I don’t have a backup routine for my PC, which is bad, really bad. Even though it’s very unlikely that my apartment will burn down, there are no guarantees that my hard drive won’t fail or that I won’t do something silly like spilling a cup of coffee down my machine or deleting a vital file.

There are many backup programs out there, and Backup Platinum have asked me to review theirs in a sponsored review. Backup Platinum costs $67 for a single PC licence which I feel is a bit on the pricey side, but in return you get a backup program that can make a copy of your data to an external drive or other media, or to a FTP server or LAN if you have one available. Read the rest of this tip »

Most users find that installing a codec pack is sufficient for playing video and audio files on a PC.  However, if you are a power user and have in particular HD content on your PC, then if your PC isn’t top notch you will need the best codecs in order for your PC to be able to cope with the files.

This handy codec guide walks you through how to manually install codecs so that your PC can handle HD formats like H.264 and MKV with ease, rather than installing a bloated codec pack.

More: Guide To The Best Windows Codecs

Vista Media Center just gets better and better and in my view a media center PC is the best thing you can connect to your TV.  The latest addition to the growing list of useful VMC plugins, is MceFM which allows you to listen to songs streamed from Last.fm.

With MceFM once you’ve typed in the name of an artist or a song, it will automatically queue similar songs and artists using Last.fm’s music recommendation feature.  Imagine having access to an ‘unlimited’ music library!

More: MceFM

I hate doing posts like this, but I feel the need to apologise for the lack of tips.  I’ve been very unwell recently and unable to focus on the site, but I’m back in the land of the living and normal service will hopefull now be restored!

All the best

Tony

One way to rise up Google’s rankings is to get your content listed on other sites, with valuable backlinks pointing back to your site. Gaining backlinks sometimes can seem like a lottery, but there are ways in which you can gain guaranteed backlinks to your site.

One such way is to submit your original content to Articles sites like Web-Articles.info, who have purchased this review.   If you submit articles to the directory, then the site claims then you could increase your website traffic and link popularity.  All articles are analyzed before acceptance before it is accepted to the directory.  You can submit as many articles as you want, as long as they have not been published anywhere else.

Read the rest of this tip »