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First a note about Gibson Research's SpinRite

I've been using Gibson's Shields Up! to check my computer's security since I first went to broadband. I've noted many times over the last several years that SpinRite hadn't been updated in a long time, and so steered clear of it.Recently, Gibson released SpinRite 6.0 for Windows XP that fully supports WinXP (NTFS & FAT), Linux, Novell, etc. I jumped in immediately and was not disappointed. It took 9 hours to low-level process and check my 60 GB drive, and recovered two supposedly bad areas of the disk. This is a very powerful tool, yet designed to be simple to run. If you BIOS recognizes your drive, SpinRite can probably recover your "lost" data. I highly recommend it.

Blogs
The blogosphere has exploded with early pioneers like Matt Drudge breaking huge stories like Clinton's adulterous affair with Monica Lewinski. More recently, blogs broke open Rathergate--Dan Rather's forged Air National Guard letters used to try and slander President Bush--and the Islamo-nazis lies about the Danish newspaper's cartoons. Still, in addition to these great sites, there also exists a lot of gargage out there. I've compiled a short list of my favorites for whatever its worth.

Michael Yon - Incomparable, independent coverage of the war on terror in Iraq. Embedded with the troops at the pointy end of the spear, he reports it as he sees it. Just don't read it, contribute to his support.

A Female Soldier - Another good blog from the front lines, this one by a female medic deployed to Iraq.

Michelle Malkin - Outstanding writer and thinker telling it straight. In addition to her erudite commentary, Michelle links to pertinent sources and parallel articles. This is my #1 news blog site.

Little Green Footballs - Another outstanding news blog that was in the lead for breaking Rathergate. From the war on terror to domestic politics, perhaps the best known of the news blogs with a reputation for solid information.

The Jawa Report - A cutting-edge, hard-hitting blog that pushes the envelope. There is great wisdom here and some fine philosophical articles, but there are also some juvenile over-simplifications. Overall, I really enjoy the mix.

The Counterterrorism Blog - Excellent source of news and analysis on the world-wide war on terror.

The Religion of Peace - Breaks the myth in the title. Outstanding reporting and compliation of Muslim-committed attrocities around the world. No shortage of material for this site. Also has a great collection of specific terrorist attacks since 9/11/2001 (4,262 as of 2/17/2006) with actual and estimated numbers of innocents murdered and injured in each attack.

La Shawn Barber - Excellent political news and commentary by a professional writer.

Mudville Gazette - Very nice patriotic milblog.

Sgt. Hook - Another nice patriotic milblog.

Fire and Ice - Blog by an official US Marine Corp artist.

Stop the ACLU - Excellent blog covering the ACLU's systematic deprivation of religious, conservative, freedom-loving, law-abiding Americans' civil rights. The ACLU is "a militant central bureau in the labor movement for legal aid, defense strategy, information and propaganda" in parnership with the Communist Party as the"center of resistance" for radical groups--this according to ACLU's first annual report. Know your history!

Stuck on Stupid - Good US political blog.

Gun Defense Blog - Outstanding compendium of self-defense news stories directly from local newspapers around the country. People who think that free citizens don't need to be armed haven't read The Religion of Peace blog above or this one. They also don't know the real history of the American civil rights movement, where American gun control started with the Klu Klux Klan taking self-defense capabilities from their black targets.

ZDNet Blogs - Collection of excellent tech blogs on computing issues.

Auctions

Yahoo Auction House - My favorite auction place to get computer and PDA stuff at the best prices.

EBay Auction House - Better for general or hard-to-find stuff, but does have computer and PDA sections. Prices seem to go higher than Yahoo.

Software and Updates

Gibson Research - Home of SpinRite, an excellent hard disk diagnostic that no serious guru should be without.

HP Computer Product and Peripherals Anonymous FTP - Hewlett Packard product info and driver updates.

Microsoft Support Online Home Page - Support for MS products.

Microsoft Office Software Library - Driver updates, patches, etc. from MS.

avast! 4 home antivirus - Outstanding free antivirus software that's every bit the equal and in many ways better than Norton and McAfee in my opinion. Fast, doesn't eat you RAM, updated regularly, and misses nothing.

Norton Anti-Virus Center - Download Updates - Norton, Central Point, and MS Anti-virus updates. NAV updated every month, others far less often. Eats your system resources and memory, though.

TextPad Home Page - Home of the absolute best 32-bit text editor out there. Try it and register it--I did!

Windows Commander - Windows file manager of extraordinary utility. Patterned after the DOS-based Norton Commander, but nicely tailored to Windows (3.1 and 95). I can't imagine life w/o it.

WinZip Home Page - Updates for the classic Windows compressed file handler.

Avant Browser Page - Free browser that uses the IE6 engine. Features tabs, pop-up/image/flash/etc. blocking that really works, tabbed interface, enhanced standard toolbar, flexible configuration, and loads pages as fast as I've ever seen. Highly recommend that you give it a try. Can't beat the price!

Trumpet Software International - Home of Trumpet Winsock TCP/IP software for internet dial-up PPP/SLIP access.

Promise Technology Inc. Home Page - Updates and tech info, including jumper settings, for Promise lines of EIDE controllers, etc.

Nvidia - Home of the top video chipset today--GeForce.

ATI Technologies Inc. On-Line - Site for ATI video and other product info and driver updates.

Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc - Updates for Diamond video cards and other products.

Iomega - IOMEGA Zip and Jazz drives and driver updates.

PKWAREŽ Inc. Home Page - Home of Zip technology.

Logitech - Products, updates, and help from a leading peripheral provider. I can't compute w/o their TrackMan Wheel.

PowerQuest - Makers of PartitionMagic - THE partition manager. Throw away fdisk and get a copy of this. Non-destructively rearranges partitions and optimizes cluster sizes according to your needs. Versions work with Windows 3.11, Win95, WinNT, and O/S 2.

Sausage Software Home Page - Home of Hot Dog HTML editor and other products.

The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software - The name says it all. Set on one of the largest collections of Shareware - tucows.

Shareware! Shareware! Shareware! - Jumbo! - Shareware! Shareware! Shareware! - Huge collection of shareware, but not always current versions.

DOWNLOAD.COM -- Welcome - C/Net's collection of shareware. Not huge, but usually current.

Progressive Networks, The Home of RealAudio - Popular sound drivers for net noise.

MacDaddy Computers - I'm not a Mac fan, but the owner is a good fellow. If anyone feels they must use a Mac, give these guys a call.

Palm platform-related sites

For other great software sites, see the links in my Palm OS software listing here and my Pocket PC software list here.

Aximsite - Home of great info and help for Dell Axim Pocket PC devices. I hang out here a lot these days.

Pocket PC Thoughts - The leading hangout place for general Pocket PC information and discussion. They cover the breadth of the PPC market.

PocketGear - Good place to buy Pocket PC software and keep up with the latest version changes.

FreewarePPC - Loads of free software for the Pocket PC platform.

Dell Axim Homepage - Home of the beautiful, powerful, reliable, and value-priced family of Pocket PC PDAs. I have a Dell Axim X50v.

PalmOne - Home of the Palm handheld line of PDAs. They're back in the game with their latest releases. They made my Tungsten|T3.

PDABuyersGuide - Great source of information and reviews on PDAs, software, and accessories. I now write reviews for them.

Sony Clie Homepage - Home of what were for a couple of years the most advanced Palm OS PDAs on the market. They engineered while Palm Computing slept. New models feature 320 x 320 pixel screens with 16-bit color and 16 Mb of RAM in great form factors. The high enders have MP3 audio capability built-in.

Handera 330 - Was one of the most advanced monochrome screen designs on a Palm OS PDA several years ago.

Palm Development Zone - Forum for Palm developers on Palm Computing's site.

OneSource - Successor site to ClieSource and PalmOneSource. A solid Palm OS site with product reviews and very active forums. Forums are very active, and they've started their software library up again.

PDA247 - Excellent site dedicated to Sony CLIE and Palm OS handhelds in the UK. Webmaster is working hard to make it a landmark site. Lots of new changes, and the news is always fresh! I check the news here every day.

Launchplug.com - Brian Spradlin's outstanding site, similar to Tanker Bob's Palm OS site in some ways. Contains many step by step tutorials. Don't miss this one!

Palm Info Center - A great site for Palm OS news and reviews.

Brighthand - Another good site for PDA news, reviews, and discussion.

Palm Boulevard - Another good Palm OS news/forum site.

UGeek - PDA Geek - Great site for breaking info on Palm and CE device developments and product reviews.

The Gadgeteer - Great site for the latest PDA news and reviews. Although they're geeky, they are users just like you and me.

The PalmGuru - Great reviews of Palm stuff.

DC PUG - Great bunch of folks who know how to run a Palm User Group. Stop in if you're in Washington DC during one of their meetings!

Brayder Technologies - Home of JackFlash, JackSprat, and JBBackup--great management tools for your Palm OS device's FlashROM. Works with Sony Clies and other PDAs not supported by Handera's FlashPro.

Handago - Older and larger site to to download and/or buy PDA software/handware. I didn't used to support them because of their parent company's frivilous lawsuit against PalmGear, but PalmGear's business practices are now equally troubling.

ZDNet's Palm Software - Another large collection of Palm freeware and shareware.

TUCOWS PDA Site - Wide selection of PDA software.

PalmGear - Original and leading site for PDA software.  The maintain a huge collection of applications.

Handera Products - Handera's FlashPro was the first software I bought after my Palm V. Lately, however, they've gone downhill along with others.

OliveTree Bible Software - The best Bible study software available for the PalmOS, bar none. Their original language tools set the standard for the industry. The AMG Complete Word Study Bible has no peer on the PDA or desktop. The reader is free as are many of the Bible versions and some other references. Outstanding support.

Laridian Bible Software - The entire Bible on a Palm? You bet, and with fast search capability! Consumes about 1.5 Mb, but can save room by only loading the modules you need or putting them on your memory card. Great product!

Backup Buddy - Don't leave home w/o this! Saves your entire Palm setup to disk so you can recover in a few minutes from the rare hard reset. Also the home of InstallBuddy, a great utility that converts common PC formats to Palm Doc format. I couldn't live w/o these two programs! These folks also wrote CruiseControl, a simple Palm performance enhancer that doesn't use overclocking.

Chapura - Maker of the PocketMirror, the only reliable program I've found to synchronize your Palm w/your PC. Comes on the Palm Desktop CD, but check for updates here.

Cutting Edge Software - Home of Smartdoc, a super word processor for the Palm. Now upgraded to Quickword. Also offers Quickword and Quicksheet as a suite called Quickoffice.

Solutions in Hand - Home of Pilot MiniCalc, a full-featured spreadsheet with built-in MS Excel conversion. My favorite Palm spreadsheet.

Pimlico Software - Home of DateBook PIM product for Palm. Replaces built-in calendar and todo list with much greater capability. Still uses built-in database for compatibility.

Benc Software - Writes a bunch of neat pop-up utilities and a currency converter. Very nice fellow, too. Update: Bozidar Benc passed away from injuries suffered in an auto accident in his native Croatia. He was a real gentleman and is sorely missed.

NormSoft Software - Home of CryptInfo and Pocket Tunes. CryptInfo is an outstanding secure information management program that safetly stores your passwords, credit card info, shareware registration codes, etc. Uses DES and 3DES encryption library. Great user interface that allows user-customized fields. Can import and export data as well. Pocket Tunes is a great music player for the Palm that uses a music organization scheme similar to MicroSoft's Media Player. The deluxe version also plays WMA files.

Creative Creek - Home of the new king of RPN-style calculators--MathUPro. These calculators emulate the classic Hewlett-Packard scientific calculators. Excellent!

ArsLexis - Home of the Noah Pro dictionary/thesaursus. Works with VFS on memory cards.

Palm Flying - Nifty collection of aviation-related Palm OS applications.

Rick's Pilot Software - Author of the MathPad library, also wrote an advanced non-RPN calculator and an great equation solver for the Palm. Really shows the power of the Palm.

Quartus Software - Makers of the Benchmark testing program and a suite of on-Palm program development tools.

Pacific Neo-Tek - Writers of OmniRemote. Turns your IR-equipped Palm or Visor into a TV/VCR remote. Cool stuff.

DBNet - Home of the undocumented Palm secrets revealed.

Nth Lab - Home of the RPN calculator. Also archives of RPN plug-ins.

Palm Pilot Archives - Large collection of Palm/Visor software.

The PalmGuru - Great reviews of Palm stuff.

Palm-sized PC Online - Outstanding source for WinCE Palm-sized PC news, but includes Palm Computing news in the mix. Culls current stories from a variety of online news sites.

CWolf Palm Page - New site on the scene by a great guy. He created the site to share his experience and help folks. Still under construction but headed for greatness.

Tanker Bob's PDA Site - My own Palm page. Has advice on which PDA may be right for you, online auctions, corporate security issues, and Reformed Theology downloads.

Muetze's Palm Page - Nice collection of information for Palm beginners.

Geek Technical Sites - chosen for their coverage of technical issues like CPU/motherboard/BIOS details, overclocking, bus speed optimization, BIOS tweaking, etc.--topics only for the stout hearted.

Tom's Hardware & Performance Guide - My favorite location for the latest in technical data and assessments.

Welcome to Anand's Hardware Tech Page - Another good technical page for the technically proficient.

System Optimization PC Hardware and Performance Guide! - Tied for second place in Tanker Bob's hall of fame for techies with Anand's above.

System Internals - Awesome source of tools and information on the Windows operating system. Discoverers of the Sony rootkit lies.

ExtremeTech - Geeked up site sponsored by PC Magazine.

Tweakit Hardware Reference Site - Another techie page.

Dot What? - Nice reference site that lists a host of file extensions.

TweakBIOS - Great shareware utility for squeezing the last ounce of performance our of your system.

Computer Companies

Welcome to Micron Electronics! - Can create a custom system online and price it out here also. My current computer is a Micron Millenia Max XP2, w/a 1.4 GHz Athlon and 384 Mb DDR SDRAM. Intel/Rambus--just say no! Configure your machine online, but order by phone. The phone salesmen will give you additional discounts not on the web.

Compaq Online - No prices online, only system descriptions and current store promotions.

Welcome to Gateway 2000 - Nifty system to custom configure your "new" system online and price it out.

Welcome to www.dell.com - Dell computers, the price/performance/quality leaders (this month).

Shuttle Computer International, Inc. - Home of excellent motherboards that are popular with geeks.

Mitsuba Home Page - Home of my last motherboard. Reliable, but not very tweakable.

Asus USA Home Page - Another popular geek motherboard.

American Megatrends, Inc. - AMIBIOS, RAID controllers, Motherboards, and Utility Software - A leading BIOS company.

Award Software International - Another leading BIOS manufacturer.

Internet Services

myhosting.com - Not an ISP, but my current web hosting service--the home of tankerbob.com. Great folks with whom to work, great service, crisp performance, and deliver what they promise. Highly recommended.

GoDaddy.com - Not an ISP, but does domain name registration cheaper than just about anyone else. Also does webpage and email hosting. Also great folks with whom to work.

Domains by Proxy - Nice service that allows you to duck spam and junk from jerks who cull domain registration services and whois information for addresses. Also preserves your privacy on the web. Not cheap but worth it in my opinion.

RoadRunner Online, Central Florida - Nice ISP with great cable modem service. If you don't have broadband, you're missing a great online experience.

Quantum Networking Solutions, Inc. - My former ISP, with links to other Antelope Valley sites. Good info on reaching the net through Windows 95.

California City Internet home page - Another ISP, further north in the Antelope Valley. Good links to info on high speed modems.

Web Searchers

AltaVista: Main Page - Digital's web searching entry. Their engine is widely used in corporate applications.

Google - Fast--the new standard in web search engines. Try their basic IE toolbar. I live by it!

WebCrawler Searching - The second fastest and most effective search tool.

Yahoo! - Another great web search service. Broken down nicely by category, speeding up specific searches.

Finger Gateway - Find someone on the internet.

Universal Whois - Searches multiple whois databases.

General Computing Locations

The Geek Zone - Learn and use your Geek code. A must for those with no lives.

PC Magazine on the Web - Neat site for PC Magazine resources.

Snopes - The definitive email hoax database. Be sure to pass the link on to those who send you wild rumors without doing their homework.

Hoax alerts from Data Fellows - The definitive virus hoax word. Don't be duped by those idiotic emails again!

Sharpened.net - A free computer and Internet resource with a glossary of computer terms, answers to computer questions, and other helpful resources.

Fileinfo.net - A searchable database of file extensions with detailed descriptions and information about each file type.

Tech Terms Computer Dictionary - A searchable dictionary of computer terms defined in simple language with helpful examples.

GIF Animation on the WWW - Excellent site to learn about GIF animation and find a wealth of resources to create animated GIFs.

Price Watch(tm) - Street Price Search Engine - Checkout the best prices before laying down your plastic.

PC Catalog's Buyers' Directory LaunchPad - Another place to check before spending.

Windows NT Magazine - Main Page - For those playing with the big boys.

California Computer Fair - The computer fair folks in the land of fruits, nuts, and flakes.

Electronic Privacy Information Center Home Page - Folks worried about their privacy on the net.


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Last updated February 18, 2006