Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tag 'Other Stuff'

CES..

mikehall — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

I read somewhere that CES may not exist come 2015. Microsoft are making their last performance right now. Apple isn’t there. Others will follow.

There is always a lot of hype for these shows, but does anybody care other than your local friendly technophobe down the hall?

Will the news, weather and re-runs of Mash look any better in 3D than they do now? If everything on TV becomes 3D, instead of chilling out on the couch, half watching some thing, we will feel like we are sitting in the middle of downtown at rush hour. Is that what most of us want?

What’s the difference between a photo taken at 1.3MP and a photo taken at 14.3MP? We now have a crappy, badly composed photo in HD. Was it really worth the $$$$$ or bragging rights? You tell me.

Will I get totally immersed playing Fable 4 with MS Kinect, or will I be put off by remarks from my grand-daughter like “What’s Poppa doing? He looks silly”?

Wake me up when you have teleportation or food replicators worked out. Both would be useful and have universal appeal. The former would save queuing at airports, jetlag etc and the latter would finally stamp out bland and indifferent home cooking.

Home software – A general warning..

mikehall — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Following on from my previous post re To do lists, Calendars etc..

The problem with feature-rich‘home user’ applications like Noto where you have to pay is this. You get used to using them, store a great deal of information in them, and then wake up one day to find that the software developer has lost interest and no longer supports the application for the operating system to which you want to upgrade. Free stuff has less functions to which one gets attached but the same may apply. It’s upgrade time..

And it gets worse..

I remember buying American Greetings Create-a-Card 2 a few years ago. The interface was designed to hold a child’s attention, but it was actually a very good program which allowed the printing or emailing of greetings cards. Broderbund got a hold of it and subsequent versions were nothing short of nasty. More than a few feel this way about the evolution of Microsoft Office and the ‘ribbon’.

While many applications can export data in a variety of formats, very few import different formats in the way one would expect, and you find data in the wrong places, wrong headings and generally it is all a mess. You can spend hours trying to rectify the import problems, and it is probably best to do it over time.

Even the big boys..

Three examples of defunct but well loved programs:

Microsoft Picture-It – most used version probably Picture-It 2001 – last version released in 2005. as Picture-It 2006. Users of this program can’t find anything current which comes close to it for functionality and ease of use.
Microsoft Money - most used version probably Money 2004 as it was bundled with many computers at that time – last version was released in 2007 and was called Money Plus – there will be no future versions released.
Intuit Quicken – used by many since its first appearance worldwide – still available in the USA and Canada, but the UK and other versions discontinued in 2005 with no future versions planned

Home users have found themselves stranded and with no way out or forwards, and these are big name applications, not the results of a hobbyist programmer.

Applications aimed at the business users are more likely to be continued, or the developers risk losing the confidence of their commercial user base, but these same applications are not ‘fun’ to use, and tend to be too feature-overloaded for home users. The price also puts the average home user off.

Alternatives..

Yes, of course there are always alternatives and open source, BUT..

The users of the above programs had use of them from end of the 90’s halfway through the first decade of the new millennium. In ‘computer’ years, that is close to an eternity. Alternatives are NEVER the same, and often lack features and functionality of the original programs.

For the above reasons, I tend to stay away from a great deal of home user stuff. I use the simple stuff in Windows mainly, and even that changes over time and not always for the best. Notable examples:

Outlook Express
Windows Media Player
Windows Classic Menu

I hate the new versions. Outlook Express was maybe riddled with bugs, but it had some very useful features which are sorely missed by many. Windows Mail was passable at a pinch if you didn’t mind losing the ‘switch users’ function, but Windows Live Mail is a disaster in motion.

Re Windows Media Player, I only play music one at a time, and I never open WMP up to find music anymore. I use Windows Explorer for that.. WMP has been nasty since version 6, in my opinion.

I have aired my views about the demise of the Windows Classic Menu in a variety of newsgroups and forums, but in case you missed them, I will recap

The Windows Classic Menu was more than the default look as seen in Windows 9x/ME/XP/Vista. You could mess with the order, and create new folders which could be promoted to top of the list, while hiding lesser stuff in the default ‘Programs’ folder. Yes, it took a little work at first, but it could be saved and re-introduced if a re-install of Windows was required, and it was easy to see what other important applications and utilities needed to installed after a major recovery.

The Windows 7 menu requires type input for stuff, and the default menu can’t be organised in the same way. The menu annoyingly adds icons to the menu, displacing what is already there, which forces the user to then have to decide which of the items is less used and to summarily UNPIN them.

The Windows Classic Menu workarounds are complete shams of the original and not worth anything at all. The basic functions of an operating system should be infinitely customizable to suit any user but, as time goes by, Microsoft are forcing changes. The developers have way too much time on their hands, and their ‘flights of fancy’ ideas and implementations take away usability and function without any regard for the people who are going to use MS stuff. If they want to leave their ‘mark’ in life, I have a few suggestions for them, none of which I can disclose here..

OK.. you can now ‘stand easy’. This blogger has left the building.. (-:

Twitter finally has some value..

mikehall — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Our local AM talk radio station, AM980 (London Ontarion) uses Twitter to put out breaking news, local gas prices etc. Coo, wow, big deal.. well big enough for me to subscribe :-) Generally, I get maybe five or six tweets per day, Coo, wow, big deal..

So, it came to pass, Sunday 4 December 2010, that it started to snow over London Ontario.. and it snowed and it snowed, and as usual, Canadians motorists proved to be no more accustomed to snowy conditions than drivers in Jamaica.

Together with cellphone equipped motorists and various organisations around the city, AM980 has put out a steady stream of tweets regarding road conditions, traffic accidents, school and other educational establishment closures, mall closures, stat of the loacl bus services et al. It has all been interesting and useful output.

Way to go Twitter and AM980. The last time I cam across anything as useful was nineteen years ago BT (before Twitter). Location: middle England.. a huge snowstorm hit Birmingham and quite a lot to the south and east. The local radio station, CWR (Coventry and Warwickshire Radio) worked tirelessly for over thrity six hours, putting out all kinds of useful info and became the central point of a local community effort to co-ordinate help for the thousands of people stranded in vehicles and homes with no power.

Treat this post as a reminder to always have a battery or clockwork operated radio, btw..

Pageflakes update

mikehall — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:00:00 GMT

It’s ba-ack, but now exists only as a link in one of my Protopage bookmark sections, not as the default Start page.

Has Pageflakes gone for good?

mikehall — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 05:00:00 GMT

The start page will not load and has been on and off for a few days. Normally, the Pageflakes forum is reachable but that is out too. I have bookmarks set up on it which are used daily, so its non-appearance is a pain.

I have a Netvibes page set as backup but the bookmarks part has a severe error and they will not display. So now I have set up Protopage.

Protopage came in third behind Pageflakes and Netvibes in a review a couple of years back. Well, it is now in 1st place by virtue of the fact that it still works. It is as customisable as Pageflakes, there being lots of widgets on offer and it makes a great RSS feed reader.

I feel that I have given Pageflakes a good shot since it first appeared, but it is too unreliable. I sympathise with the creator, and I understand that offering stuff for free is maybe not sustainable for ever, and that it is difficult to charge for something like an Ajax start page and actually get people to pay.

The trouble is that users want reliability, and if the service can’t be made reliable with the funds available, and there are no funds from elsewhere which can be pumped in, maybe it is best to call it a day with the entire venture. Make no mistake,, I woulld sooner stay with Pageflakes, butt the way things are, it is of no use to me unless it is working..

Protopage lives here: http://www.protopage.com/protopage/about

The Ultimate Mouse Pad?

mikehall — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:00:00 GMT

In a former posting about overcoming the problem of friction between a mouse and mouse pad, I suggested cutting strips of Scotch® tape (Sellotape® in the UK) and carefully placing them over the mouse ‘feet’. You should use the opaque tape, not clear, and always use scissors for a nice clean cut.

The above works well on most if not all mouse pads for a while at least, but the tape will need replacing as some mouse mats take the surface off or catch the edges of the tape. I have been trying a variety of commercial mouse mats and other surfaces, and one of the best was a simple disposable cutting board bought from a Dollar store. Unfortunately, the surface of said cutting board did not last as well as I had hoped it would.

The problem with many mouse pads is that they do not stand up to cleaning very well. So, what surface is good for multiple cleaning sessions without suffering surface loss? How about a glass cutting board of the type you may use for cheese?

The item shown is made of tempered glass, is 10” x 8” and is available from Amazon, but your local cook shop or Dollar store may have something similar. I have a feeling that the one I am using originated from a Dollar store. I was given it as it was about to be thrown away in a friends trash can.

The surface is easy to clean, has a ‘machined’ finish which cuts out drag, and my mouse glides over it so very easily. It has been a boon for me as I suffer arthritis in my wrist and hand joints, and I do not have to use much force to move the mouse around.

Lastly, it is compatible with all versions of Windows.. :-)

The Ultimate PC accessory

mikehall — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:00:00 GMT

I have one of these, but it is no longer part of my computer configuration. Why? Well, my humble abode has become a ‘no smoking zone’ since the appearance of my favourite granddaughter. For those of you who are not ‘in the know’, it is a Sunbeam Cigarette Lighter for PC and is Windows 7 compatible (no drivers required).

The biggest problem with the device is that it has to be used in conjunction with accessory cigarettes which tend to produce a lot of smoke and tar deposits. Fortunately for me, I have fast track access to outside, but it is not fast enough to prevent a smoke trail, which is in direct contravention of the ‘no smoke’ regulations. Needless to say, this is NOT the ultimate PC accessory.

And neither is the ubiquitous BiC lighter, as it has no affiliation to anything PC other than the fact that some PC users may own one or two.

So what is the ultimate PC accessory? Drum roll please..

Enter the USB cigarette. It is USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 compatible, and will run on any version of Windows or Linux. Available in 35 flavours including tobacco, it will hook up to desktops and laptops (unlike the device pictured above), but it will not work in USB hubs unless of the powered variety.

In actual fact, I think that a powered USB hub on a suitably long cable or a USB extension cable would be useful because the ‘umbilical’ cord could be kept away from tangling with USB wired mice. There is no doubt that the cable could be a distraction while typing, and may bring weird looks from onlookers and passers by if it was being used on a laptop in a public Wi-Fi cafe area.

There is a mobile version (shown right) which gets over the problems already mentioned, and includes a USB connecter that can be used more surreptitiously in a car or one’s home, courtesy of the other charger adapters included in the full mobile set.

Note that this is one PC accessory which you will NOT find in any of the major PC retailers.

For more information, here is the website.. http://www.thebigspotlight.com/greensmoke_y.html

Windows 7 ‘god mode’ ..

mikehall — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:00:00 GMT

If extended lists scare you, don’t do this. I now have a ‘god mode’ window containing two hundred and sixty nine functions. Fortunately, they are split up into forty five categories..

A quick recap

269 functions spread across 45 categories

OK, this is how you do it.

Double click on ‘Computer’
Create a new folder and give it this name (copy it from here and paste the name in)

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

A split second after the folder creation and paste operation, you will get an icon which looks just like the regular ‘Control Panel’, except for the fact that this one has had a steroid injection..

If you have a ‘user pinned’ section on your task bar, the new icon can be dragged to it, or you can place it wherever is most convenient..

NB. There are rumours that 64-bit IE8 crashes if you open the folder icon.. If you have any problems with it, it can always be deleted as fast as it was created..

Website experiences..

mikehall — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Please bear in mind that I am a beginner to all of this stuff, and have had to do all of this with limited knowledge and even less resources..

I have recently moved my website from a paid service with HostPapa . There was nothing wrong with the service offered, but I simply could not justify the cost of keeping my website there. A group of guys I know who provide a free hosting to an elite band of people who provide their services free to the online communities came to my rescue, providing me with a sub-domain where my website could happily exist. Thanks, guys :-)

Moving a website from a www address to a sub-domain on another server is a little daunting. Apparently, one can’t move a www site to a sub-domain on another server by normal means, or to put it another way, website hosting companies will not do it. What I had to do was upload my website to the new server and HostPapa for the last two months of my paid subscription in order to stop page 404 errors appearing if somebody was to click on an indexed page which pointed to the outgoing host.

I created a copy of the FrontPage website held locally on my computer, gave it a unique name, and uploaded the contents of each folder to the respective servers, but initially forgot to alter the ‘robots’txt’ file in the new copy. I realised that something was wrong, as I was using this website to find out what pages, if any, were being indexed.. http://www.websitetrafficrankings.com/#.

It didn’t take me too long to create a new ‘robots’ file (with help from Google Webmaster tools) which included a relevant sitemap for the new address and a couple of other changes, and I duly uploaded it to the new server.

The results are surprising yet maybe not surprising at all.. I fully expected the Google crawler to do the best job, followed by Yahoo and MSN in that order, because historically this was the order for my old website address listings. Guess what? Bing (MSN) is doing the best job of all. Google has managed to list five pages, Yahoo found all of my blog entries and is only now staring to list web pages, three so far, and Bing has found and listed thirty six pages. Bing is definitely in Google’s slipstream and although the air gets dirty at close quarters, Bing will pass Google in time.

So what has become of my old website address? Well, thanks to my new website host team, I found out about ‘301 permanent redirects’ and even though the search engines list pages with the old www address, anybody clicking on them is immediately taken to the new server. The only page to survive intact on the HostPapa server is the original index page which itself has been redirected, and the robots file has been set to disallow everything. My subscription has ended now, but I guess remnants of the old address will survive for a good while, maybe even forever.

Page indexing is all very well and is important of course, but it is by no means the whole story. If your web pages appear in a search at the big end of the search results, it is unlikely that anybody will find your website. Ultimately, the only way a website is ever going to appear in the top ten search listings is if one pays to get it there.

For all of my efforts and time spent negotiating the learning curve, my website will always be an ‘also ran’ because I don’t have the monetary funds to promote it. It would be nice to be able to generate some business through it, have it put some food on the table, but for now I am pleased that I have it and hope that anybody who does see it will benefit in some way, even if the only benefit is knowing how NOT to design a website.

Social Networking..

mikehall — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Twitter definition: intransitive verb chatter: to chatter or giggle in an overexcited or nervous way.

In the UK one might use the word ‘twitter’ in the following context: You are on the phone to your mother and she asks how your child is.. “Oh, she is twittering away to herself and seems to be having fun”.

So, have you tried Twitter? I did. Hmmmmmmm… In 140 characters or less, I am asked to type in what I am doing now, and I did that. Next day, I opened Twitter and there was all kinds of meaningless crap there, and I had people following me. So what I am doing today? I am wondering why I took the trouble to join Twitter is what I am doing. Needless to say, I have delete my account.

I have a Facebook account and, a while ago, I had an e-mail from Facebook asking me why I hadn’t called in recently. Should I write back and tell them that it is because I am sick of seeing messages from people I thought I knew who have inexplicably joined the ‘Campaign to save the severely endangered Icelandic Crested Elephant’ or want me to join a mind numbing, senseless fishing game? Yes, sure you can block this kind of stuff, but if you do it, there is no longer any point in having Facebook. Hey, that’s it. Facebook and Twiiter have no useful purpose. For sure you can maybe find lost friends sometimes, but the price in terms of crap intake is high.

Even MSN and Yahoo Messenger profiles are being converted to social networking areas. Is there no escape? Best part is that nobody asked me if they could do this. All of a sudden I get a message to say that a friend has left a comment on my profile. If I want a comment on any part of my person, I will ask. Please do NOT leave unsolicited comments, or I will block you, ok?

Personally, I think that the drive to socially network has gone far enough. Like chat rooms, most of the content is meaningless drivel that you wouldn’t want your boss or your Grandmother to see. So join with me and we can start the ‘Campaign to exterminate Social Networking Insanity’. BTW, squeamish people should not apply. It could be a messy campaign.. :-)