There are times when we need to reset the router settings to the factory default.

• Cannot login to router because of forgotten password
• Settings are unrecoverable
• Too many settings have been tampered with, and you want to start fresh
• You may want to start fresh and will restore a backup configuration
• Any other valid reason, lol

To reset the router, there are two options, depending on the situation and hardware model:

• Login to the router administration page and select “Restore to factory settings”
• Reset the router manually by pressing the reset button. To know more information how, visit: eHow.com: How to Reset Router

Some things you may need to remember before resetting the router:

• Try to remember the default administrator site and login details. If you don’t remember, you can find the list of the default user name and passwords for most routers here: RouterPasswords.com
• You must really be sure that you want or need to reset it

After resetting the router, you may encounter a problem on not being able to login using the default router administration page. Usually the default address of this page is http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1. One thing that may be causing the failure in accessing the web page is your computer IP settings. I had this problem when I restarted the router connecting the server to the internet. You may need to change the IP settings, that is, Obtain an IP address automatically, and Obtain DNS Server Address automatically. Without a DHCP server, the router will be the one to assign an IP address to the computer where you will change the router settings. After this step, you should be able to access the administration page and login successfully.

Watching YouTube has never been so promising…

Imagine what you can do with your existing Wii remote…

Johnny Lee from CMU was invited to talk for TED (http://www.ted.com) about his innovation on the Wii Remote. He used the Wiimote to create a digital whiteboard where you can use an infrared pen to write on it as you would write on a whiteboard or tablet PC. He also used it as a means for creating a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3D viewer. See the YouTube video below.

I haven’t tried it myself yet, but the information and software are available on his website. Visit http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/245 for the video as hosted by TED. Also on the link (for those interested to try it out or to know more about the speaker) is a link to his biography and other useful information and links.

Yesterday, I found a very interesting enhancement/add-on for browsers – PicLens and I thought it would be great to have others know about this since it’s a pretty neat app.

PicLens can view pictures from some sites like Flickr or DeviantArt and puts them into a full-screen 3D wall. You can see the picture above. It gives a fresher look to pictures and the idea of image browsing is quite innovative. Browsing for photos has never been this fun.

PicLens supports the best known browsers and is compatible with Macs and Windows PCs while Linux systems are not yet supported.

I’ve had few slowdowns on exit of the program using 512mb ram and Mozilla Firefox 2 but only occasionally. I’d recommend this to anyone who likes surfing or into visual arts and people who are just plain bored like me .

If you want to try it out then you could visit their site at piclens.com and find the download button for your browser (only about 1mb).

Have a great time browsing!

With the increase in the usage of the Internet as a medium for communication, more and more people lean on it for information. With so much information out there, that is, so much interesting websites we want to visit, we usually do not have time to browse and take a look at each page everyday.

Google Reader is a free web tool for reading feeds from sites we subscribe to through the use of RSS feeds. RSS feeds are just like “summaries” of the contents a page has. (See the image below for a screenshot.)

Google Reader is like a scrapbook of your hand-picked sites, where you be updated of the newly-posted entries your favorite sites offer. The interface is very similar to Gmail – professional and clean.

Adding Feeds
In order to use the reader, you must first add feeds to it through the Add Subscription link. Finding Feeds are relatively simple as they are usually indicated by this sign .

Reading and Organizing Feeds
Clicking the Feed name on the lower left part of the screen allows you to view the contents of the feed. As you scroll through each entry, Google Reader automatically updates the number of unread entries. It also logs statistics on how much you read from your subscriptions, among others. You can have a look at it on the Trends link. As with Gmail, you can also mark specific items with a Star. You can also share entries/news items to your friends and colleagues. Organizing feeds is also easy. Just click on the Manage subscriptions link, and there you can add or remove categories and place the feeds accordingly to each category.

Google Reader is a versatile RSS reader. A good thing about it is it’s web-based. As long as you have an internet connection, you will be able to access your feeds anywhere. That’s it.

To learn more about
Google Reader – http://www.google.com/reader
RSS Feeds (Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)

Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog

Happy reading!

STOP 0x7A or 0x0000007A : KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (see Microsoft for error details)

Our laptop system encountered a STOP 0x7A while using it (The operating system was Microsoft XP SP1 – it just came from a fresh install using a recovery disc). The file associated with the STOP error was atapi.sys. The causes of this error are usually bad sectors in the paging file, virus infections, HDD problems or RAM problems.

The system showed signs that the HDD was failing. µTorrent was telling us that it had problems with an I/O device, the HDD power indicator was always on full boom, system slowdowns and long hibernating times were occuring.

I thought that the HDD had the most obvious signs compared to others that it was breaking down so I first performed an disk check (CHKDSK) on the restart.

The disk check showed that there were some problems with the HDD and was apparently unable to repair it fully judging from what it’s saying (refer to photo above). After booting to the operating system, I encountered yet another error, a delayed write failed error.

After clicking ‘OK’, the laptop just wont respond (I waited for an hour or so) although it showed the mouse pointer so I just manually turned it off, holding the power button for a few seconds.

There are supposed to be more causes for the “Delayed Write Failed” error given by Windows but since it wont load the OS I don’t know for sure so I will have to resort to another tactic.

I’ll try fixing it by trying to replace the HDD with another one since I only have one at this time (this one’s) and it’s not working apparently so when I get one I’ll try to update this post – in Part 2. Hopefully by then I’ll be able to figure this problem out.

Cheers!