Blogging: source crowded knowledge management

You know what I like about blogging? You can leave a trace for others. It is really like "crowdsourced knowledge management". You can write something, and others can find what you write about, simply by googling the topic.

Meaning: once you blog about something, it remains there, in the public domain, for years to come. For others to find... Crowdsourcing: information fed by the masses. Or call it "Power to the People" if you like.

I will take two examples. Two things that made my life miserable in the past months.

1. I have a X60 Lenovo computer which kept on shutting down due to overheating.
   A problem because for the past months, I worked in an environment where the ambient temperature would easily get over 25 dgrs C. My laptop would barely startup, then detect it got too hot, and subsequently shut down. Annoying to say the least. I searched the web, but did not find a solution.
2. Since I installed Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, I had a weird problem: every 30 minutes or so, my harddisk would get full, even though I had 3 Gbyte of free space when I started up my computer. I googled like nuts, the ICT helpdesk too, but it was only when I googled in different languages, that I found a trace of someone with the same problem, who posted it in an Italian discussion forum. And it gave me the solution. If it was not for that obscure post in an obscure discussion forum, I would never have found the solution. And my life would still have been miserable

So I will contribute to humanity here. I will blog about the solutions to the two earth shattering problems. And Google will do the rest. Maybe, I will solve someone's problem too. (and I trick Google by putting the subjects as <h2> headers, so it increases the probability of people finding it through search results)

Your laptop shuts down because of heating problems? Two solutions!

1. Use SpeedFan:
   Speedfan is a free utility that monitors the temperature of core elements in your computer and forces your computer fan to remain on, all the time.
2. Open your laptop (disassemble it) and spray all inner parts with pressurized air:
   Speedfan by itself, did not do the trick for me. Every year or so, especially when working in dusty environments, dirt particles would settle on my motherboard and on my fan fins. The only thing that helps is disassembling the laptop (taking the cover off the harddisk, keyboard and motherboard) and spraying off the dirt with a can of pressurized air.
   PS: disassembling a laptop is not for the faint of heart. Ask your computer shop to do it for you. But the trouble is worth it: spraying off the dirt is the only thing that solves my laptop's heating problem.

The problem with AdAxxx.tmp files filling up your harddisk

I diagnosed the problem of my harddisk filling up, with the free cleanup utility called CCleaner. CCleaner not only cleans up all temporary files, but also cleans up your system registry of orphaned traces of de-installed programs.
CCleaner showed I had thousands of files in my /Temp directory, all labeled AdAxxxx.tmp (where xxxx was a sequential number).
The problem was simple: a conflict between Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and AdAware, a free utility to protect against malware hidden in websites.
Installing AdAware automatically also enabled an add-in in Outlook to scan for malware.
My earth shattering problem for AdA.tmp files filling up my harddisk was solved by disabling the AdAware add-in:
Go to : Tools > Trust Center > Add-ins and disable the AdAware plug in.

Voila, those were the two contributions to humanity I had today. Google: go and do your thing now!

If you come across this post, through Google, and it solves one of those two problems you had, leave a comment. It will be nice to see I was right about crowdsourcing and blogging. ;-)

Update:
You might think I am kidding, but I assure you, I am not. Here is the proof: One hour after I published this blogpost, guess what appeared on the top of the Google search list for "adaxxx.tmp problem":




Picture courtesy Starts with a Bang