ZoneAlarm, a Windows firewall and antivirus program, is celebrating its birthday today and you can get the professional version for free if you download it today.  It normally costs $40, so get it soon if you need a firewall/antivirus program.

Get ZoneAlarm Pro Free here.

I recently discovered the website Tips4Linux.com.  If you are a Linux user, or are considering using Linux, it is worth bookmarking.

One of the recent tips is how to create an image of any directory, which can be used to help in backing up your files.

"If you want to make a quick backup of a certain directory, ready to be burned on a CD or DVD, you can use

mkisofs -V LABEL -r directory | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz"

In this case replace "LABEL" with whatever you want the CD label to be (what shows up when you insert the disk or mount the image).  Also, replace "directory" with the location of the data you want to make the image from.  So if you wanted to make an image of the /home/user/documents folder and give it the label "Documents," the command is

mkisofs -V Documents -r /home/user/documents | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz

This will create the gzipped file cdrom.iso.gz in the /home/user directory.  Alternatively, you can create the .iso file without being gzipped by removing the section after the |, and adding "-o filename."  So to make an image of the folder /home/user/stuff named image.iso with the label "Stuff," the command is

mkisofs -V Stuff -r -o image.iso /home/user/stuff

You can read more about this command here.

I ran across this video the other day.  It's pretty funny.

I like the ending. "Ubuntu?"

In more display news, shoe company ASICS comissioned the world's largest Lite Brite to be build for a new shoe or something.  It measures 11x15 feet and has more than 300,000 pieces.  Kinda makes some of my Lite Brite creations as a kid seem a little less impressive.  But at least with my Lite Brite I made things cooler than a shoe.

via: Gizmodo

CineMassive is a company that specialises in huge, multi-monitor displays and software to utilize them.  One of their offerings, dubbed the OmegaPlex, consists of a dozen 24-inch LCDs, each with a resolution of 1920x1200.  With the monitors in 3 rows of 4, that makes for a total screen resolution of 7860x3600 and 27,648,000 total pixels.

It comes with software so you can actually utilize all the screen area, a 3-year warranty, a zero-dead-pixel guarantee, a multi-monitor wallpaper, VGA and DVI cables, and a lint-free microfiber cloth.  Considering the "New Low Price" is $12,995, that better be a very nice microfiber cloth!

When you consider that the price breaks down to just under $1100 per monitor, it is not too terrible of a price, well, as long as you have that much extra cash lying around.  Many large format displays and high-end projectors are similarly priced, and the OmegaPlex offers some functionatily that other types of displays do not.  Read all about it here.

via: Engadget

OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) are beginning to be used in more and more applications.  One of the more interesting is a series of micro-displays from eMagin.  There are several lower resolution displays available now, but they have demonstrated and are preparing to ship new SXGA (1280x1024) displays.  With the resolution, response time, brightness, and color spectrum increasing while the manufacturing costs are decreasing, within a few years these might be commonplace for video games and other home entertainment.

via: I4U News

Festo, a German engineering company, has designed some interesting things.  Last year, they made a robotic flying manta ray, now they have made some robotic jellyfish.  One version flies through the air and another swims under water.  Watch the video to see.

Smashing Magazine has posted some great underwater photos.  Some of them are of underwater creatures, some are of people, and they are all amazing.

This is a really neat-looking video (not real-time) of some clouds that look like waves.

via Dark Roasted Blend

Microsoft announced that today is now "Global Anti-Piracy Day," as they are calling it.  According to the press release, today marks "a simultaneous launch of education initiatives and enforcement actions in 49 countries on six continents to combat the sophisticated, illegal trade of pirated and counterfeit software."

Some of the more interesting statements include:

"Counterfeit software exposes consumers to an increased risk of viruses, worms and other damaging code including spyware and Trojan horses."  Last time I checked, the risk of viruses and such is not increased by using a pirated copy of Windows, but rather by using Windows in the first place.

"Customers expect to receive genuine, high-quality software..."  Uh, from Microsoft?  Yeah, right.  "...but counterfeit copies often contain malicious code and/or malware and fail to operate properly."

"This, in turn, can present a significant risk of security breaches and lost business data, damaged reputation, and the need to invest thousands of dollars to recover from incidents of malicious software on individual workstations."  And we all know this never happens when using Genuine Microsoft products.

"Should the software end up being counterfeit, customers are provided with information on what they can do to secure a legitimate copy of the software."  Yes, the information is that they can go pay another $140 or more for a new copy.

The folks over at the Pirate Bay have also acknowledged the day.  See below.