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Gearhead

By Mark Gibbs

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(Gibbs)
(How-to articles)

Ensuring you get pizza with sync tools: 07/06/09; Here's the answer to missing files compromising your plans for pizza, beer and TV.
Building an RSS podcast feed, Part 3: 06/18/09; Mark Gibbs starts by discussing audio editing tools and then wraps up his discussion of building an RSS feed for a podcast with a couple of news feed building tools.
Building an RSS podcast feed, Part 2: 06/11/09; Mark Gibbs continues to explore the details of creating an RSS feed for a podcast.
Building an RSS podcast feed, Part 1: 06/04/09; Gibbs explores the details of creating an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed for a podcast.
Xandros 'Presto: No rabbit in this hat: 05/29/09; Mark Gibbs takes a look at an interesting new Linux-based operating system from Xandros called Presto that can be booted instead of Windows in 10 seconds. Gibbs likes the idea but has reservations.
Excel, Twitter, FreeBASIC and a book: 05/14/09; Mark Gibbs points to a great directory of Twitter resources, explains how he finally solved his self-imposed challenge to analyze Twitter with Excel, waxes enthusiastically over FreeBASIC and reviews a book. He has been know to leap over tall buildings in a signle bound as well.
Debugging the Interwebs: 05/07/09; Mark Gibbs opens with an interesting question from a friend about monitoring Internet network outage problems and then reviews an outstanding (and free) HTTP and HTTPS monitoring proxy.
A couple of Twitter search services: 04/30/09; Mark Gibbs goes looking for other services that provide searching of Twitter Tweets and finds a couple that are really useful. In the process he also briefly reviews a book on tags.
Analyzing Twitter with Excel, Part 4: 04/23/09; This week Mark Gibbs wraps up his quest to analyze Twitter data using Excel gets results despite loads of "gotchas". Ugly results it is true but results nonetheless.
Analyzing Twitter with Excel, Part 3: 04/17/09; This week Mark Gibbs figures out how to grab useful Twitter data despite Twitter’s lame API and begins massaging it to make it really useful. Oh, and he shows cURL and grep a little love.
Analyzing Twitter with Excel, Part 2: 04/09/09; After looking at the update of a product that Mark Gibbs was, to put it mildly, rather critical of, he continues his self-appointed task of using Excel to analyze Twitter data.
Analyzing Twitter with Excel, Part 1: 04/02/09; Mark Gibbs ponders how to analyze Twitter for a specific search term using the Twitter search API and Microsoft Excel.
Aardvark solves my Gmail problem: 03/19/09; Mark Gibbs suddenly found that with Firefox on his Mac he couldn't log in to Gmail and there was no obvious reason. After asking his friends he tried asking strangers by using Aardvark, a social search service. Surprise of surprises; he got an answer!
Generating regexes and Gmail filters: 03/13/09; Mark Gibbs is very impressed with a service that generates code for regular expressions and he has found that Gmail now supports importing and exporting filters. His happiness knows no bounds.
Search tools: hardware, an add-on and a service: 03/03/09; Gibbs outlines a product awaiting test that searches and captures television programs, raves about a browser search enhancement plug-in he can’t live without, and is quite impressed by a service to help you identify errors.
Wrapping up TiddlyWiki: 02/25/09; The excitement is coming to an end...Mark Gibbs has covered TiddlyWiki up one side and down the other and is still amazed with the application.
TiddlyWiki macros and plugins: 02/20/09; Continuing with his exploration of TiddlyWiki wiki technology, Mark Gibbs looks at the system's macros and plugins that modify and extend the how and what the software can do.
Exploring TiddlyWiki: 02/11/09; Mark Gibbs discusses some reader feedback on TiddlyWiki and then starts to break down the TiddlyWiki system. Will the excitement never end?
Building a wiki with TiddlyWiki: 02/03/09; Gibbs continues his detailed look at TiddlyWiki
TiddlyWiki is amazing, fantastic!: 01/28/09; Every now and then you stumble across a truly great idea and, as often as not, don't get it at first. Then you fall over the idea a second time and click! The light goes on.
Goodbye malware, hello micro-projector: 01/21/09; After weeks of wrestling with malware on one of his Windows XP machines, Gibbs seems to have found a way to get rid of it . . . but he has no idea what was actually removed. Then he checks out a micro-projector. Busy, busy, busy.
Finding music online and driving IMAP: 01/15/09; Mark Gibbs discusses a cool utility for finding and recording just about any music you like and sings the praises of scripts that are really useful with GMail.
Malwarebytes finds pesky Trojan: 01/07/09; The last Gearhead column wherein Gibbs discovered that his Windows XP machine was acting weirdly generated a huge amount of reader feedback and one recommendation -- using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware -- worked where many others hadn't.
Malware hunting: 12/17/08; One of Gibbs' Windows XP machines is acting up. Again. Looks like he's got a case of malware but it seems to be a little hard to find.
Migrating MapPoint pushpins to Google Maps: 12/10/08; Gibbs is not happy with having his location data locked up in Microsoft MapPoint but he’s found a tool that can extract the important data.