Tomorrow is April fools day, but you might not be laughing when you try to log into your computer. The Conficker Virus is apparently set to be activated on April 1, 2009. The worm has been very difficult for law enforcement to track down due to the way that the virus operates. No one is really sure what it will do when it activates but you need to make sure that you are protected. All of the major Anti-Virus programs have released updates to counteract the Conficker. One sign that you are infected with Conficker is that you can not update your computer with Microsoft. If you can't get your automatic updates their is a good chance that you may be infected by the Conficker virus. Some people are not even going to be on the Internet on April 1st. This is one of the worst computer viruses since the SQL Slammer. Microsoft is offering a $250,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of those responsible for Conficker. If you do not have virus protection software you need to get yourself protected now. Some experts have suggested turning off your WiFi on April 1st. That is the only way to be 100% sure you are safe. The Conficker Virus may or may not turn out to be a "big deal". It may even been a sick April fools joke, but don't count on it. Get protected from the Conficker Virus now.


AVG Free Anti-Virus Software - Highly Recommended
Microsoft Update - Update Your Computer Now(Only Usable In IE)
Microsoft Info On Conficker - For More Information

*The Conficker Virus Only Effects Windows Computers.

I really love the Nintendo Wii. It's just so much fun, and its easy to play. Even if I've had 6 beers I can still beat you at Tennis. The graphics are not as good as say a 360 or a PS3, Wii is in a whole other category. The Nintendo Wii has continually out sold both the PS3 and the xbox. The system appeals to so many people Sony and Microsoft just can't compete. I just wish that Nintendo would produce more challenging games for it. Every game on the system seems to be fun easy to play games. Nintendo needs more RPG and action games, which they will hopefully be releasing soon. I hope to see some really good games at this years E3(June,2009). But only time will tell.

As you know my name is Nick. And I am a 21 year old college student. I really have a hard time paying the bills but I get by. There are two types of people who go to college, those who pay for it themselves and those who have other people pay for college. I fall into the first category, I pay for college all by myself. I've decided to start a new blog in addition to this one. It is called Make Money At College. I want to share some tips and tricks I use to make myself some extra money for everything from beer money to paying tuition. This will not be another make money online blog. I just want to help some people and give them some ideas. Plus have a little fun in the process, so if your a college student, or a parent of one, check it out. Thanks very much.

Make Money At College

Tweeter Getter is a cool new web 2.0 tool for twitter users. It gets you free twitter followers, yep free. All you have to do is go to the site and put in your twitter user name and password. Then you start getting more and more twitter followers. Gary McCaffery is the designer behind the tool, you can find his twitter account here. If your a web entrepreneur or just want more friends on twitter go and try out the tool. Twitter is still relatively new, it will be interesting to see what people do with it in the future.

Just thought I would give people a heads up. If you want to start your own blog or website there are a lot of free resources out there. You should never pay a company money to make a website for you(There are exceptions to this). Site Build It is a company that you pay $300 a year to and they make a website for you. They promise that there way will make you money. The truth is that you could do exactly what they are doing for around $5 a month, and everything that Site Build It does you can do. Most of the products Site Build It sell are free on the internet. So really Site Build It is a scam, please don't waste your money on it. There are tons of free resources out there that can help you get started with a website or blog.

An interesting thing happened over at Lis Sowerbutts blog, she wrote a review of Site Build It. She wrote about what a big scam it is, and guess what. A bunch of Site Build It cheerleaders showed up and bad mouthed her in the comments. These cheerleaders of course make money with Site Build It, they make about $75 every time someone uses there affiliate link. Well of course if they make money from the website they don't want people telling the truth about the fact that it is a scam. The interesting thing is, that the CEO of Site Build It even left a comment on Lis's blog. They really must not want a bad review out there, sounds a lot like what Scientology does. Go and check out Lis's Review Of Site Build It. Make sure to read the comments, it's really funny that these people felt the need to bombard Liz with comment after comment, they even call her stupid. Site Build It is a SCAM plain and simple. Don't buy any of there products, it is a waste of your money.

Disclaimer: This is completely opinion, please do your own research.

As we speak the anon's from 4chan.org are voting on Times 100 most influential people of 2009. Who are they voting for you ask, well Moot of course. Moot is the creator and owner of 4chan.org. Moot's real name is Christopher Poole. 4chan is responsible for basically every Internet joke ever made, including the rick roll and lolcats. So really moot is a very influential person. Though at the same time 4chan has done some crazy things too. You can see the full list of candidates here. Currently Moot is number 1 followed by John Stewart. Both of whom are beating out people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Everyone should go and vote right now, you can vote as many times as you want. If 4chan pulls this off, it's going to be one of there greatest raids ever.

A torrent is a file type that is used in P2P data transfer. It is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to transfer data. Torrents are the most popular file transfer system in the world. They work by sharing data small or large, one piece at a time. The file is not hosted at any one particular server but on users computers who are downloading or have already downloaded the file. Everyone who is downloading a torrent is known as the swarm. The larger the swarm the faster the download. One person can upload a torrent and within hours millions of people could have downloaded it. The system only works if people share, you need to upload as much as you download. It's a very easy system to learn.

First thing you need to do is download a torrent client. The client you download will depend on your operating system. You may pick from the list below, go to the website and download which ever one meets your needs. Then install the client. For Windows, My favorite client is uTorrent.

Windows
Original BitTorrent
ABC
BitBuddy
BitTornado
uTorrent

Mac
Original BitTorrent
Tomato Torrent
Bits On Wheels

Linux
ABC
BitTornado
Original BitTorrent

Okay, So now you have your torrent client downloaded and installed. Next thing we need to do is find some torrents for you to download. Finding torrents is not like other P2P file sharing programs. Torrent info is kept in small text files, (.torrent). Torrent files can be found all over the Internet, you can even search google for torrents. One of the best places to search for torrents is Torrents TO. Torrent TO searches the popular torrent networks for whatever you want. So the first thing to do would be to decide on what you want to download. You can download a movie, music, books, photos, or TV shows. So make a choice on what you want.

Popular Torrent Sites
The Pirate Bay
MiniNova
isoHunt
BTjunkie

The New iPod Shuffle is a big jump from the old one. It got 4 gigs of space and a new sleek design. The cool new feature is Apple's VoiceOver. Though iPod Shuffles have never had a screen, you now can know what song your listening to. VoiceOver will tell you the name of the song and the artist that sings it. It will also tell you the name of your playlist. The new iPod Shuffle has no buttons on it, so how will you change songs? The buttons are on the headphones, duh! Now this does mean that you will have to use Apples earbuds. The 4 gigs lets you hold about 1,000 songs. It still uses a USB cord to connect to your computer and it has about 10 hours of battery life. Currently it only comes in light gray and dark gray, bleak choices I know. The Apple iPod Shuffle is gonna set you back about $80 US.

Apple iPod Shuffle

Capacity: 4GB (Flash)
Screen: N/A
Battery: 10 Hours
Connection: USB

Height: 1.8 inches (45.2 mm)

Width: 0.7 inch (17.5 mm)

Depth: 0.3 inch (7.8 mm)

Weight: 0.38 ounce (10.7 grams)

I read a story earlier this month over on GeekoLogie.com about a robot that was programmed to love. The robot, built by Toshiba, apparently malfunctioned and went into stalker mode. The robot trapped a female in a room and would not let her go. Toshiba has decided to decommission the robot so that it does not hurt anyone. Read the full story here.

I think this is one of the coolest stories I have seen in a long time. We really are living in the future now. Robots that can love, that's a insane task for Toshiba to take on. Yet, I'm so glad that someone is putting research and money into Artificial Intelligence. Maybe one day we will all have our very own robots.

Since the dawn of time man has tried to armor himself in combat. Man has used everything from shields, suits of armor, helmets, and most recently Kevlar. But the days of Kevlar may be numbered. A brand new substance made by d30 Labs is out on the market, and no it's not a force field. The new product is called d3o Gel, That's right it is a gel. Great Britain's Ministry of Defense has even given £100,000 to a small company that developed the gel. If all goes according to plan the gel may be able to replace the bulky plates that our soldiers have to wear in combat. It will be used in helmets, gloves, and body armor. It may even be modified to reinforce vehicles.

The gel works by hardening on impact, yet its light weight and flexible. Anything moving at high speed that impacts the gel causes it to become a solid, when the pressure is released it becomes a gel again. It is still being tested for military use. The defense contractors that work for the government still have to test and work with the gel, it may be 5 to 10 years before we have bulletproof soldiers. Yet, the gel is already being used by athletes. The gel can be found in sporting goods, racing suits, gloves, shin guards, and even ballet shoes. You may already own it and not even know it. This is exactly the type of innovation and technology our world needs.

The Pirate Bay(TPB) is a popular file sharing website using torrents to allow users to connect and share files, information, photos, video, and just about everything you can imagine. The site was launched on November 21, 2003 and currently has 3 million registered users, though you do not have to register to use the website. The site has had over 25 million unique peers.

The content available for download is not hosted on the Pirate Bay's website. Users connect via the Pirate Bay and download the content from each other. There has always been controversy associated with The Pirate Bay due to the fact that users can share anything, whether it is copyrighted or not. On January 31st, 2008 charges were filed by the big record companies against The Pirate Bay. Universal, Warner Brothers, Sony BMG, and EMI are seeking over $13 million dollars, The trial was set for February 2009. The defendants are facing over $180 thousand dollars in fines and 2 years in prison. But the pirate bay is not going down without a fight. The first day of the trial was February 16th, it was met with protesters and press. Lines of people were outside the trial cheering on The Pirate Bay and telling them that the people were with them. The website Filesharer.org even let people upload a picture of themselves so that the record industry can see what a criminal really looks like. In my opinion the music industry is desperate, there profits have been going down for years. With many artists leaving the big record companies to start there own, and the music industry being down 30% since 2001.

The prosecution says that The Pirate Bay is the "number 1 source of illegal music" and the the owners of The Pirate Bay are profiting off of the illegal file sharing, through advertising. The Pirate Bay plead not guilty. The defense states that they can not control what there users post and because they do not host the content they can not be held responsible. The trial lasted 9 days, with both sides not willing to submit. The closing statements were on March 2nd and March 3rd was the trials official last day. It is unclear at this point who will win this battle. The verdict is due by April 17, 2009. Neither side is willing to lose this fight so an appeal is inevitable. I only hope that the music industry decides to concentrate on making music instead of going after Innocent people.

Stoners do a lot of dumb things, but this one has got to take the cake. On Sunday March 1st, Acea Schomaker was caught smoking marijuana through a device that he had put his kitten in. Yes, he put his cat in his bong. The 20 year old faces misdemeanor animal cruelty charges and a $400 fine. The funny part is that the police caught him doing it, they were in his house responding to a domestic disturbance. When you know the cops are in your house, you don't put your cat in a bong. Schomaker insists that he was trying to calm the cat because it was "hyper". The cat is currently in good condition and was not hurt at all, just a little high. The device was a box modified with some hose and glass, with a small chamber for cats. The kitten had 12x6 inches of room in the bong, not much space for a cat. Last week kids beat a cat and now they are getting them high. There really is nothing a stoner can't think up.

I don't know about you but I hate Windows Vista. All the compatibility issues and the fact that is likes to hog system memory have made Vista my enemy. I recently got a peek at Windows 7 and it looks like Microsoft might have some good ideas this time, and some bad ones. Microsoft says that Windows 7 will be out by Vista's 3 year consumer release. That would put the release date around January 10th, 2010.

People got a first look at Windows 7 with the beta program. All of the keys have already been given out so beta is closed. The beta expires on August 1, 2009, so be prepared if you do have the beta. My impression from all the reviews online is that Microsoft has learned a lot from Vista. The OS is much faster and a lot of useless fluff has been removed. But, this is not the final build, it is only a beta. So I do not want to judge the OS just yet.

One interesting fact is that Microsoft has removed some of the programs that come with Windows. Namely, Windows Messenger, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and Windows Mail are all gone. They have all gone into the new Windows Live Essentials Pack, which is a free download for Windows 7. The Essentials Pack also come with some great new apps. Windows Media Player has also had a full overhaul to improve performance and reliability, the mini media player has been removed. If Microsoft can make the Windows Live Pack an essential and useful part of 7 they will quite a product on there hands.

Microsoft is doing all it can to learn from Vista. They are stripping off any pointless fluff that was apart of Vista. 7 will also be fully compatible with Vista, in fact that is marketing plan, selling it as an upgrade. Microsoft stated that the release candidate for 7 will be a huge improvement from the beta, and will have quite a few changes. If Microsoft can work out all the bugs and improve performance they may have quite an operating system on there hands. If they have a solid and fast OS they will do very well. I can't wait to see what the final release looks like. I have a hope that Microsoft will pull through and give us a great product, at a good price.