Online gaming is incredibly popular, with millions of players from all over the world participating. Not all games are like the hectic action games. There are plenty of very popular games such as online backgammon which offer a more relaxed pace suitable for everyone.

Online gambling is quite popular as well. A successful backgammon site is announcing that they are now offering the opportunity to play poker as well as their popular backgammon game. A part of the reason for the popularity of their gaming system is the realistic 3D avatars and sounds available in the software download. With the addition of poker, gamers have the option to play for real money on up to 3 tables at once, or play for fun with no money involved. As a limited time bonus, game tables will be rake free (no house commission).

They offer more than backgammon and poker. The software includes perudo for you to play. Also available in the software, is a real time chat client for you to keep in touch with your gaming friends, or to make new ones.

The popular online backgammon sites also offer daily, weekly, and monthly tournaments to add a little more excitement to your gaming experience.

If these options sound at all interesting to you, do not hesitate to visit their sites and give their software a try.

This has been a sponsored post.

LG put their new cell phone on display in Korea, the LG-SV280. For some strange reason, the LG-SV280 was dubbed the “banana phone”. OK, so it is pretty obvious why it is called that. Apparently the keypad also features a lavender scent.

I must be completely out of touch with what some people want in a cell phone.

Source: Aving

One question I am frequently asked, is how to stop certain programs from starting automatically and sitting in the system tray in Windows. Fortunately it is quite easy to do this in one easy interface.

To get the interface we are after, simply hit “Win+R”. “Win” in this case is the key that is probably on your keyboard that has a little windows logo and may say “start” as well. Hit “Win+R” means press both the “Win” key and the “r” key on your keyboard at the same time. When the “Run” menu pops up, type in “msconfig” as shown, and hit “OK”.

Now the interface we are after will pop up. Select the “Startup” tab, and uncheck whichever programs you do not want to start automatically. Easy wasn’t it?

For the last few years, the majority of traffic on the Internet was file sharing, or P2P. This would consist of traffic over things such as torrent, eMule, Limewire, and such. Now, your average HTTP page in a browser is back on top. But, it is not due to a sudden upsurge in people doing research, or anything like that. A good portion of the upsurge in HTTP traffic is thanks to streaming video over YouTube.

The numbers break up like this, HTTP now accounts for 46% of the traffic on the internet, with P2P coming in second at 37%. Of the HTTP traffic, only 45% is made up of traditional web pages which include text and graphics. 36% of the HTTP traffic is streaming media, 20% of which is YouTube videos.

If my math is correct, 9.2% of all traffic on the internet is from YouTube.

Maybe I’m naive, but I had no clue that there was an industry based around being able to trace cell phone numbers. Apparently all you need to do is become a member of one of any number of sites, and start searching away. I decided to test one site, and it was able to accurately provide information about a phone number in a different country.

I guess I must have been living in a hole, because by looking at the number of times this is searched in Google, it is a very common thing. I guess you learn something new each day.

Edit:

I managed to find an easy way to trace cell phone number. Just put one in the box below, and search away. It is rather startling to me how easy it is. I tend to enter the numbers in 555 555 5555 format and it works well.

Do you have a stack of CDs, DVDs, games and such that you do not use any more? How about trading them for ones you would rather have? But, finding someone to trade with can be a real hassle, especially if you are trying to find someone who has what you are interested in, and also wants what you have. This is where SwitchPlanet.com comes in.

SwitchPlanet.com offers people the ability to create an account and start looking for trades right away. But, and this is where it is great, you do not have to find someone specific to trade with. You simply put up for offer whatever you are interested in trading, and people can browse or search to find what you have. You can do likewise. You simply browse for whatever you are interested in. Once someone offers to take what you are trading and you accept, you get some virtual currency called switchbucs. You do not have to do a trade with the same person. Whoever wants what you have can ask for it, and you can take in return from the service whatever you are looking for from whomever, simply use your switchbucs. Of course, you have the ability to turn down an offer. Now, here is the real kicker, it is all free! You only have to pay to ship your trade. SwitchPlanet.com does accept donations and shares with several charities as well. So you can trade your old movies, music, etc., and feel good doing it.
Make sure to check out SwitchPlanet.com. It is all free, and you would have to pay for shipping anyways. What is there to lose.

This has been a sponsored post.

As a budding web publisher, I am learning about the ins and outs of supporting myself online. One thing that I came across for determining the ranking and/or value of a site for advertisers and such, is an Alexa rating. Apparently this rating is based in part on the number of times your site is viewed by people using the Alexa toolbar. I have tried a few times to install this toolbar, but even trying to download the freaking installer sets off my anti virus software into a barrage of warnings and detections.

This has happened to me in Windows XP and Vista, each operating system using a different brand of anti virus software. Apparently this toolbar is rather intrusive, as the other recommended toolbars I have tried have not created this nightmare.

I’m left wondering how the some of web publisher community can rely so heavily on such an apparent privacy nightmare, that it is a battle to get installed if one is running up to date anti virus software? Is this an indication of the level of lack of security/privacy concern that a site owners visitors have. If they are willing to run this software, they might install anything?

I have to admit, this Alexa rating being an important factor in the value of a site is leaving a rather bad taste in my mouth.

If you are at all interested in having a secure back up of your computer, or work with large files such as video, then using USB Hard Drives is a good option to consider. Buy.com offers a large selection of USD Hard Drives to choose from, and presents them in an easy to use and informative interface.

The benefits that USD Hard Drives can offer are varied. As I mentioned earlier, USD Hard Drives can be great for creating a back of your computer. The massive size that they are available in from buy.com, up to 500GB at this time, would make backing up your computer a snap. At the larger size, they can clearly be used to make backups of all the computers in your home or small business. The fact that they are USD Hard Drives means that they are easy to share between computers. They are far easier to share than a DVD burner, and offer far more capacity. If you have done any work with video or other multimedia, you should know how the massive and easy to use storage that USD Hard Drives offer will be a real benefit.

Buy.com is a place to shop for USD Hard Drives because they offer a great interactive interface, displaying plenty of important information as well as pictures of the various products they offer. You can even compare prices with other sites. When I was there today, I noticed many USD Hard Drives that were available with free shipping. Buy.com is certainly worth a look.

This has been a sponsored post.

As I mentioned previously, the firewall in Vista is a significant improvement over past attempts by Microsoft. However, there are two distinctly different ways of configuring the firewall(actually, there are more than two, but I’ll show you two).

The first, and perhaps of most interest to the average user, is accessible through the security center area of the control panel. Get to the control panel from the start menu, then simply follow the screens below.

Keep reading →

Computer viruses can be a nightmare. I’ve had to deal with my share of them. I can admit that I’ve been caught before myself. I was using one of the free anti virus tools, and it failed to catch a particular trojan that was running amok on my system. I only noticed because my system was becoming unusually sluggish and decided to scan with another engine.

The worst one was the owner of a business that I worked at. His home computer was crashing constantly, and I was asked to look at it and get it fixed. Now, the poor man was thoroughly ignorant on computers, so this is not really his fault. But, he had a base Windows XP install running no firewall nor any anti virus software. It was connected directly to the internet with absolutely no protection! I managed to track down that it was a certain worm, I forget which one, that had infected his computer, and we went to get him a Linksys router and some commercial anti virus software.

Right after I got this fixed, I was informed that one of the teenagers at work’s laptop was behaving badly, and the hard drive was getting full for no apparent reason. I was also informed that she had a wireless setup and had no clue about if it was secured or not. Great…

There are tons of stories, and I certainly have more. The thing I certainly recommend is for computer owners to learn how to remove computer virus infections.