GeekwithEnvy

Richard Vincenti Jr

Google Improves Maps

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Google

Google’s already uber detailed maps get an overhaul in areas of Europe, Africa and Asia. The areas of focus are updated maps of Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lesotho, Macau, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore and Vatican City.
The maps are said to be more detailed and precise such as coverage of National Heritage Areas, as well as more detailed coastlines and bodies of water.

Google has added more accurate names and locations, such as airports, universities and public squares, better and more clearly labeled ferry routes in many places.
Local roads are more accurately distinguished from highways, and multi-lingual names are available for a larger proportion of roads in many countries. Another update mentioned having maps available offline in Google Maps for Android.

I personally use Google Maps all of the time and I am always amazed at the level of detail achieved. I imagine it won’t be long before Google will allow you to virtually walk through any public building right from your home computer or smart phone.

How To Erase a Hard Drive

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So, you have finally decided to throw out, sell, or give away some of your old hard drives and you want to make sure what ever data you had stored on them is completely wiped out. Well, I’m glad you have made the smart decision to protect your sensitive information but there are a few things we need to go over before we wipe everything clean.openHarddrive

Please note that the process explained in this guide will completely erase your hard drive, unlike formatting which basically makes the data invisible but not completly gone. With formatting, data can actually be recovered by using special software.

So you want to nuke it all, let’s get started.

1. Backup anything stored on the drive that you want to keep, as you will not be able to recover it once this process is completed.

2. Download a program that is made for destroying data. The one I will mention in this guide is DBAN which is a free and powerful tool.

3. Following the instructions provided on the DBAN site, burn the iso file to a disc.
**Do not modify the file at all or it may corrupt boot disk creation.

4. Once you have created your boot media by buring the DBAN iso file to a disc, insert the disk into the computer that contains the hard drive you would like to erase.

5. Boot the system with the DBAN media, if this dosen’t seem to be working you may have to go into the settings of your BIOS. You can usually access your BIOS settings by pressing, esc, delete, F1 or F2 right when you power on your machine. Once inside the BIOS settings make sure to change your boot order to allow your system to read from your optical drives before your hard drives. Then be sure to properly save your BIOS settings before you exit.

6. After DBAN is running you can follow the on screen prompts to complete the cleaning process. I would recomend running DBAN in interactive mode which will allow you to change the method in which DBAN will erase data. In interactive mode you will see a menu at the bottom of the screen. Press “M” to change the method. Each method has a decription of it wipes a hard drive and the security level it has been given.

7. Choose a how you want to verify passes to enusre the proper removal of data.

8. Start the wipe process. Usually “F10” in the menu.

** Please note that it can take anywhere from just a few minutes to many hours to complete this process depending on the storage capacity and method used to wipe the drive.

If you have any other issues getting started please refer to the DBAN webite and navigate to their help section.

Diablo III Player Makes $10,000

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Diablo III

WishboneTheDog, managed to make more than $10,000 using the real money auction house in Blizzards’ Diablo III. He has even posted a Reddit AMA showcasing his work.
He claims that it’s all completely legit and earned his cash by diving into the games economics. He mentions that he has been enjoying playing around with item markets in other games such as Neopets for years and used many of the same techniques.

Making the move towards the use of real money in video games has been a controversial subject and it still remains to be seen how well these types of gaming features stand up to the test of time. Many players however have embraced the idea of spending hard earned cash for video game progression. Don’t forget about the many apps we use on our mobile devices that ask for cash in order to gain levels or grab special items to move past all of your friends and level up.

As long as gamers are not being punished for not wanting to participate with real money then I don’t see why these features can’t exist. We already spend a lot of money on our favorite games to begin with.

Blizzard’s Battle.net Gets Hacked

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Mike Morhaime of Blizzard Entertainment has released an announcement that there has been unauthorized access to Blizzard’s internal network.

Morhaime states that they have taken steps to close the breach in security and are now working closely with law enforcement to investigate the situation.Battle.net

It is important to note that Blizzard does NOT believe that any personal information such as credit cards,billing addresses or real names have been compromised. Although they do mention that some internal data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for battle.net users. Information about players on North American servers such as personal security question, Mobile and Dial-In Authentication we also accessed. However, this information alone is not enough to gain access to battle.net accounts.

Passwords to battle.net accounts were also compromised but these passwords are scrambled using Secure Remote Password Protocol (SRP) which protects passwords.
Blizzard cautions that even though the passwords are scrambled you should still consider changing your password.

An automated process will be coming along in the next few days to get battle.net users to change their secret questions and answers.

For more information on this subject please head to the official link below.

http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/important-security-update-faq

Improving Your Wi-Fi Reception

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Whether your struggling with your Wi-Fi connection at home or just want to optimize the connection you already have here are a few steps you can take to improve your Wi-Fi reception.

1. Keep your router in a central location, basically keep your router away from outside walls and if you have a multi-level home, keep the router on the first floor and not tucked deep in the corner of the basement.wifiGraphic

2. Keep away from mirrors, this causes more problems than you would think. All metal surfaces reflect Wi-Fi and mirrors contain a thin layer of metal which can create dead zones.

3. Keep the router off the floor, this is not the greatest location for a router for many reasons, especially Wi-fi reception. Try placing it on a high shelf or at least on top of a desk or table.

4.Check your cordless phones, do you have cordless phones in the home that operate on 2.4 Ghz? If you do, chances are your having issues with your Wi-Fi. Wireless routers and older cordless phones operate on the same frequency and interfere with each other, newer cordless phones work at 5GHz and up and should not cause interference.

5. Keep adapters and routers away from other electronics and power cords as these may hinder your Wi-Fi signal as well.

6. Change your routers broadcast channel, to do this you will need to log in to your router. Here are a few of the default addresses you can use to access your routers settings. You simply enter the following IP addresses into your browsers address bar.

**You will need to get the specific instructions for your router manufacturer in order to locate the area in your router settings that allows you to change the broadcast channel.

Router Address

D-Link 192.168.0.1
3Com 192.168.1.1
NetGear 192.168.0.1
Linksys 192.168.1.1
Mircrosoft 192.168.2.1
Actiontec 192.168.0.1

7.Keep up-to-date, always keep your router and or adapter firmware up-to-date. These firmware releases often fix buggy software problems including reception issues. The same goes with you device drivers.

8. Stick with the same vendor, if you utilize a wireless adapter such as a USB adapter, to receive Wi-Fi then try to utilize the same vendor that made your router. These companies after all designed these components to work together and getting support for either device should be easier since you can go to the same website for all your drivers and firmware.