Of course they say; “The server is fine”. So I’m looking for some good tools to prove them wrong when I can’tget to it.

I stumbled on host-tracker.com tonight and it’s pretty sweet.

It’s not fast, but the data they give you for free is pretty cool.

So yeah, currently, as in right now, the server is doing just fine.

Give it a look…

I guess it’s kind of slow if you’re viewing this from Iran or Germany, but that’s not our biggest target audience…

If you know of other good testing tools please post them in the comments.

Much to my dismay, the love affair I’ve had with X1, my all-out favorite for desktop search, has come to an end.

Why? It’s certainly not because I’ve found something better, no.

It’s because it’s simply stopped working. Others have given up on it a long time ago, but it has stayed and remained my favorite.

Nothing else give you the speed and flexibility. Results as you type, etc.

Crashes with the products have become more prevalent, though usually work-around able, they were becoming more than I could stand. I checked for an update, and there was a ‘minor’ release. I tried to upgrade to that. Tried simple upgrade, and full-reinstalls. It works, it indexes my files, and my Mozilla email but for some reason it won’t touch my Outlook anymore. The prior version had stopped updating per the schedule, but I could still manually update the index from time to time, which I had done.

But now, nadda, nothing, zilch. No Outlook/Exchange indexing to be had. Spending more than an hour screwing with it negates all benefit, so it’s now gone.

I’m now on the hunt for the best tool for my needs. No, Windows desktop search isn’t it. While it works, it’s slow and clunky.

I’ve just re-installed Google Desktop. It’s claming it will take another 10 hours of idle time to finish the initial index. We’ll see how that goes.

My biggest need is searching emails. I get too damn many. When it’s time to fill out an expense report I want to be able to search for $49.95 to find the email receipt for that software I purchased a month ago. I want to be able to easily pull up all emails from *@domain.com fast and easy. X1 used to give me that.

Outlook search folders work fine if you’re in no hurry but I usually am.

If you have tip for a good email indexing product, post it in the comments.

Sick and tired of giving up your email address to evaluate some software only to be put on mailing lists after you explicitly do NOT check the “I wish to be contacted” checkbox?

Guerrilla Mail is your solution, and it works quite well.

Simply visit: http://www.guerrillamail.com/

Generate an unique, yet expiring email address and you’re good to go.

Simply Brilliant!

Actually it’s annoying, but fun for, oh about, five minutes.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke (”DBAN”) is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

Enjoy the list here.

There aren’t many surprises on the list, but it’s broken out well with nice icons so you know which platform things are going to run on, and if it’s command line only or GUI.

Thanks fellas.

Tags: Network_Security_Tools, Insecure.org, Top_100, List, must_have

Get it today here.

Update: I downloaded this and gave it a whirl.  I used a IBM Stinkpad T40 for testing.  Not the fastest machine on the planet but not to shabby either.  The Administrator password was one of 8 Characters, using both Upper and Lowercase, including Numbers and a non-alpha character (1).  OphCrack2 popped that password in about 20 minutes.  It’s still working on the other accounts including the IUSR_ account and the IWAM account.  It also immediatly showed that the Guest and User accounts had no passwords (though they were disabled)

Nice…

Technorati Tags: Windows, password, craciking, recovery

Need I say more? If you were too cheap to spring for the $75 bucks, get it now. Hopefully you won’t have to install all of that Yahoo stuff.

If you hate to wander from the keyboard to launch a simple application or to check your mail, then this is the utility for you!

Despite having been built on top of Delphi I still like it.

It just sits, hovering above all else on your desktop minding it's business displaying the date and time:

Hit the magic key combination windows key-Q and type in a "Magic Word":

viola!

Your application or command will be taken care of. Pretty nifty stuff.

Poohbah rating: A+ so far.

[This tool tip leaked by: http://www.techtoolblog.com/ The Colonel didn't give up his secret recipe but he did give up this tip.]

Tags: commands, gadgets, nifty, software, utilities, windows

Long for the days of legacy email clients like PINE? Then you need this:

Outlook-QuoteFix

It works, and does what it advertises it does. Has some limitations though, like you can't use Word as your editor. Why would you do that? Well you might need to use templates, or really need the spell checker as you type (like me) and/or some of the other functions.

But it's nifty.

If I didn't have to fit into the Outlook-ized Corporate world with a standardized sig and all that jaz I'd probalby be using it.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Outlook, Quote, Quotefix, Tools, IT, Freeware