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Sunday, April 30, 2017

Looking for a free & professional tool for recording your screen & making "how to?" video tutorials?

Today i was looking for a free and professional tool for recording my computer screen (also known as screen-casting) and making professional "How to?" videos for my audience and i landed on; iSpring Free Cam 8

In brief here are a few good things i liked about iSpring Free Cam 8:

  1. it's absolutely free to download
  2. No watermarks 
  3. No adverts
  4. Has voice recording
  5. You can directly upload to YouTube
  6. Has social media plugin and you can directly share on social media
  7. No limit of the number of videos
  8. No limit of length of video
  9. You can edit the video
  10. You can remove the background noise
  11. Has a highlight on the pointer
  12. Can record system sounds and mouse clicks

Here is a sample first video i created with this tool and i look forward to many more like these:



Credits: iSpring Solutions

How to add, change or remove keyboard layout input method - Windows 10?

Summary:

How to add, change or remove keyboard layout input method - Windows 10?

Problem or Goal:

When I press shit + 2 on my keyboard, it types the quotation mark (“) instead of the at symbol (@). 

Cause: 

This is caused by having the wrong keyboard layout in your computer settings.

Solution:

Watch my five minute video on YouTube on how to quickly fix this



Problem Solved?

Yes

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Is your bad internet experience being caused by your ISP's underperforming DNS? Find out today

So you have finally signed up for that broadband and dedicated internet bandwidth that you ISP has been trying to sell you for the last one year and has been telling you all the nice things that dedicated bandwidth can do! you decided to bite the bullet and release that hard earned cash to experience that fast lane for internet, may be it started out so well on day one but the experience gets worse by the day and soon or later you can't even tell the difference between your old and new connection.

Well, there are other factors that affect internet speeds and trust me you can have a whole pipe of 100Mbps to yourself, but if your ISP's DNS (Domain Name Server) has issues, it will always have a direct impact to your internet experience. 

One of the major performance indicators (a.k.a KPIs) for DNS is the "DNS Response Time"; This is the time it takes (in milliseconds) for the DNS to resolve a requested domain (for example www.facebook.com) into it's corresponding IP (Internet Protocal) address (for example 157.240.7.35).

A slow, overloaded or unreliable DNS has a direct impact on customer's internet experience and noticeably slows down virtually all your internet use. Every ISP has their own DNS infrastructure that is closer to their end users (topology-wise), but this does not directly imply that it will be the fastest DNS in response time. There are many well known publicly available DNS alternatives, which by geo-location and topology-wise are far away from your access device but have better response times and today am going to show you how you can determine that and also optimize your connection.

"You can't optimize it until you can measure it"

Another important point is that your ISP DNS could be in the wrong order, with the secondary DNS performing faster than the primary DNS and this also matters because the requests will always be sent to the primary DNS first. so this article is for both the end user and you the ISP engineer. Am sure you don't want a customer to walk into your office and present to you a report of how publicly available DNS(s) are performing better than your DNS(s)! So you better measure it now and optimize it now.

DNS Benchmark is a freeware tool and you can download it HERE
This tool compares the performance of the ISP DNS with many well known publicly available alternatives. The tool then generates visual reports that compare your ISP DNS response time with other public DNS(s), these reports are easy to interpret and the DNS(s) are ranked according to response time. You don't need to be an expert or geek to use this tool, and you will find the "How tos?" on the download website.

See below a screen shot of the tool and sample report:
DNS Benchmark

DNS Benchmark Report
Based on the results and conclusions from the benchmark, you can determine if you should continue using the DNS(s) provided by your ISP (if they rank top) or if you should change to public DNS(s), that's if the public DNS(s) rank on top of your ISP DNS(s). And if the DNS settings for your connection can't be manually changed, you have the right to walk up to your ISP and challenge them, just make sure to save your benchmark reports.

Going forward, don't let a slow DNS ruin your internet experience. Have fun

Credits: Precision Freeware by Steve Gibson

Thursday, April 20, 2017

HiiL Innovating Justice Call for Innovations 2017 is Now Open!

Innovating Justice Challenge 2017

Innovators working on justice and legal issues worldwide can apply for up to 20,000 EUR in equity-free grant money as part of the HiiL Justice Accelerator’s Innovating Justice Challenge. The Call for Applications, which opened March 1 and remains open until June 30, encourages two types of application: first, startups with an idea and team may apply for funding in the Call for Innovations; second, individuals without a team or idea can apply for the Call for Talent.

The Call for Innovations has, over the last five years, awarded funding to over 60 innovative justice/legal technologies from all over the world. It is open to applicants with both a team and justice innovation idea.

The Call for Talent is a search for individuals with a particular skill that they wish to apply to the cause of justice innovation. Up to 10 individuals will be selected and supported through innovation training, some travel to local events, support for their ideas, and future support.
Applications are particularly encouraged that address six main pain points of justice: employment justice, family justice, neighbor disputes, land disputes, crime and law enforcement, and migration/human trafficking. Applications are also welcome from other areas. More information about HiiL can be found HERE and please submit your ideas HERE!

Innovating Justice Challenge 2017

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Dell Laptop Battery Issues - Plugged in, Not charging, LED blinking Umber

Summary: 

Dell laptop, model LATITUDE | E4300
The battery is not charging, LEDs are blinking umber when plugged in and down under the battery are blue LEDs on the battery that constantly stay ON even when unplugged, shutdown or battery detached from the laptop.


Dell battery issues

Problem or Goal: 


Dell battery plugged in, not charging

Cause:

Battery failure

Solution:

N/A

Problem Solved?

N/A

Up Accelerate call for applications | Deadline 30th April

Up Accelerate program is now accepting applications for its next cycle. If you missed our first call, why not give it a try?
Up Accelerate is an initiative of UNFPA, implemented by Outbox, focused on supporting young people that are addressing challenges in Sexual Reproductive Health through social businesses.
In this call, we are interested in innovators building solutions to:
a) Improve access to essential medicines and supplies in Maternal Health or,
b) Improve the use of data in healthcare planning, monitoring and delivery.
We are looking for up-to four teams to support over a period of four months. Please submit your application here by 30th April 2017. Each team receives mentorship, business training, technical guidance and seed funding of up-to $10000 for a period of four months.


For more information, please visit http://upaccelerate.co.ug
For inquiries, please write to sopio@upaccelerate.co.ug

Thursday, April 13, 2017

How much is your website or blog worth and how much can you make from blogging?

Are you curious to find out how much your website or blog is worth? you can find out at worth of web
Am not a very active publisher, i do about 2 to 5 posts in a month but am impressed my blog is worth about 57 USD as of today. Well i opened this blog in 2010 so it's about 7 years old so may be the value also comes with age, but i believe the age should not matter at all if you are a committed published.


my techie guy worth
To successfully gain from blogging, you need to be active everyday and make sure you publish a minimum of 10 posts per day, and we are not talking about just 10 words posts! we are talking about at least 200 words post that can attract at least 5 visitors per day.

Lets do simple maths:
And am going to use the statistics provided by Worth of web



My techie guy daily earnings
According to worth of web:

1. My blog gets 11 page views per day (which is not very true when you compare to the google analytics statistics, my blog actually generates close to 50 page views per day)
2. My blog makes 0.02 dollars per day (This is almost true when i check my daily Adsense earnings)
3. My blog makes 0.47 dollars per month (This is not true because the earning per day sometimes spike up and i end up with about 2 dollars per month)
4. My blog has a total of 192 post as of now

So what do we deduce from the stats above:
11 page views ---> 0.02 USD
=> 1 page view ---> 0.02/11 approx 0.002 USD

192 posts ---> 11 page views
=> 1 post ---> 11/192 approx 0.06 page views

If you are a committed blogger and you can publish 10 good posts per day for the 7 years:
10 posts per day = 10 x 360 x 7 = 25200 posts
=> Daily page views will have grown to 25200 x 0.06 = 1512 page views
=> Daily earnings will have grown to 1512 x 0.002 = 3 USD

Estimate for daily earnings in your first year of active blogging:
10 x 360 = 3600 posts
=> Daily page views after the 1st year = 3600 x 0.06 = 216
=> Daily earnings after the 1st year = 0.432 USD

There are so many other factors that can improve your earnings from blogging, my assumption is based on best effort, where you just write posts and wait for organic traffic.
And my only source of earning is Google Adsense, but there are other channels you can consider to make your blog more profitable, for example affiliate marketing and other advertising platforms.

Monday, April 10, 2017

The Royal Academy of Engineering announces the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovations - Open for applications.

Call for applications
The prize aims to stimulate, celebrate and reward innovation and entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa. Applications are invited from individuals or small teams, living and working in sub-Saharan Africa.

Entrepreneurs from all engineering disciplines, with an innovation that can provide scalable solutions to local challenges, are invited to enter.

Shortlisted applicants will receive a six-month package of tailored support to help them achieve commercial success from their innovation.
The overall winner of the GBP 25,000 prize will be announced at a high-profile event in June 2018. Applications close on 24 July 2017.

Please share this with anyone you think might be interested in applying.



Contact Information

Louise Olofsson
GCRF Programme Manager

The Royal Academy of Engineering
Prince Philip House
3 Carlton House
London SW1Y 5DG

Louise.Olofsson@raeng.org.uk
@RAEngGlobal

Registered Charity 293074

Delete Your Internet Cookies - Trying to look for cheap online airline tickets!

While searching for airline tickets online, always remember to delete your Internet Cookies. Prices go up if you visit a website multiple times.

Never Stop Learning

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Jarkata Night life - Bartender juggling fire bottles at Venesia Bar, BSD...



What are bogon routes & why should they be a concern to ISP network admins?


What are bogon routes?

Bogons are martians (private and reserved addresses defined by RFC1918, RFC5735 and RFC 6598) and net blocks that have been allocated to a regional internet registry (RIR) by the internet assigned numbers authority (IANA).

A bogon prefix is a route that should never appear in the internet routing table therefore packets routed over the public internet with a source address in a bogon range should be discarded.

Why should bogon prefixes be a concern to ISP network administrators?

Bogons are used by malicious internet users and hackers to launch DDoS attacks and IP address spoofing. In fact, most of the frequently attacked sites, 60% of the naughty packets were obvious bogons.

What should you do as an ISP network administrator to guard your network against bogons?

You need to filter and reject or discard bogon routes at your BGP edge router so they don’t enter your routing table as valid destinations. Filtering should be done on both the ingress and egress direction because similarly you don’t want to advertise bogon prefixes to your upstream provider.

However, if you choose to filter bogons you need to have a plan to keep your filters update because these lists change every day especially the full bogon list which has significant changes every day.

You can find the full bogon IPv4 and IPv6 lists here.

Bogon filtering is good and a wise decision but you have to be committed to maintaining it every day, if you just download a full bogons list once and use it to filter at your BGP router without updating it, it will become out of date very quickly and you will end up blocking legitimate traffic.

A good idea is to peer with bogon route servers, it’s a free service and you can apply here

In this way, your bogon prefixes will be automatically updated. Any changes in the full bogon prefixes will immediately be reflected in your BGP router which saves you from what would otherwise be a rigorous daily routine of downloading and updating your full bogon lists.

Credits: TEAM CYMRU