Tamer’s Tech Blog

I read this great post on Mozilla Links on how to add the new Facebook app to your Firefox sidebar. Check it out, it is cool.

SO, I have been playing with the FB chat for number of days now. I have not yet decided if I like it or not. It is simple, lets meet connect with friends, however do I really need another chat product?

I have read over the last month or so about the rumored 3G iPhone, and of course the Blackberry 9000. They are both very promising products. Personally I am long time fan of the Blackberry. However the blackberry cannot compete with the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities in my opinion. Also, the capacity on the iPhone (16 Gigs vs. the 64 MB that the BB has) is superior compared to the iPhone. Now that both devices are coming out with the 3G version, and my current BB is over a year old, I am want to get a new device. The question I have is, do I get the iPhone or the blackberry?

I went to an AT&T store a few days ago to play with an iPhone, I found that my big fingers are not making it easy for me to type on the iPhone. So that made me think twice about the iPhone.

I will wait to see which device comes out first and I will decide then.

As of late my Laptop has been taking forever to shutdown. Last night it took nearly 15 minutes to shutdown. Thus I decided to find a few article, tips and tricks to help me speed up my slow shutdown process.

I found this great article that showed me how to tweak my PC’s registry setting so that I can speed up the shutdown. http://www.cnet.com/8301-13880_1-9900788-68.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

The other thing I did besides the tweaks mentioned in the above article, is create a desktop shortcut to shutdown (instead of going through he start menu). This is how I did it:

1. Right-click on an empty area of your Desktop.
2. Roll-over your Pointer on New.
3. Select Shortcut from the menu which appears.
4. Type this code “shutdown -s”, without the quotes, in the field with the Caption Type the location of the item:.
5. Click on Next, and then Finish.
6. The code above, would shut down your Windows, as it does normally i.e. By closing each and every program, and then shutting down. But, if you want your Windows to shut down instantly, just by stopping every program, then use this code “shutdown -s -t 00″(00 is the number of seconds till shutdown, if you put 100 it will take 100 seconds),without the quotes in Step 4. Follow Step 5, to complete the creation of a Shutdown Shortcut.
7. If you would like a ‘Goodbye’ message, just add ” -c “TYPE MESSAGE HERE”" to the end of the code.
8. If you want to abort the shutdown got to start, click run and type “shutdown -a”(Note: you can only abort shutdown if you put the nuber of seconds after ” -t”, it won’t work without).

Lets say you are working on a word document, for example I am working on changing my resume. I opened the resume and made some changes to the document and saved and exited the document, but not before deleteting my opening paragraph because I did not like it. A few days later I decided I liked the opening paragraph and that I wanted to restore it back to my document. however I do not have a backup of my document. Well, what will I do? how do I get back the earlier version of my resume? Well, with Microsoft Vista you can restore earlier versions of a file.

To restore the file:

• Get to the file location in Windows explorer (on the hard drive).
• Right-click the file, and click Restore Previous Versions.
• Pick the earlier version you want to restore.
• You know have your old file.

This tip only works on only Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, and Windows Vista Ultimate editions support previous versions of files.

Here are a few of my favorite free apps.

• Chatting: AIM, www.aim.com
• Browser: Firefox www.mozilla.com
• Audio Player: WinAmp, www.winamp.com
• Anti-virus (not free, thought) CA’s Anti-virus, http://home3.ca.com/Microsoft/
• Documents: Google Docs, docs.google.com
• Webmail: Gmail, www.Gmail.com
• Online Calender: Google Calender, calendar.google.com
• Online Backup: Mozy, www.mozy.com
• Sync files between drives: Microsoft SyncToy 2.0, www.microsoft.com/downloads
• FTP: FileZila, www.filezilla-project.org
• Virtual Machine: Microsoft Virtual Machine, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc
• Blogging: WordPress, www.wordpress.com
• Photo Manager: Picasa, www.getpaint.net
• Maps: Google Maps, maps.google.com

I will expand on each in the future as to why I love each one. Stay tuned…….

I was just checking my Gmail account this AM and I saw the famous Gmail beta logo. I feel like Google is the only company that gets away with having an enormously long beta cycles. For example Gmail launched on April 1 2004, that’s over 3 and half years ago. Come on!!!! How long will Google wait before it take the wraps off the beta. Other examples are Google calendar, Google docs, Google Toolbar, and Google Desktop.

In doing some more research it seems Google has a different definition that the rest of the world on beta. The dictionary definition for “beta” is: “a version of an application that is made available prior to the official release for the purposes of testing.” Google used the term with a more general meaning: an application that it’s almost complete, that may still have bugs, that’s not fully supported and that may be dropped if users don’t like it. Google has a principle: launch early, and “beta” was a term to illustrate that.

Thus the label “labs” comes into play. Google replaced beta with “labs” to show experimental products. I hope this demystifies some of the mysteries of Google.

I often get asked this question on job interviews; (not that I am going on that many of them, however this question somehow always pops) “What are your favorite’s website to visit?”

Well my favorite websites are:

• Betanews.com: Because it always fresh with beta software reviews and sign-up links. That where I go to find out about what companies are working on.
• Webware.com: I used to think this website is dedicated to FaceBook, because of the many posts the writers have on FaceBook. However lately I have given it a second chance and I really like all the articles that have on web applications and website reviews.
• DownloadSquad.com: I really like all the freeware software they find. You can practically find all the software you need for your PC that is free there.
• Crackberry.com: I LOVE this website. I am a BIG time Blackberry user and I love all the info this website gives on upcoming blackberry products and current blackberry app and product reviews.
• Engadget.com: I love gadgets. So any website that can tell me about current gadgets and upcoming ones is OK by me.

I have a few more that I like as well. However the ones above are the ones I always check daily.

So my brother just bought a new MacBook laptop. I was impressed with the sleek looking laptop. So he asked me to install Windows Vista on his MacBook. My experience can be described as”EASY”. The folks over at apple really made it easy to install a windows OS on the Intel based apple machines.

• I loaded Boot Camp in Leopard
• I partitioned the hard drive
• I rebooted the laptop
• Windows vista started
• Formatted the partition for NTFS
• Installed Vista

Overall the installation was pain less.

Here are the few hick up and issues that I ran into post installation.

• Keyboard: the MacBook, does not have a full keyboard, so the layout of the keyboard was slightly different, however there are no “insert, backspace, right click” keys to name a few. I had to go and look for a keyboard remapping software to remap some of the keys. that turned out to be a difficult task; since there a few easy to use programs. I used Sharp Keys software. it is free and pretty easy to use.
• The f1 to F12 keys are hardware keys, for example when you press F5 you are increasing the volume. SO I had to go and change that

On the pro side, Vista was flying and working very well on the instal-based mac hardware.

Overall if you are looking to pay for a laptop, then get the Macbook, as it gives you both apple and Microsoft windows OS.