http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ — Great for utilities and games

http://www.macupdate.com/ — Supa for staying updated on apps, but also good for freeware

http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ — A lot like macupdate, with more developed freeware

Backing-up is something that everyone who has important data should be doing. Archiving onto CD/DVD is effective, but continual back-up is important. Lacie, the maker of external Hard-drives and disk-drives, own a freeware app called SilverKeeper which is pretty timely and effecient at backing-up. It offers schedule back-ups, that can exclude keyword files, password protect files and access password protected files. All and all a good app well worth its price of $0.
Get it here.

Same as the following article, the “Google Hack” filetype, which is hardly a “hack”, we can hunt the web for .fla files and .swf files… amazing!!

All you gotta do is figure out what type of FLA are you looking for? Let’s say snow.
The kids, they love the snow.
So type the following into the Google search input:
filetype:fla snow

Oh my GOD… it works!!! FLA’s for everyone!!!
Now Google produces FLA links as results, so just click on the links.
Some browsers are smart enough to know that these files should be downloaded and not displayed in the window, so clicking on them should work. Some browsers are not so clever, so right clicking (control + click for mac users) on them and downloading them (”save to disk”) should do the trick.

Now the same can be done for swfs, and you can load external swfs into flash, or even better… you can decompile swfs after you download them.
So using the same technique, do the Google search for a swf you want:
filetype:swf snow
Download the swf you want, by right-clicking (control + click for mac).
Then download a flash decompiler, Mac users can use Gordon (get it! Gordon… Flash Gordon… lame).
Now open the downloaded swf in the decompiler to create the editable flash file. That’s it.

Using the “Google Hack” filetype:, it is easy to find TTF (True Type Fonts) on the net.

Say your looking for that Zebra font, always a classic with the younger folk. Well Google’s filetype feature allows you to rummage the web for it. All you have to do is type the following into the Google search input:
filetype:ttf zebra
And wow, look at that… it found a couple versions of them. Now onto acquiring them. Some browsers are smart enough to know that these files should be downloaded and not displayed in the window, so clicking on them should work. Some browsers are not so clever, so right clicking (control + click for mac users) on them and downloading them (“save to disk”) should do the trick.

IPv6 was created and developed in the face of running out-of IPv4 ip-addresses.

Just a brief background on the two:

IPv4 ip-addresses look like this: 192.168.1.1
IPv6 ip-addresses look like this: FE80:0000:0000:0000:0201:32FE:AB06:309C

It’s pretty obvious that you can obtain more addresses out of IPv6 than IPv4. That’s really all the background you need to know for this blab.

Due to the surge of users on the net, IPv4 addresses were running thin. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) were buying, more like leasing, up blocks of IPs (an IP-block is a range for IP addresses that someone is currently owner of. ex., Global Crossing {I heard Tom in HR wears the craziest shirts on wacky-shirt-wednesdays} in Phoenix Arizona currently owns 64.212.0.0 – 64.215.255.255). But, in light of all that IPv6 offered (there were other benefits as well, ex., better support for media content) how would you implement this standard across then net? Most people have router’s in their homes, business has loads of network-architecture. Upgrading to IPv6 would be kinda-pricy. And by kinda-pricey I mean billions trillions everyone on earth would be on welfare!

Now home-networking is actually the perfect example of the solution for IPv4 address issue.
Chances are, you have more than one device in your home that uses the internet. Now back-in-the-day each device would require it’s own IPv4 address, so it could be connected to the WAN (Wide area network… which is pretty much the net). Now some ISPs decided to start charging for the number of connections you were making to the WAN, and some people decided to incorporate their house into a private network… which requires a router. There are specific IP4 blocks reserved for “private use network” (most commonly, house/office networks), compared to the other reserved blocks, so it was/is entirely possible to have a private network in your house. This is all common practice now. Most houses have a Linksys, Netgear or D-Link router, which enables one IP4 address to a house, while the house may have several devices accessing the internet. That is all thanks to the wonder that is NAT (Network Address Translation). Which works very well, but has issues with some common applications (Like e-mail and FTP). The email issue is pretty bad, considering home common it is used. The issue with NAT is that there is only on IP4 address representing, potentially, a huge amount of users. If one of those users is a spammer, the IP address will get put on the black-list. This is pretty common when there is a long distance communication. Eastern-Europe, South-West on the Pacific rim, Russia, Eastern-Africa are the most subsceptible from being blocked by the Americas.

If you’ve read this far, you deserve a pat on the back… but I’m not that type of guy… so keep reading.

IPv6 has the ability and prowess to really take the net up a notch, to something that is really world acceptable. But with the cost and time to integrate it into new systems, there could be an IPv10 out. Their was an amazing opportunity to implement this new protocol standard and mobile phones were the network to do it on. Now GSM is the standard, there is CDMA as well, but GSM is more global for $$$ reasons. But IP6 was so easily integrated into the new system because; One, Mobile users get new phones, roughly, every three years. Two, mobile networks are compeletly seperate from the net and the equipment for them is broadcast-based. So one unit is changed, and it can be implemented on a thousand users. No welfare on this kind of integration, only a higher-quality media service.
It has carried out this way, so nations are more likely to bring IP6 to the forefront; England, Western Europe and most of Asia. The issue of land-mass vs. populas is an issue when trying to integrate these new services in North-America. Canada suffers the worst, with such a low population and huge land-mass. Russia is in a similar circumstance. Though Russians are more technically resourceful than Canadians, so the chances of Russians relying on a mobile service is less likely.
NAT has really been a blessing to most users, but it still causes some serious issues which only switching to IP6, and giving every user their own unique identity, can fix. While North America scrapes together solutions that vear far from a truer direction, WiMax and WiFi hotspots (which are readily available in a lot of different place), for their laptops and notebooks, other devices (mobiles, hand-helds, palms… crackberry’s) have already evolved onto IP6. It’s not like when you pick up the phone and make a call that you’re using IP6, but when your phone drops onto the web, there is a point that IP6 is, most likely, being used.

It would be great to have IP6 implemented, it would really allow every device on the net to be unique. So true direct connections over the net would be possible to every user. The best network to implment this on is wireless networks, which is happening. Though bandwidth is still an issue with most cellular networks, so having alternative protocols, to IP standards, are usually implemented. But moving toward what is standard for computing purposes seems the right choice for mobile markets.