So, someone spilled what looked to be coke on one of the Apple keyboards in one of my labs on campus. There may be a way to take these keyboards apart but after about five minutes of looking for a way to do that I decided to give a rumor I heard a go. Washing the keyboard in a dishwasher.

With the keyboard already written off, I had spares, I didn’t prep it in any way. I just placed it on the top shelf of the dish washer, added a little soap, and ran the dishwasher on the “Normal” setting. I stopped the dishwasher before it got to the heat cycle as I was fairly sure that if the keyboard made it through the wash the plastic used on the keyboard most assuredly would not survive the heat cycle the washer uses to the dry dishes.

After I took it out of the dishwasher I shook as much water out of it as I could and then I put the keyboard out in the sun for a day to dry. The next day I plugged it back in and it works perfectly. Keys no longer stick and every key input works. Just to be sure this wasn’t a fluke, I did the process all over again with a second keyboard that had sticky keys. The second keyboard works as well.

So, if you have a sticky keyboard and have nothing left to lose, give it a shot. It worked for me.

On one of my missions to help someone out with a setting in some program they were using I stumbled across this handy little app. If only I had this back in my tech support days it would have saved me countless hours of phone support with a client. Jing allows you to create screen shots or videos to use when trying to explain how to use a piece of software or some element of their computer’s operating system. When using the screen shot feature it gives you several options to annotate the image to get your point across. A very useful feature for tech writing. In the past I have used Photoshop to create my images for tech papers but as everyone does not have access to Photoshop this application will do quite nicely. In the image below you can see some examples of the annotations provided by Jing.

When a simple pic won’t suffice you can create a video showing step by step instructions complete with audio. This is easily the best feature of Jing as nothings gets a person through a jam like video with audio prompts showing them exactly what they need to do in order to accomplish their task. A friend new to Mac computing and Adium (a multi-client IM application for Mac OS) asked me how to set a custom away message over email, I launched Jing and created this video in a matter of minutes…

Creating a custom away message in Adium

Much faster than typing out the steps in an email and left little chance of them not understanding how to do what they wanted with their application.

Jing sits off to the side of your screen and when you need it all you have to do is hover your mouse over it and you’re moments away from creating a screen shot or video you can share via chat, a web forum or email. Jing places a link to the media you created on your clip board, so all you have to do it paste it into your conversation. It’s a cross platform application so there are versions available for both Mac and PC users and at the current time Jing is free. That’s right, free.

So, if you want to check it out head on over to their web site and give it a try. The only thing you have to spend is your time.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you heat doesn’t affect a computer. Heat took out the fan on the power supply and the server is now overheating.

FrostWire.com – Official Website – Free BitTorrent/Gnutella Client – No subscriptions, Just download and install

What is FrostWire?

FrostWire, a Gnutella Peer-to-Peer client, is a collaborative effort from many Open Source and freelance developers located from all around the world. In late 2005, concerned developers of LimeWire’s open source community announced the start of a new project fork “FrostWire” that would protect the developmental source code of the LimeWire client and any improvements to the Gnutella protocol design. The developers of FrostWire give high regard and respect to the GNU General Public License and consider it to be the ideal foundation of a creative and free enterprise market.

Obviously, if you would like to keep people from using the USB ports on your computer to prevent them from doing this to your machine or copying data from your hard drive, well, that works too!

USB Port Blocker – Pack of 4, Colour Code: Blue | USB Light, Fan & Security Locks | USB & FireWire | LINDY UK

The simple and effective tool for blocking access to a computer’s USB port!

USB Port Blocker – Pack of 4, Colour Code: Blue
With this neat little device, system administrators can physically prevent users from connecting Pen Drives, MP3 Players and other USB Mass Storage Devices to their computers to copy data, introduce viruses etc.

The USB Port Blocker is made up of a combined ‘key’ and ‘lock’ assembly which plugs into the USB port. To use, simply plug the ‘keylock’ into the port and release the latch – the lock remains in place! Plug the key back into the lock to remove. Easy!

* Physically blocks access to a USB port
* Quick and easy to use
* Consists of 4 locks and 1 key

* 5 different colour code versions available: Pink, Green, Blue, Orange, White
* Each key only works with a lock of the same colour
* Also available in packs of 10 (without key)