Posts Tagged ‘Software’

Hotmail Upgrade

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

Microsoft have started to roll out a new Web 2.0 version of Hotmail. The new version is designed to replicate the look and feel of Outlook through a web interface. New customers will be automatically signed up to the new version, while existing users will be given a choice of using either the classic Hotmail interface or the new one.

As an added bonus, Microsoft will also be releasing a free connector that will allow users to link their desktop installation of Outlook to their online Hotmail accounts. This software was previously available, but at a cost.

FireStats Update

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

The last couple of days have seen some updates to the FireStats plugin. The first update was a security fix, and the last two have been bug fixes. It’s recommended that if you are using this plugin that you update to the latest stable release, version 1.1.8-stable. The download is available from here.

Dell Support Redux

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

After my previous experience with Dell Support, I decided to get on to their website and use their online support to see if I could get anywhere. I sent off an email, and eventually got a response. They’ve graciously agreed to send me a set of recovery CD’s by courier in the next 5 – 8 working days.

It’s taken a while, but now, hopefully, I’ll be able to get this system repaired and back to the owner. Frustrating as telephone support was, their email support is slightly better, just don’t expect to get an instant response. I first contacted them on Monday and received confirmation today that the CD’s are being sent.

Reinstalling Windows on a Dell Dimension 2400 Part II

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

I eventually got around to installing XP on my friends Dimension 2400. As he did not have any restore CD’s, I had to use a copy of XP that I had myself. The install itself went fine, and after about an hour or so I had a working install. The only problem was that XP wanted to be activated. As the product key was an OEM one, it’s not going to activate. So now I’m stuck. I can either use a crack to bypass the activation, or I can try to get a copy of the restore cd’s.

As this is a perfectly legal install, I’d prefer not to resort to have to use a crack. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any way to order restore CD’s from the Dell website.

I have created an image of the hard-drive, so I can restore that back if I need to, but that isn’t going to do a whole lot except get me back to square one.

I’ll have to think about this one a bit, and see if there is anyway that I can get the original Dell OS back onto the system.

Using a Screensaver as Desktop Background

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

I found this on a Mac OS site. It allows you to use your screensaver as your desktop background:

  • Open the Terminal app.
  • Type (all on one line): /System/Library/Frameworks/Screensaver.framework/
    Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &
  • Hit enter.
  • Terminal will return with the process ID
  • If you want to stop the screensaver background, in the Terminal, type kill followed by the proces ID.

IPTV Coming to Ireland

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

Babelgum, who are providers of IPTV services, have announced that they are to set up their international headquarters in Dublin. Apparently their decision was based in part on the fact that Dublin serves as the European headquarters for companies such as Google, Paypal, Yahoo and more.

IPTV allows you to watch television over your broadband connection, and in Babelgums case will require the installation of their software to view programming. Programming will be supported by advertising, but they do not give any details of how this will be implemented. At the moment Babelgum are looking for beta testers (Windows XP users only though), but given the woeful state of broadband in this country, are they sure they can make this work?

Protecting Your PC

Monday, March 5th, 2007

As anyone who uses Windows on a regular basis will tell you, security is a problem. It’s a problem because Windows is the biggest target out there, and every script-kiddie, virus-writer with half a brain can write software to exploit it.

It takes time and effort to lock down a computer. More than time and effort than most end users are willing to dedicate to the issue. Securing your computer is more than preventing unauthorised access, it’s about protecting your private data, and ensuring that your computer continues to work the way you want it to. So here’s my basic guide to securing your home PC.

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Make Some Money

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

If you can program, have an in-depth knowledge of modern OS architecture and design, are short of cash, have I found the job for you. The pay will be in the region of $1000 – $3000. But you need to be quick, this one time offer closes in 3 days, and you need to get in there quick.

Job Description: (stolen from getacoder.com):

Hi,

So I’m posting for a rather large project. I need someone to program me a new OS (Operasting System) that looks different than Ms Windows XP etc. but has the same style. It does not need to run on a mac but all the other PCs. It’s supposed to have a stylish look with clear edges etc. And ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE JUST A REDESIGNED WINDOWS as I’m going to sell that operating system later on. It’s going to be called BlueOrb.

These are some important points :

It should have ALL THE FEATURES that Windows Xp Professional has.
ALL the files that run on Windows XP ust also run on the BlueOrb OS.
It must have a very user-friendly interface (like MS WINDOWS XP)
When it gets Installed, the user needs to insert a serial number.
It HAS to be HACKER SAFE!
It must be quick and good looking.

Note that I only accept quality work and do not want any quickly done BS.

greetz,

M.Reinhardt

So when can you start? :)

Plug-ins List

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

I was pretty bored, and couldn’t sleep, so I went looking for new plug-ins to install on my blog. I came across Lorelle’s list of WordPress Plug-in Lists, and I went through every site on that list looking for plug-ins. There were quite a few I hadn’t come across before, so the one’s that interested me were duly downloaded and installed.

I also modified one of the sidebar widgets that came with the theme I’m using and I created a “Plugroll” widget. All I did was add a link for each installed plug-in to my blogroll, gave them a category called plugroll, and used the widget to list them automatically. You can see the list below the linkroll in my sidebar.

Without further ado, here’s my list:

Akismet: Comment spain is a royal pain in the ass. Akismet saves you the hassle of wading through hundreds of spam comments. Any comments detected as spam are held in a spam queue for 15 days. You can chose to delete or unmark potential spam comments. Check the spam queue once a day, just to make sure that you have no false positives.

Autometa: Inserts META headers into your pages. Useful for serach engines crawling your blog.

Category Cloud Widget: Creates a cloud of your categories. The number of posts in each category determines its dominance in the cloud.

Category Tagging: Converts your categories into tags. Simple really. Also allows you to create a tag cloud.

DoFollow: Removes the “nofollow” attribute from links on your blog. “nofollow” tells search engines not to count the link from your page when determining the popularity of a site, which has a significant effect on a sites placement in search results.

FeedBurner Feed Replacement: FeedBurner is an alternative method of providing RSS feeds to your reader. Provides all sorts of statistics and extra functionality. This plugin forwards your feeds through FeedBurner without having to rewrite any code.

FireStats: Provides statistics on who’s visiting your site, most popular pages, unique visitors in the last 24 hours, etc. Uses a nice AJAX interface to reload the statistics every 5 minutes without reloading the entire page.

Google Sitemaps: Generates a sitemap for your blog whenever you save or edit a post. Automatically pings Google when the sitemap has been updated. Can also be used to manually generate a sitemap without saving or editing a post. A must if you want to improve your Google ranking.

Joe’s Quote Widget: Generates a random quote every time your site is loaded. Just one of those fun widgets to make your blog more interesting. Includes famous Bushisms, but Joe also provides Futrurama, Family Guy and Simpsons quotes.

runPHP: Allows you to embed PHP scripts in posts or pages, and have it run. Configurable so that only select users can insert scripts. Handy for creating pages with tag/ category clouds, etc.

Search Meter: Provides statistics on what users are searching for on your site. More importantly, also shows searches which return no results. If your readers are looking for something and can’t find it, it will let you know so that you can add it.

Sidebar Widgets: Enables Widgets in your blog. Opens up a whole new world. No more fiddling around with arcane code. Just drag and drop the widget onto your sidebar, and away you go.

Sociable: Add links to the bottom of your posts to submit to numerous social websites. Configurable for the websites that you want your material to be submitted to.

Tiger Style Administration: Cleans up the WordPress Administration Panel. Easier in the eye, and easier to navigate, and all done through the power of CSS.

Ultimate Tag Warrior: The ultimate in tagging, lots of configyration and administration options, supremely powerful. The best tagging plug-in out there. I particularly like the way it has a version number of pi. Just as powerful as pi, if you ask me.

Wordpress Database Backup: Sooner or later you ARE going to need this. No ifs, no ands, no buts. You will need it. First rule of WordPress: backup your database. Second Rule of WordPress: backup your database. Third Rule of WordPress: we don’t talk about the Third Rule…..

WordPress Mobile Edition: You want to reach a large an audience as possible with your blog. Now you can extend your thoughts to those browsing on mobile devices. With a browser sniffer, and a theme designed to display on mobile devices, you won’t go wrong with this plug-in.

WordPress Reports: View your Google Analytics and FeedBurner statistics straight from WordPress. You’ll need accounts with Google Analytics and/ or FeedBurner for this plug-in to have any use, but if you already have accounts with these services, then you know the power of information.

wp-cache: Speed up your blog with this caching plug-in. Creates static copies of your frequently visited pages, and serves those instead of your database intensive, dynamically created pages. May require minor editing of your wp-config.php file, but worth the effort.

WP-phpMyAdmin: Use this plugin to get direct access to your WordPress database. Optimise tables, drop tables if you like, but just be careful before you do.

WPG2: Embed photos from your Gallery2 installation directly into your blog. Can embed random or specific images and albums. According to the home page, not fully compatible with WordPress 2.1, but seems to be working ok here.

That’s it, that’s my list of plug-ins. I have a couple of more installed, but they’re not activated for various reasons. The main one being that I got fed up of them, and just haven’t gotten around to uninstalling them yet.

U3 Crapware

Monday, February 19th, 2007

Why do manufacturers insist on installing crapware like U3? I just bought a new flash drive, and this is the first one of many that I own that came with this program pre-installed. When the drive is connected it automatically installs and launches a program that apparently is designed to manage programs and data.

I don’t want another program to manage my software or data. I certainly don’t want to install or launch software like this on somebody else’s system. Who thought that this would be a good idea? Whoever it was, also thought that it would be a great idea to store the program on a CDFS partition. A read-only partition that cannot be deleted or modified.

Luckily there was someone else that thought it would be a good idea to provide an uninstaller. Here is where you can get it: U3 Launchpad Uninstaller