The other day I was explaining to someone what a Wiki is, though I didn’t do a very good job because it’s something that is a bit difficult to explain off the top of your head.

Well, now I can redeem myself by posting this excellent video about Wikis which simplifies and demystifies the entire subject.
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Folks, I just wanted to pass along a tip for a free PDF Printer Driver in case anyone was ever looking for one, or in case you don’t know what this even is!

A PDF Printer Driver is a little piece of software that installs just like a printer would, but instead of converting your printed output it saves the exact printed format as a PDF file. You might want to do this for any of the following reasons:

• To e-mail a document in a universal format which preserves the exact page layout. For example, if you create a form using MS Word, you can convert it to PDF.
• To preview exactly what a document is going to look like when printed before wasting paper and ink.
• To post a printable version of a document on a Web site that people can access using any computing platform.
• If you want to print something, but you aren’t near a printer you can print it to a PDF and then later print a hard copy. VERY useful for offline work on a laptop while traveling.

The only problem is that up until relatively recently the only way to accomplish this was to own a very expensive piece of Adobe software. But now there are a few free alternatives on the market, and I wanted to recommend Bullzip PDF Printer.
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Today’s post is unfortunately a sad one. We lost a very close family member this weekend to a long battle with a number of ailments including Cancer. It was one of those situations where our loved one was taken decades before her time, but at least it was not something that just occurred suddenly.

It’s been a very sad weekend, but at the same time one that reminds me how precious life is. I also came to the personal realization that grief is for the living, not the dead. We have to continue on through this world forever missing a part of ourselves that can never be refilled.

This weekend also reminded me of a commitment I made some time ago to help Stanford University’s Folding@Home project which researches fundamental causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. Cancer and Parkinson’s have both impacted my family and I believe that with enough emphasis we can cure these crippling diseases.

And you can help Stanford’s research by simply running a tiny piece of software on your computer that only uses the spare cycles when you don’t need them.
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By Guest Star (and responsible Power-Digger): SuxMonkey of AllSux.com

Have you submitted great content to Digg and wondered why it didn’t make the Digg homepage? Are you just curious about how Digg, the most popular of social media sites, works? Did some content of yours make it to the front page, but you don’t know why it did or why other content of yours didn’t?

This article will start to address these questions, and refer you to further resources to help you on your way to understanding the social news powerhouse that is Digg.com. It will also provide advice for sharing news and information on Digg as well as how to promote your own content responsibly. Keep in mind that this article is about understanding how to build a better Digg community for everyone - not about gaming Digg for personal gain.
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I keep wondering two things, why does the RIAA continue to persecute people, and more importantly why do people do stupid enough things to keep getting prosecuted?

That organization exists for the sole purpose of suing the pants off of people, but they can only do so when people leave plenty of evidence about their activity - namely hosting content on their computers and allowing others to download it. Most of the time it seems these foolish people aren’t even aware that what they are doing by running Kazaa, eMule, Gnutella, or some other file sharing application puts them at risk.

But why in the world would anyone share their music, movie or software collections via open, anonymous connections? Especially when there are other virtually risk-free alternatives? (By the way, know your rights if RIAA comes calling.)
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Thanks to Sean from Geek With Laptop we’ve got the first ever demonstration of a MacIntosh computer by Steve Jobs.

This post is dedicated to Terry and Debbie who both mercilessly persecute me for being a die hard PC user and paying no homage whatsoever to the Mac.
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I can’t think of the last time I fell in love with a piece of hardware so fast as I did the Belkin N1 Vision Wireless Gigabit Router (Model: F5D8232-4).

I saw it on the shelf at Best Buy while looking to replace my crappy old Netgear router, and after reading some of the literature I could not resist grabbing the only one they had to take it home and give it a try - despite the $200 price tag.

I picked it up for two primary reasons:

• The cool display on the outside of the router actually looked like it could be useful for seeing what is going on with the connectivity.
• The box claimed a freakishly long range, which I reasoned would be worth it if I could actually get coverage throughout my large house.

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In two words, it sucks.

Now, on to the detail. First of all, I paid $179 for this router earlier this year. I had upgraded to this router primarily for two reasons: I wanted more range, and I wanted Gigabit ports for my wired LAN.

It turns out that I did get slightly better range on my Wireless G laptop than my previous Linksys wireless router, but only slightly. For example my old Linksys router wouldn’t reach from my home office to my bedroom at all, and the Netgear WNR854T did reach… but just barely. I averaged only one bar and this made surfing from bed an excruciatingly poor experience.
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Six months ago I published a guide to the complete disassembly of the Creative Zen Vision W personal media player. At the end of that post I theorized as to how one could upgrade the hard drive when larger ones came available.

Well now, thanks to the generosity of Aaron Vronko and RapidRepair.com for supplying a 100GB drive; and Dan, one of my loyal readers, for playing guinea pig using my previous post to repair his Zen, I now have the largest drive in any Zen W in the world - and the theory is now a reality!

Here is how it was done.
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My buddy Jamie Harrop found this awesome new little site that helps choose a domain name by automatically trying every possible combination of whatever words you want in the domain name.

The original post comes from our HTMLHelp.com Blog.

The site is called Bust A Name and it has some truly excellent features and will really save a ton of time when it comes to choosing a name for your next new Web site.
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Google recently acquired a company called GrandCentral, which I was preparing to do a review of anyway after testing the service out a bit. This only makes the offering all that much stronger, and in my opinion it’s something everyone should try out.

Here is the Google acquisition announcement which took about 2 seconds to download directly from my voice mail:

GrandCentral links all of your phone numbers together and layers on a TON of new features. How? They are giving people One Number…for Life - a number that’s not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you. This number will consolidate your voice messaging, route calls to wherever you are, and even allow you to screen your calls.
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Remember that scene in Star Wars where R2D2 projected Princess Leah’s message into thin air? Well, it only took about 20 years to pull it off, but finally someone has actually invented it!
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