Being without my main broadband connnection for two weeks I have got myself a T-Mobile mobile broadband dongle, I had previously used a Vodafone one but coverage is poor where I am on Vodafone and so the speed was very low. The T-Mobile mobile broadband flies by comparison but it does not work with everything, Windows Live Messenger is blocked, some web pages simply don’t work properly, and most notably images are very heavily compressed. Sometimes a key combination of “Shift + R” will decompress an image but often this doesn’t work. There are occasions where image compression may be useful, especially if the broadband speed drops, but for any site where the images are important the comprression level is far too high, resulting in very grainy images, and so I searched the Intnernet for a way to bypass this.

with / without compression

I found the solution that I have detailed below on the Phototropic web site, on this page: How to fix poor image quality (compression) when using T-Mobile Web ‘n’ Walk on a Mac

The solution works on Windows as well as on the Mac.

The Fix

1. This fix only works with Firefox 3 so download and install that if you do not already have it.
2. Launch Firefox
3. On the menu bar go to Tools… Add-ons
4. Choose the Get Add-ons tab, if not already selected
5. In the search box enter Modify Headers and press return
6. When you see the Modify Headers extension listed, click on Add to Firefox…
7. You will need to restart Firefox to complete installation
8. With Firefox restarted, on the menu bar go to Tools… Modify Headers
9. Select the drop-down box in the top left corner and choose Add
10. In the first box enter Pragma and in the second type no-cache
11. Click on the Add button to the right
12. Again, select Add from the drop-down box
13. Enter Cache-Control in the first box and no-cache in the second.
14. Click on the Add button on the right hand side
15. Click on the Configuration button in the bottom right corner
16. Check the box next to Always on: Enable…

Mark Zuckerberg introduces the new messaging concept

Earlier today, at a press conference in San Fransisco, Mark Zuckerberg and his team announced the latest big feature on offer from Facebook, a new messaging service that integrates with email. Facebook users will be able exchange messages with people who are not on Facebook with an @facebook.com email address which comes directly to their Facebook inbox, but this is not intended to simply be a new email platform.

WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics)  is a free program that makes finding and removing large files an easy, almost pleasing experience. It displays the contents of your disk as a colourful chart of grouped rectangles that helps you to easily spot where all your space has gone.

WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics) cam be downloaded from here.

WinDirStat is, as the name implies, for Windows only, all versions,  it is quite old now so I don’t know if it works on Windows7 (thank you Brian Jacob). WinDirStat is based upon KDirStat which is still available for Linux systems. There is also something similar called GrandPerspective for the Mac.

I have used this software several times in the past and knew I needed it again today, in looking for it I realised it is not referred to in many places so, as much for my own benefit as for yours, I thought I would make it that little bit easier to find by blogging about it here.

Once downloaded, before it can display your disk in its useful coloured box format, WinDirStat  needs to look at your disk to see how much space all the files  are taking up. When you first run the program you are offered the choice between scanning all drives or selecting an individual drive (or even just a folder), if you are only concerned with one drive it will obviously be a lot faster to view only that one.

The next screen you see is  really just telling you that the software is getting the information it requires, the display shows pacman chomping through your folders, but rest assured he is not eating any files.

Once WinDirStat has finished analyzing your hard drive you get to see what I find to be the most useful representation of your hard drive for determining which files and folders are taking up the most space on your system. As shown above, the main window is full of coloured boxes and rectangles, each one representing an individual file on your system, grouped into larger rectangles representing the folders that they are within. As you move your mouse over the colourful graph you see the file names appearing in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Click on any box and the traditional file manager view at the top of the screen will jump to that file. If you want to see how much space the entire folder that that file sits in is taking up simply click on the folder in the top left file manager and you will see the box representing its disk usage highlighted on the main chart.

Right click on any box or rectangle representing a file in the main window and you get the option to zoom in or out of the picture, giving you more detail on those numerous smaller files on your system.

Right clicking on any file or folder in the top-left file manager view gives you the option to delete it or open an explorer window onto it. When a file is deleted using this menu the image below is automatically updated to accommodate the change.

I hope you find this program as useful as I do!

The service uses voice recognition to work out what is being said and to place captions at the bottom of the screen. Currently the service is only available in English and the quality of the captions depends on the quality of the audio track but even with high quality audio, beyond getting an idea of what a video may be about, the number of mistakes means that the service probably has more entertainment value than transcription value at the moment.

Uploaders have the option of correcting the captions, which may be used in the future to enhance YouTube’s search capabilities.

Captioning is not yet available on all old videos, where it is available it can be accessed either via a “cc” icon or an upward pointing triangle on the video player tool bar.  Automated captioning in other languages should follow in the near future.

Basically, this article is unlikely to be of interest to many regular visitors to my blog, but it might help people who are running into similar issues that try searching the web for the answers.

1. “A program needs your permission to continue”
2. “Windows Live Messenger has stopped working”
3. Don’t install your friend’s copy of Microsoft Office
4. Bluetooth and Memory upgrades

“A program needs your permission to continue”

I have an administrator account in Windows and I start a program, apparently that does count as consent for that program to run, I have to confirm it has my permission. When setting up a computer and launching numerous processes this is very frustrating. There are two ways around it.

a) When launching a program, right click on it and select “Run as administrator”

b) Disable User Account Control. Go to Control Panel, Click on “User Accounts and Family Safety”, click on “User Accounts”, click on “Turn User Account Control on or off”, remove the tick from the check box where it says “Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer”, click on “OK”. For the change to take effect you need to restart the computer, you will be offered the choice to do it ‘now’ or later. To re-enable User Account Control go through the same procedure and return the tick to the check box at the end.

Thoughts… User Account Control is annoying in two scenarios, firstly when you are setting up or maintaining a machine and making lots of changes in the process, and secondly where you have a program that does not install itself well under Windows Vista which needs permission to run every time it is launched. It would be ideal if we could exclude certain applications from User Account Control but, as far as I am aware, we can’t. As annoying as this security feature is, it offers a high level of protection against harmful software installing itself without your knowledge as a result of a maliciously coded web site or an email virus being opened. For this reason I would recommend leaving User Account Control switched on for general computer use, and possibly disabling it for maintenance and upgrade work.

“Windows Live Messenger has stopped working”

There is a known problem for users of Acer computers running Windows Live Messenger. The Acer eDataSecurity software causes Live Messenger to close. An immediate fix is to run Messenger by right clicking on the icon and selecting “Run as administrator”, but this is not very user friendly and does not work if you want Windows Live Messenger to be able to start when Windows starts.

The solution is a patch to Acers eDataSecurity software, it can be found on their web site here: http://global.acer.com/support/winvista/t-faq.htm. The European link is not clear on what you should do, the Pan American one is clearer. Basically you need to download the latest version of eDataSecurity for Vista and install it. (links correct at time of writing).

Don’t Install your fiends copy of Microsoft Office

Why not? Because license restrictions have become quite tight and when you come to activate the software it may fail, and if it doesn’t fail it may fail next time your friend needs to re-install the software. If you are the friend that everybody borrows from, be very cautious about sharing, it may cause both you and your friend problems with using and upgrading the software.

You may be thinking you can use a dodgy hack from the Internet to get around activation, and they are easy to find, but you will be using an old version of the Office software that probably has security risks which need updating, and you wil not be able to update your hacked version.

There are a few alternatives to Microsoft Office, standing high among them is the free OpenOffice.org suite of programs. Unfortunately this does not offer a replacement for Outlook, for that there is Thunderbird, with the optional Lightning calendar/task manager add-on. Or Windows Live Mail and the Windows Calendar (installed with Vista). That said, Outlook is probably the least-rivalled element of the Microsoft Office suite and the pricing of the different Office versions reflects this.

So let’s say you cannot carry on living without having access to Microsoft Office, at least in the short term, perhaps all your email is in Outlook format and you need to use Outlook before you can export your mail into another program. If this is the case hen you can download a free trial copy of Microsoft Office and use it for about 60 days, before which time you will either have to migrate to alternative software or find the funds to buy a longer term license. You can grab a trial copy of the suite from here.

Bluetooth and Memory upgrades

I was pleased to see that my Aspire had a Bluetooth switch on the front, but disappointed to find that there was no hardware behind the switch. The connector for the Blutooth is just under the central memory cover. A custom made Bluetooth module can be found on ebay for about £20 (I won’t translate that into other currencies the way the financial markets are right now) or, if you are feeling adventurous, you could modify a simple USB or other Bluetooth module to work with the help of the information in this forum discussion.

Memory upgrades could not be easier than with the Aspire 3680 and similar models as both memory bays are accessible from the bottom of the computer. To get to the memory you simply undo the two small screws holding the large central memory bay in place, the cover has some plastic fingers which make it a little tricky to remove, gently move it around as you try to lift it up.

I do not recommend you do these by yourself if you are not familiar with hardware upgrades, bribe a friendly computer geek to help in return for some human interaction.

The following versions were tested: Windows Search 4, Copernic Desktop Search 2 and Google Desktop Search.  The test was done using WIndows XP. WIndows Vista has Windows Search built into it and that is an improved version, as far as I understand, of what I was testing on XP. First to the test was…

Google Desktop Search

Google Desktop has two main features, a desktop search engine that will index the files on your computer and search through them instantly, and side bar similar to the one that comes with Windows Vista, to which you add lots of gadgets including news readers, email notifications, calendar, slide shows… the list goes on. Personally I find side bars distracting and I have enough distractions off-screen without a side bar giving me more, but this feature is easily disabled. Once Google Desktop Search has indexed the computer it is extremely fast to find results in most file formats including Outlook emails. The software can be accessed in several different ways, my favourite method is as a search box docked onto the task bar at the bottom of the screen. As you type a search query into the box the search engines starts to provide matches to the partial word you have entered. What is particularly good about Google Desktop Search is that the results are all shown with a content preview, showing the text that surrounds your search string where it has been matched, this makes it extremely easy to find the very document you are looking for. The only problem I found is that not all the documents on my computer were being indexed. I uninstalled the software, re-installed it and ran a full index and still found that many of the documents I had were not indexed by the Google Desktop Search.

Windows Search

I was optimistic when I installed this given that the product should be as well designed for Windows as such a product could be. Windows Search did index all of my files but it lacked the context to the results on the search bar. When used as a full application the software offered the ability to open the found documents in a preview window so that you could then search for the result inside the document and realise the context, but this worked very slowly. On the whole I didn’t feel that Windows Search 4 made searching much easier than using the search features already built into Windows and Outlook, having used Google Desktop Search I had had a glimpse of how quickly a search tool could work, and by comparison Windows Search was painful to use.

Copernic Desktop Search

Copernic Desktop Search is similar to Windows Search in appearance and in its interface, it does offer filename matches very quickly from a search box on the task bar at the bottom of the screen but in order to get context you have to use the application Window and preview the matched document in a preview window, this was, however, considerably faster in Copernic than it was in Windows Search. Copernic also seemed to index every one of the files on my computer, including Outlook email, and the application interface is very easy to use. I found that once I had used Copernic a few times I was able to use its features to find the documents and emails I needed very quickly.

Conclusions

My favourite desktop search for WIndows XP is Copernic Desktop Search. I found the instant contextual results in Google Desktop Search superior to both Windows and Copernic but the incomplete indexing made it inadequate at the most important task of searching files on my computer. I did check through the support forums but,  like others before me who had had the same problem, I could not find, nor was offered, any solutions. Copernic was fast and intuitive, had I not seen the way in which Google presented results I would not have even thought it might be lacking in any department.

My tests were limited to the free version of Copernic Desktop Search 2, they have since released version 3 and that appears to offer “results as you type” in the commercial (non-free) versions, their web site does not specify if these are contextual results or not. If Google added an option that would allow you to force indexing of files and folders it had missed out then Google Desktop Search would be my winner, but at the time of testing there was no known way of doing this.

Links: Winner: Copernic Desktop Search, Second: Windows Search 4, Third: Google Desktop Search

I decided I needed a solution that would enable me to get working quickly from any computer, and i bought a 4GB USB Disk to try to set somehting up. Now, had I bought a 2GB disk I now realise I could have done something a little more clever that would have worked without the need for WIndows being installed, but I may well come back to that in a future post, for now I have a 4GB disk and am very happy with what I have got, which is this…

• An encrytped, password protected, briefcase of my most important documents
• An encrypted, password protected, backup of my Outlook email folders and settings
• A one-click facility to synchronise my public and private documents, and email, with any WIndows computer (in the case of email it needs to have Outllok XP or better installed)
• All my essential applications installed on the USB disk and launchable from there
• A nice launcher that sits in the Windows system tray and accesses all the facilities from the disk

So, not only do I have my data backed up but I can use almost all of it without interefering with another machine. If I want to use my email on a friends machine I will have to configure a user account under my name to use a fresh copy of Outlook, but I can use webmail for email too. I did consider using Thunderbird as my primary email client and then not needing access to Outlook on any machine (as I can run Thunderbird from the USB Drive), but I prefer Outlook for email management tools.

Here are the tools I am using, and hereby recommending…

• Truecrypt – This creates an encrypted briefcase file that I can “mount” as a drive when I need access to it.
• Allway Sync – A utility that can be set to synchronize between certain folders on the USB and the host computer]
• PStart - An application launcher, like the WIndows start button, that can be configured to work for all the programs on a USB stick.

I also have OpenOffice, Firefox, Mozilla, FileZilla, Gimp, GeoClock, CCleaner, Process Explorer, InfraRecorder, VLC Media Player, Notepad++, Audacity, and a large number of other portable applications installed which can run from the USB drive. Using PStart I can open my briefcase as Drive J: with just one click, and carry out synchronization of Outlook between computers I use with just one click.

One note about Outlook and Encryption, if you are familiar with creating a new .pst file in Outlook then you will know that you are offered three levels of encryption for your messages… None, Compressible or Best… Outlook does not compress the .pst file itself so unless you are going to compress it then the Best option is best!

Most of my blog visitors are not that technical minded to want to know more details about this, so if you do want to know more please le tme know.

I was wondering if anybody had found a hack to make it feel like you were flying a plane over Google Earth scenery, and I was pleased to find that Google have done it themselves. If you hold down CTRL+ALT+A (according to their instructions) you launch a flight simulator, choose your aicraft from two available, choose a starting point, and you can take to the skies. I have tested it by crashing into some trees in Venice. Details on all the controls are here.

On my computer CTRL+ALT+A didn’t work, something to do with having a British keyboard layout, but using the right hand (as opposed to left) CTRL with A (no ALT) worked instead.

There is also an option, which I have not tested yet, to explore space. You choose a location on earth from which to look at the skies and then click the sky button, from there you can explore our solar system and much of the known universe beyond it.

Firstly, I don’t believe in less than 4GB usage per month as being worth while, so prices I mention are for packages offering more than that.

1. PlusNET. £14.99/month + BT Line Rental
This service has a 4GB limit during peak hours (4pm-midnight) and no limits outside those hours. You are don’t even have to commit to a year but you have to pay a deferred activation fee when you leave which could be as much as £47. I’m with PlusNET, so if you join them by following this link you will save me a few pennies a month (only pennies).

2. Sky Broadband £20.00/month (£5.00 if you already subscribe to Sky) + BT Line rental
This is a great deal, you get almost unlimited use, you get Sky TV and you pay less than many other companies charge for broadband without the TV service. The actual package is £5.00/month for Sky subscribers and Sky subscription starts at £15.00 for which you can get all the best entertainment and documentary channels. (£20.00 activation fee)

3. NTL/Telewest. £17.99/month
If you don’t have a BT telephone line then cable is the way to go, it’s slower but its unlimited and cheaper than paying for a BT line and broadband on top of that. Cable only covers some of the country, availability is limited. Unfortunately “cable is not available in [my] area”, though it is on the other side of my street!

4. Talk Talk. £19.99/month
It’s almost unlimited and the price includes your BT line rental, you also get great deals on your phone calls. The catch… it’s an 18 month contract and you will be using Talk Talk instead of BT for all your phone related matters.

5. BT Broadband. £22.99/month + BT Line Rental
One of the things about broadband is that when something goes wrong you want it fixed, and the people who are best at getting things fixed when they go wrong, generally speaking, are BT. They are the more expensive option but they are reliable and they are in control of everything you are using, if you use BT and have a problem then it will never be a third party’s fault.