Wiping confidential data when you sell your PC

If you are selling or otherwise disposing of an old PC, have you removed all the critical/confidential data? Just dumping all the files in the Recycle bin/trash can and deleting them is no where near adequate. The cheapest data recovery program can get those files back. They can even get files off a freshly-formatted hard drive. So if you want to be absolutely certain that your old PC's new owner won't get your private information, you need to wipe the sensitive files by overwriting them with new 1s and 0s. Here's some tips on what to do, courtesy of PC World.

Viral videos

Viral videos are those YouTube-type videos that people can't resist sending to each other. For instance, the Susan Boyle audition on Britain's Got Talent has registered nearly 70-million hits so far, and rising. But apart from the occasional ones that the media pick up on, how do you find these treasures? A website called butterscotch.com has done some of the hard work for you. They have a regular blog picking out some of the best.
And to give you a bit of light relief, here are some links to a few of the best that I have come across:
Matrix-style table tennis
Bob Newhart - "stop it"
The Two Ronnies Mastermind
Russian portable toilet practical joke
Parkour - free running

Preventing embarrassing emails

"Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send," writes Gmail engineer John Perlow. "Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help. When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?"

Enlarging thumbnails

Some time ago I posted about ways to change the views of your Windows folders. I mostly use the "Details" option, because I need such information as the date a file was created, and its size. However, I switch to thumbnails for a quick scan of photographs. Only trouble is, the thumbnails are really too small. There is no native method in Windows to enlarge them, but there is a handy add-on provided free by Microsoft, called TweakUI (one of a number of handy little applications which come under the banner Microsoft Power Toys and which can perform a variety of changes to how XP works on your machine. This link is for the XP version, by the way). After you download TweakUI, you need to install it (double click on the icon). This, however, does not automatically start the program, and it manages to hide itself quite well, not putting a program icon on your desktop. I suggest go to Start menu/Programs/Microsoft Power Toys/ and right-click on TweakUI. You can then drag a copy of the icon to your desktop, from where you can launch the application. When the application is running, you will see a list of items on the LH side - 4th down is "Explorer". Click on the + sign, and then choose Thumbnails. Now you can choose how large you want them to be. Note: Windows stores thumbnail information in its memory cache, so the larger the icons, the more memory the system will require, but you can choose lower resolution to offset this. Also, if you have viewed thumbnails previously in a window, they will not automatically adopt the new size. You can force this, though. Go to the top menu in a folder window, choose Tools/Folder options/View and then check "Do not cache thumbnails". Click on "Reset all folders", and bingo.
Incidentally, you can have a full-size slideshow of all or selected photos in a folder, by right-clicking on them, and then choosing "Preview", which brings up the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. This is another feature I use a lot, as it's faster than launching most other viewing programs.

Highlight web page passages

Ever wish you could take a yellow highlighter to a Web page - for instance, a particularly noteworthy passage in a really witty or helpful blog post - so you could easily retrieve the information later on? That's the idea behind WebNotes, which adds a virtual highlighter and sticky-notes to your browsing experience. The service was designed to help people like students and researchers to mark up Web pages the way they'd mark up books or journals - but obviously it's useful for anyone who wants to record and organize information for future use. Find out more on how to use it here. (PS: Another great free service.)

Stumble on some great websites

Ever get the feeling you're missing out on some great websites? Often, the best discoveries come from random hopping around the web. Now there's a website devoted to helping you find those undiscovered treasures. It's called StumbleUpon. Clicking on the Stumble! button in the site's upper-left corner will take you to a random page. If you prefer a bit more targeted randomisation, you can select within a range of preferred topics, and you can share recommendations with friends.

Five free system restore tools

If your computer suffers a major catastrophe, your best insurance against a heart attack is having previously backed up all your essential data. Even better, if you have backed up your entire disk. That's a lot easier to say than to do, of course. But Lifehacker offers five free tools to help you avoid disaster. I recently bought a 160Gb external hard drive for $100, specifically for back-ups. I figured it was a lot cheaper than paying a computer company 2-3 times that amount or more to recover my data in the face of a meltdown. So far I have been doing the back-ups manually, so now it's time to get down and learn how to actually use an appropriate back-up software package.

9 great uses for a binder clip

Binder clips are the underdog of the office supply world. The even humbler paper clip gets more attention - and inventiveness. So Lifehacker redresses the balance with nine great uses for a binder clip (apart from holding together a bundle of papers - that's too obvious). How about: emergency cuff links, keeping the toothpaste tube squeezed, or an i-phone dock?