I bought these conductive Agloves soon after getting my first iPhone (not my first touch-screen phone). They are made with conductive silver thread that allow you to use your capacitive touch-screen devices with gloves on. No more freezing fingers while trying to use your phone or tablet/reader!

I haven’t used other conductive gloves, but the Agloves work well and have been an awesome tool as the temperatures start to drop.

The gloves extend over the wrist and fit snugly to keep all heat in. They may not be thick enough to ward away strong chill, but can easily be worn under thicker gloves. Whether you are using them to keep your fingers warm or for hygienic reasons while using public transportation, it’s handy to be able to use your touch-screen devices without pulling your gloves off.

I own the plain, original Agloves. They also make a sports line and a bamboo line. You can purchase the gloves easily on Amazon or the Agloves website. Agloves have been the perfect solution for me. Because they also work with computer trackpads and the Apple Magic Mouse, I hardly take them off throughout the cold mornings.

They are so good that I bought several more pairs for gifts. Hmm, stocking stuffers anyone?

I use Ninite.com to install packages of software whenever I need to set up a new computer, or reinstall a Windows/Linux OS. I have found that ninite.com is the best way to install or update software if you are either buying or building a new PC.

You go to the website, click on the software you need to download or update, and it downloads a custom installer program that will install ALL of the software in a couple of clicks. This is far easier than having to visit each individual website, clicking around till you find the right software to download, and waiting for each individual file to download. An added bonus is that it will always install the most up-to-date software, and will update any software already installed.

There is nothing else available on the market that I have found that provides a service like this with similar efficiency.

[Not only does ninite make it easy to install packages of software, but the list of installs they offer is a great way to find free, useful, programs.--OH]

Format Factory is a Windows-only piece of software that will convert any video format to any other video format. It will do the same for audio files. It will do the same for digital photos. It is free.

I have been using it for six years in my job as an eLearning producer, and my hobby as a “Let’s get this movie to play on the computer, the iPod, the iPad” and so on.

I have paid for and used virtually every other video format converter, and this one is the clear winner for ease of use, flexibility, speed, and being able to stack up several conversions and have them run serially. You can even add a new task while it is busy working on another.

Want to rip a DVD to play on your iPad? Easy.
Want to convert a video file to Flash? Easy.
Want to extract audio from a video file? Easy.
Want to convert your home videos to YouTube format? Easy.

It has built-in settings for iPod, iPad, Blackberry, Asus, PSP, and many other devices.

Advanced tools for the tinkerer allow you to choose the codec, aspect ratio, bit rates, and other settings. You can also trim segments from the video, or join video files. You can name and save your settings.

Did I mention it was free?

I’ve used the Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard for two months and am impressed. Wireless computer peripherals are a great productivity tool for enabling freedom of movement, and because it uses solar panels it is only 1/3″ thick (no thick battery compartment), and no need to worry about charging/replacing batteries. At the same time it feels more durable than any keyboard I’ve used before. It replaced my prior favorite, the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 7000 wireless.

The K750 has instant responsiveness compared to the slight delay in response when using the Microsoft after a period of inactivity. It feels built to last, not made of cheapo injected plastic, and more along the lines of an Apple product. The nano-sized USB Unifying receiver can connect multiple Logitech peripherals, which is handy for me since I also have a Unifying-compatible Logitech mouse.

As far as the solar charge is concerned, I use it throughout the day in a room that has a window but not a lot of direct sunlight. I also use it for several hours at night with no apparent loss of functionality. It actually has a little button to the left of the on/off switch that lights an LED beside either a smiley face or unhappy face to indicate whether it has sufficient/insufficient light.

[Steve burned the candle at both ends to test whether or not there was a loss of power after extended use without light. He found no loss of functionality even after working in the dark for 8-hours.--OH]

IrfanView is a Windows-only swiss army knife for images. It’s lightning fast, opens just about any format known to man, and runs off a portable or network drive. Oh, and it’s free as in beer.

I’ve used IrfanView for more than a decade, and the developer has been cautious to add features but not interface bloat. It’s never gotten slower. It gets really powerful when you start using shortcut keys.

Want to resize an image? Ctrl-R.
Rotate it? Press R for right, L for left.
Save? S.
Crop? Draw a box and hit Ctrl-Y.
Screen capture? C.
Paint tools? F12.

It’s not a full-fledged photo editor, but it does come with a basic assortment of filters, including pixelate, blur, and red-eye reduction. It can use standard 8bf (Photoshop) plugins too. It’s got a very powerful batch processor and converter. Watermarks, sizing, compression, naming, it’s all there.

About the only feature I wish IrfanView had was a curves editor, but that’s easily solved with a free plugin called SmartCurve. For marking up screenshots and documentation, it can’t be beat. For cropping and resizing, there’s nothing faster.

IrfanView doesn’t replace PhotoShop, Gimp, or even Picasa. It just means you’ll use them a whole lot less often, and only when you’re planning to spend some quality time with an image. For day-to-day editing and management, IrfanView is infinitely faster and easier.

It’s free for non-commercial use, $12 USD for commercial use.

Password strength has been a topic about the Internet lately. I have seen lots of clever methods for generating and remembering strong passwords. Some are better than others, but IMO, none are adequate. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t matter how strong your passwords are if you use the same one on multiple sites. All it takes is for a site to get hacked, like Gawker media, or even Sony did, and now your super-strong password has been compromised, and every site on which you used that password has been accessed.

So, the bottom line is that no matter how strong your passwords are, and no matter what clever tricks you use to help you remember them, if you’re like the average Internet denizen, you have way too many logins for you to remember a unique password for every site. And that means that the only truly secure password system is one that remembers them for you.

Enter LastPass. It’s not the only password manager out there, but I like it the best. You create ONE strong password that you have to memorize and use it to access your LastPass database. The LastPass database is stored online, on LastPass’s servers, and is accessed either via HTTPS, via a browser plugin, or via an app on your smart-phone. If you use the browser plugin, logging into sites is seamless: LastPass recognizes the site you’re on and automatically logs you in (after, optionally, asking you to re-enter your master password). LastPass also has automatic form fill and automatic password generation. This means that you can have a different, unique, very strong password for every site you log into, but you only have to remember one master password. It’s the best of both worlds.

One argument against LastPass is that if their database is compromised, then all of your sites are compromised, and that’s true, but given that their entire line of work is keeping that information safe, I’m willing to take that chance. The alternative is rolling dice or picking phrases to create passwords, writing all of them down on a piece of paper or something, and then having to manually type them in when I go to a site. A clunky mess.

There is a free version of LastPass, with some additional features unlocked if you pay a $12 a year subscription.

I’ve used Diceware to generate secure passwords for a few years now. It really is a simple system. Basically it’s just a list of 7776 common English words, mapped to the outcomes of dice rolls. Combined with a set of five dice (or one die rolled five times), it is an easy and extremely secure method for generating strong passphrases.

As highlighted by XKCD, most human-generated passwords just aren’t very strong – they don’t have high levels of entropy.

Creating a password using Diceware allows you to create passphrases that are very easy to remember, yet extremely strong. A passphrase comprised of four or five words (typically 15-20 characters) is far stronger than one that contains fewer characters but a more diverse character set.

Generating truly random passphrases is difficult, though. If you pick words out of your head or a newspaper, they won’t be very random. Diceware takes the human element out of the equation and replaces it with true randomness, dice rolls, and is a simple method of creating secure passwords with minimal effort.

As noted on the Diceware web page, Diceware is easy to use, secure, prescriptive, transparent, and free. Diceware is my tool of choice for generating passwords, and I’ve used it for years. It creates easy-to-remember passphrases that have high entropy and can be extremely secure, provided you use enough dice rolls.

This is the best general purpose, USB powered, adjustable speed, muffin fan on a stand. It is great for random cooling of equipment, or blowing away solder fumes. I bought it to cool an external NAS drive I have on my home network. The adjustability lets me turn down the speed so that it’s almost inaudible. USB power is becoming ubiquitous around computer equipment, so it is conveniently powered.

Most of the time I use my Macbook Air while sitting at an old wooden table. Recently I noticed that my Magic Mouse wasn’t working very well with the Air even though I’d Pledged the wood as best I could. So badly was it tracking that I had to switch to a wired mouse which worked just fine.

But who wants that? So I did a bit of research to see what I could find to make my wireless mouse work the way it’s supposed to. After a bit of searching I stumbled upon this tool.

Bottom line: this mouse pad works perfectly, does what it says, tracks precisely and effortlessly, and thus consigns my backup wired mouse to the utility drawer.

The pad is a 7-inch x 8.5-inch piece of thin plastic with some sort of specialized texture akin to a diffraction grating engraved on the top. The reverse side has a repositionable backing that keeps the surface in place and lifts off without damaging furniture or leaving any residue. The package shows some guy removing it from the top of his laptop, which would be an easy way to take it with you. Also works nicely with a wired mouse, by the way.

Bonus: On the front of the package it says “Extends battery life up to 75% for wireless mice.” You’ll have to take 3M’s word for the battery life extension but even if it’s wishful thinking, the improved mouse function makes this an excellent addition to your batterie de computer.

Highly recommended.

I bought my Casio FX-115 Solar Calculator 25-years ago, probably in Malaysia. It replaced my then aging Texas Instruments calculator. The thing I like most about it is that it doesn’t need batteries. None. You can pull it out of a drawer after a year and it just works. No fretting about whether you left it on or not, and I’ve never needed to replace anything.

The new ones come with a dual solar and battery combo called “solar plus”. Don’t be fooled. The closest new equivalent is probably the Casio FX-260 Solar ($9.99), but that model doesn’t have some of the features of the FX-115.

As far as calculations go, it has pretty much all anyone would need. It has a nice friendly EXP button for scientific notation and infinite levels (18) of parenthesis. It converts and computes in alternate number bases (binary, octal and hex) and does linear regression.

The plastic is a bit scuffed after riding around in my backpack all these years, but it’s been wet and recovered. It also gets really sluggish when used outside in sub zero (C) weather.

[Note: The FX115 comes in two very similar models, the ES and the MS, that feature minor differences. However, it appears that the MS is preferred by some math teachers, and is approved to be used on many licensing exams (where as the ES has in the past not been approved for some engineering exams in California.]