The newer versions of Real Player have added an annoying feature which will allow you to download a video playing in the browser. At first I thought disabling all the RealPlayer plugins within Firefox would take care of this. It did not and then I noticed the same thing happening in Chrome. After some poking around in RealPlayer (which I rarely use) I found out how to turn off this feature. Launch RealPlayer* From the RealPlayer drop-down menu at the upper left select Preferences.. Click the Download & Recording category (2nd from the bottom) You can either un-check the enable…

Everything seems to be working fine now. However, every time I restarted Windows my speakers would be disabled. Looking at Playback Devices panel (right click on the speaker icon on the Windows 7 Taskbar and select Playback Devices)  I noticed what was happening was Windows was making my HDMI monitor my default playback device. I’d go in and reselect the speakers and even make that ‘Default’ device. However, upon reboot it would revert back to HDMI. I did a batch of Windows updates and after the reboot was back to HDMI being the default playback device. However, while I was…

I am posting this in hopes it will save someone else from the hours of frustration and viewing countless discussion forums on how to fix this fairly simple problem. In my home office I have two separate computer systems one is an off-the-shelf HP computer which runs both Windows Vista and Linux Ubuntu. The other which is my primary was custom built at the end of last year to replace my aging Vista system. I run Windows 7 on this computer. On my primary system I have an Acer H243H 24″ Monitor which has inputs for VGA, DVI and HDMI….

So last week was the big announcement of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype. Some people may have forgotten back in 2008, Microsoft bought Danger (the makers of Sidekick) for $500 million. That did not work out as well as Microsoft had hoped as seen by summer 2010 release of the Kin phone (which if you blinked you missed it lasting only 7 weeks on the market). In December Microsoft washed their hands of the Kin Phone. Further the Sidekick brand ended up returning to T-Mobile. Of course there’s the on again, off again talks of acquiring Yahoo! As of…

With the recent news that Microsoft is acquiring Skype, it did not take long for someone to come out with a packaging design for the new Microsoft Skype. The Super Annoying Edition (with Clippy) is one of 12 editions coming to a Microsoft Store near you. Source: Microsoft Blog

Via the Seattle PI: Microsoft Blog. What could possibly go wrong?

Microsoft really needs to something about their PR Department. Via the Seattle PI: Microsoft Blog. Microsoft has apologized for a Japan earthquake tweet from its Bing team that sparked a backlash Saturday on Twitter. At 7:45 a.m., Microsoft posted the following Twitter update: @bing: How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K.

Came across the story ‘AP: Microsoft’s answer to the iPad is still in pieces‘, earlier this morning via The Microsoft Blog. Not very good PR for Microsoft: The Associated Press writes: “Instead of unveiling an elegant response to the iPad, Microsoft came to the tech industry’s premier gadget show with a collection of exposed computer guts. … Microsoft’s missing tablet served as a reminder that the world’s largest software maker remains years from a serious entry into this new category of devices. It also raised more doubts about whether Microsoft Corp. will ever be able to grab a meaningful piece…

Okay, so I had a chance to do some more research. I looked at the pricing of getting a new hosting package with my current provider for 2-years and dropping out the reseller program. Since I am already paid into the program until April 2014 I would get a refund for the remaining 3-years which would mean I would come out ahead a couple dollars. Interestingly, though if I purchased hosting through my reseller site I could get 3-year for less than the 2-year of my current provider. I could still drop out of the program though and keep my…