Gastown Webspace

Taming the mixed HTTPS/HTTP webpage content prompt in Internet Explorer 8

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:26:00 +0000

Some web sites that serve up pages using HTTPS after you log in still have embedded elements (often images) that are served up insecurely (by HTTP) for a variety of reasons, such as: a performance boost by avoiding the SSL overhead, use of a third party server's bandwidth, web bugs for tracking your surfing habits, etc.

In Internet Explorer 8, when such a mix of HTTPS and HTTP connections are served up on a single page, a pop-up dialog box says:

Security Warning: Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely? This webpage contains content that will not be delivered using a secure HTTPS connection, which could compromise the security of the entire webpage.

If you want to display the mixed content in IE 8, you will need to click "No" even though it is NOT the default choice.

Previous versions of IE (such as IE 7) asked the user, "Do you want to display the nonsecure items?" you could click the default button of "Yes" to display the mixed content (or hit the enter key). But since the default choice wasn't the most secure option, the developers of Internet Explorer made the change from 'yes' to 'no' to get the whole page to load completely. You can read all about this topic on Eric Law's MSDN Blog.

If, like me, you find the prompt annoying, the MSDN recommendation is to go into the IE menu item 'Tools > Internet Options > Security > Internet Zone > Custom' and change the "Display mixed content" option "Disable". This will always block non-secure content in secure pages without the annoyance of the prompt. You will need to agree to the prompt "Are you sure you want to change the settings for this zone" and hit OK to close the dialog box. NOTE: you may need to tap the 'Alt' key on your keyboard to get the menu items to appear in the toolbar area of your web browser.

For some in-house web applications whose Development and QA servers aren't using signed SSL certificates, I've added those hosts into my list of 'Trusted Sites' and changed the "Display mixed content" option to "Enable" in that zone only.

Useful programs that work on Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:05:00 +0000

I'm running a fresh install of Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate, build 7100) on a secondary desktop PC, and I'm very impressed with it! Here is my checklist of programs and plug-ins that I typically install in Windows:

Anti-virus/Anti-spyware: Microsoft Security Essentials is free and provides some basic protection, so there is no excuse not to run some kind of anti-malware utility. My primary Windows XP install is running AVG Internet Security, and I've used Avast in the past too, and both of those companies also offer free products for home use.
Browsers: Mozilla Firefox (now my default), Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. Having just one alternative to the built-in Microsoft Internet Explorer is probably enough, but with the web work that I do, I like to test sites with all of these popular web browsers.

Browser plug-ins: Adobe Flash and Shockwave Players, Adobe AIR, and Microsoft Silverlight. Install these after you have installed all of the browsers that you intend to use so that the plug-ins will go into each one. Install them before you do much surfing to reduce your frustration of hitting sites that require these plug-ins for their navigational structure.

Chat and social media: Digsby is my preferred multiprotocol messenger. I could have installed AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Messenger (MSN), and Google Talk. Although Pidgin is also a Jabber (XMPP) client, and does have skype4pidgin for Skype's chat feature and a pidgin-facebookchat plug-in, I like using Digsby for its Facebook chat feature and to check my news feeds in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace -- all from one interface. To get an even better view of the "twitterverse" I use TweetDeck (an Adobe AIR application) to group the contacts that I follow into logical columns and easily check when others mention or direct message me.

Audio/Video tools: Apple QuickTime and RealPlayer are useful to play things that Windows Media Player can't (certain audio and video codecs). Audacity with the LAME and FFmpeg libraries is a free way to edit sound files. Movie Maker is part of the Windows Live Essentials installer package, but you can deselect everything else. VLC (VideoLAN client) is a free media player that also has conversion/streaming capabilities, and a wide assortment of bundled codecs so that it can play almost anything!

PDF tools: PDF-XChange Viewer and PDF Creator. You might not need the full Adobe Acrobat just to handle the most common annotation and form-filling tasks -- use the free PDF viewer from Tracker Software, and the open-source printer driver on SourceForge.

File management: 7-Zip is an open source context-menu utility to open a wide variety of compression formats (e.g. RAR, GZIP, TAR, etc.) and supports AES-256 encryption in both the 7z and ZIP formats. µTorrent is a light program to download BitTorrent files (only legal ones, seriously). CoreFTP has a free client for not only FTP but also SFTP, SSL & HTTPS.

Remote control: Terminals is a multi-protocal remote desktop client for not only RDC (Terminal Services) but also VNC, Telnet, SSH and more. For remote access to the PC itself, I add the computer to my LogMeIn Free account right away.

Productivity: OpenOffice is the free and open-source suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program, and more.

There are many more programs that I run on my main Windows XP installation for work purposes, but the above list is a good way to get started with free software on the newest desktop operating system from Microsoft.

Split a hard drive for use by either Windows or Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:03:00 +0000

When you buy an external hard drive for a Mac, it comes preformatted as HFS+ (so that it's unusable from Windows) and when you buy one for a PC it generally comes preformatted as either FAT32 (with a 4GB per file limitation) or NTFS (so that a Mac can only read from it but not write to it). But if you're like me -- running both Windows and Mac operating systems (whether physical or virtual machines no longer matters), you may have wondered if it is possible to split a hard disk drive (HDD) to allow half of it to be used with Windows XP/Vista as an NTFS partition, while the other half to be used with Mac OS X as an HFS+ partition.

I recently used these steps to split up my new Western Digital My Passport Studio 500GB and it works great (I love the Firewire 800 speed)! Here is stock photo of it:

In this article I won't cover the NTFS-3G driver that can add read/write NTFS capabilities to Mac OS X. I also won't review MacDrive by MediaFour which allows Windows to read/write Mac-formatted partitions. The most practical solution that I've found which doesn't require any extra software is to divide up the drive -- one physical drive that presents different partitions depending on which operating system you plug it into. This is successful when you follow the correct sequence of partitioning and formatting the drive -- the order of the steps is important!

On the Mac, use 'Disk Utility' (under 'Applications > Utilities') to select the external drive. On the 'Partition' tab, use the 'Volume Scheme' drop-down to split the drive into 2 Partitions. In the first area, select the format as "Free Space" -- this won't actually create a partition, but will set aside an unallocated area at the front of the disk. There is no point giving this area a name since we'll be naming it later in Windows anyway, but do set aside the number of MB (megabytes) that you want to be available to Windows.
In the second area, select the format as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", give it a name, and let it have the remaining space (size in MB = Mega Bytes).
Use the 'Options' button to choose the partition scheme as "Master Boot Record". This is the key to having the drive recognized by Windows. Although the Mac OS can't boot from this partition scheme, it can recognize all of the partitions too and our purpose here is to support backups not booting clones.
Click the "Partition" button to appy your changes once you're sure that you've done all of this to the correct drive! Here is a screen shot example:
Eject the disk from the Mac (drag to Trash and remove connecting cable).
Plug the drive into your Windows machine, and open "Computer Management" (right-click on "My Computer" and choose "Manage" from the contextual menu). Another way of launching this is with 'Start > Run > compmgmt.msc'.
Identify the drive that you've inserted (e.g. Disk1 if Disk0 is your only internal HDD). Right-click on the "Unallocated" space with the black title bar on it and pick "New Partition". Notice the 2nd portion of that drive is a "Healthy (Unknown Parition)" -- that's your Mac partition, so don't touch it.
Step through the "New Partition Wizard" to format it as a "Primary Partition" with the desired size in MB, assign a drive letter (e.g. "E:"), format as file system "NTFS" and give it a name to help you recognize it. Leave the optional check-boxes de-selected (we don't want a quick format or compression). To begin the formatting, press the [Finish] button on the last screen of the wizard.
Once the NTFS formatting is complete, the status will say "Healthy" and you can "safely remove hardware" (right-click on the aptly-named icon in your task tray) before you unplug the drive from your Windows machine.
Now you can use the drive with either Operating System! When you plug it into your PC, you'll get the NTFS partition available through the drive letter that you specified, and you won't see the Mac side at all. When you plug it into your Mac, you'll see both partitions, and can view/open the files in the NTFS partition if you want to, but more importantly you'll have a normal Mac partition that you can use with Time Machine or for other backup purposes! Here is a combined set of partial screenshots from the footer of Disk Utility showing how I split up my drive:

Did I mention that I love Firewire 800 -- it really is much faster!

Useful BlackBerry Bold applications

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:25:00 +0000

I've had a BlackBerry Bold (9000) since it was released on the Rogers wireless network in August 2008. Here are some tips, tricks and general hints about the applications that I've found useful on it:

WeatherEye Mobile for BlackBerry: The Weather Network's free (ad-supported) app can sit on the home screen to show the current temperature and conditions for your selected city when you glide over its icon! In the app, you can see short-term and long-term (through tomorrow) and long-term (5-day) forecasts.

BeejiveIM: this is my preferred Instant Messaging (IM) client since it's multi-protocol and not dependent on a web service. I also have many single-service free IM clients installed, but it's worth paying $20 for BeejiveIM to get the Jabber/XMPP support and the consolidated buddy list across services. The other clients are generally only available as Over-The-Air (OTA) downloads from your BlackBerry's mobile browser so that the carrier's service books can be checked:

Social Networking:
- Facebook - it's handy to be able to see a few recent friends' updates as well as update my own status. But the photo upload resizes your pics, so I recommend using e-mail to mobile@facebook.com (with PIN code confirmation by SMS) for better quality. In version 1.5, you can update your contact records with their profile photos!
- TwitterBerry (OTA) - it's a quick way to tweet without using SMS (there are other clients out there but this met my needs)
- MySpace (OTA) - I don't really use this, but I had to try it.
- Flickr (OTA) - yes I have an account but rarely use it.

Google Mobile for BlackBerry: a whole suite of mobile apps and optimized web sites, such as Maps (see below), News, Docs, Reader, Sync, Mail, Picasa, etc. (lots more)

Maps and driving directions (with both aGPS and true GPS support):
- Google Maps (this is practically a killer app, especially with Latitude so that you can share your location and see your friends' locations who are sharing with you)
- MapQuest for Mobile has a friendly interface and accurate maps in my experience but is still in beta so isn't as fast (OTA)

Newsreaders (RSS feed clients):
Streaming radio:

RepliGo Reader: after the 10-day trial period, this native PDF file viewer (not just online attachment preview) costs $20, so I haven't decided if I'll use it enough to buy it -- but the couple of files I tried it on worked very well.

Games: BBTetris (free falling bricks game)

Now you can browse and download a wide variety of free and paid applications from the BlackBerry App World on your phone.

Great keyboard for using both Windows and Mac OS X at the same time

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:21:00 +0000

Ever since I started running Windows as a virtual machine on my Mac, I'd been frustrated that the Apple keyboard was missing Windows-specific keys such as "print screen" and the Windows key (for the Start menu). On the other hand, using a typical PC keyboard in Mac OS X meant not having an Option key, having to remember that the Alt key was the Command key, and not having volume keys. I found the generic-sounding USB 2.0 keyboard but discovered that the black one is actually a very innovative keyboard with many great features:

includes the useful 'Windows' key and 'print screen' key but not the 'application key' (right-click key) that I've never used.
caps lock is tucked away in the bottom instead of to the left of the letter-a (where it would otherwise be too easy to hit)
dedicated volume keys (mute, quieter, louder) are slightly recessed
the 'num lock' key is tucked away in the bottom row instead of being in the upper-left of the numeric keypad. That spot is now used by an extra tab key, which helps us accountants with rapid data entry!

I suppose that the USB 2.0 dock on the top of the keyboard is convenient for things like thumb drives, but since you have to plug in both of the keyboard's two USB connectors to your computer to get that port enabled, it's just a one-for-one extension and not a USB 2.0 hub. The two-port USB hub on the back of the keyboard is just USB 1.1, so those ports are only useful for your mouse and other simple devices.

Installation tip: if they keys don't seem to be acting the way they are labeled in your operating system, check the manual for your key mapping instructions (e.g. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger has an extra set of steps compared to 10.5 Leopard). In Parallels 4.0, I had to use the Preferences to re-map the 'Alt' key to the 'Win' key and the 'Cmd' to the 'Alt' key, and deactivate the Mac's Command-tab so that Alt-tab would work in the PC -- then all the keys worked as they they indicated!

The Matias Corporation is a Canadian company, and they sell the USB 2.0 keyboard both directly from their web site and through a long list of resellers worldwide. I got the keyboard for USD $35, but you can get a discount online.

Another nice keyboard that I'm using now is the Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard (Part Number: 967233-0403). It's been discontinued but still available online from 3rd-party sites. It's a PC keyboard but the 'Start' key also has "alt" and "option" labels on it, and the "Alt" key also has "Apple" and "Command" labels on it. The volume and mute buttons work with the Mac sound settings! It doesn't have a USB 1.1 hub built-in though.

Make your Windows desktop look like a Mac (at first glance)

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:39:00 +0000

As a fan of the Mac "look-and-feel" I decided to make my Windows XP desktop look more like Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Here is how I set up my PC to make this screenshot:

Search the net for a Mac-inspired high-resolution wallpaper image using terms such as: mac leopard aurora wallpaper. Be sure to get a JPEG with a resolution at least as large as your monitor so that it doesn't have to be scaled up.

Get the free RocketDock -- a smoothly animated application launcher. You can right-click on it's trashcan icon to work with the Recycle Bin.

Install the 'Tweak UI' part of Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP then use it to hide the Recycle Bin from your desktop. You can hide the other icons from your desktop (like 'My Documents', 'My Computer' and 'Network Places', by using the 'Customize Desktop' dialog in your display properties.

Set your taskbar to "Auto-hide" (there are aggressive hacks that can get rid of it completely, but I like the comfort factor of being able to get back to it if necessary).

Change your Windows desktop display settings appearance to the color scheme "Silver" so that at least the remaining slice of your hidden taskbar isn't bright blue anymore.

Download the Mac OS X Leopard Skin for RocketDock by AnthoNYC. This provides the translucent slanted shelf of the dock. Install it into "C:\Program Files\RocketDock\Skins".

Download the iLeopard Icon Pack SE and install it into "C:\Program Files\RocketDock\Icons"
Install a Dashboard-like application for Windows XP such as Yahoo Widgets or Google Desktop Gadgets. Microsoft Vista users already have Windows Sidebar. Drag the application to your RocketDock and change the 'Icon Settings' to use the Dashboard icon from the icon pack. Set up a few widgets, such as a clock and local weather.

Download the Stacks Docklet, install it into "C:\Program Files\RocketDock\Docklets" and configure it to point at your preferred downloads folder. This gives you the 'fan effect' view of files & folders in that directory just like Leopard.

Download Safely Remove Hardware v2 and install it into "C:\Program Files\RocketDock\Docklets" since you'll want an easy way to disconnect your USB devices cleanly without fishing around for the taskbar status icon.

Add the "iCal" docklet (included) which shows the current date. You can configure it to launch your favourite Personal Information Manager (PIM) or calendar program (but I didn't).

Download iShut to have an easy dialog box for Restart, Sleep and Shutdown.

Go nuts with dragging shortcuts or programs onto your RocketDock and change each icon to match the Mac equivalent:
- My Computer = Finder icon
- Cygwin = Terminal icon
- wupdmgr.exe (Windows Update) = Software Update icon
- My Network Places = Network icon
- Control Panel = System Preferences icon
- Picasa 3 = iPhoto icon
- PDF XChange viewer = Preview app icon

I could have gone even further and "skinned" the whole Windows theme using Stardock WindowBlinds but I decided not to go that far (yet).

Migrate Outlook Express and Windows Address Book to Apple Mail and Address Book using Mozilla Thunderbird

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:09:00 +0000

Last week I helped an uncle switch from using Windows XP on an old PC to a new 20" iMac with MacOS 10.5 (Leopard). I volunteered to help him move his e-mail from Outlook Express to Apple Mail and move his address book from Windows to the Mac's built-in Address Book application. Here are the steps that worked successfully:

Back up the directory "C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{PROFILE-SPECIFIC KEY}\Microsoft\Outlook Express" in which you'll find the *.dbx files (mail folder database files).

Back up the directory "C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book" in which you'll find your {USERNAME}.wab file.

Import the Outlook Express e-mail and Microsoft Address Book into Mozilla Thunderbird for WINDOWS (note: the Mac version doesn't have the ability to do this). If the old PC is too clunky to do this efficiently, use a separate profile on a different PC with the backups you took in Steps 1 & 2 (e.g. I used my own laptop).

Export the Thunderbird contacts to an LDIF file (Lightweight Directory Interchange Format). Save it in your Thunderbird profile folder for convenience (this is simpler than exporting to vCard files).

Copy the Thunderbird profile folder (e.g. in "C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\" on Windows XP) to your Mac. You don't need to actually install Thunderbird for Mac, just put the folder on your desktop.

In Apple Mail, you can import the mail from the Thunderbird profile backup that you copied from the PC to the Mac. Many others have done this successfully, such as FineWine on MacTalk.

In Apple Address book, you can import the LDIF file that you copied from your PC to your Mac.

Happy Mac!

iDefrag your Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:35:00 +0000

There is an urban myth that Macs don't need to be defragged because OS X "takes care of it for you" -- well, that's true for FILE fragmentation but not for FREE SPACE fragmentation. I have an iMac G5 (PowerPC) with a 160GB hard drive that I've filled up then freed up some space on several times over the years, so I figured it must be rather fragmented. So I bought iDefrag from Coriolis Systems (on faith and good reviews alone) and sure enough it consolidated my 37,000 fragments of free space into just 4 -- one of which was 48GB of contiguous free space at the end of the drive plus 3 other tiny ones near the front (not sure why).

Here are the BEFORE and AFTER screen shots (literally pictures of the screen taken with my Blackberry, since iDefrag only offer full optimization functionality when run from another drive or their boot disc -- which is what I used):

This process took several hours (I should have timed it), including a little break where iDefrag gives the hard drive a chance to cool down since it monitors the drive's temperature sensor. I also should have timed my boot time before and after but I forgot to do that. I'll see whether it saves me any time on my whole-disk backup (using SuperDuper!) too.

Remote control and screen sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:04:00 +0000

When you need to see what's happening on a another computer's screen, it can be hard to decide which technology to use. Here are some recommended software and services to consider.

NOTE: Logos are the trademarks of the respective companies mentioned below.

Working with a computer that you own or control (e.g. your server or desktop)

Within an internal network (inside the firewall including on a VPN):
1. to control a Windows computer, use RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) on port 3389 (or 4125 for Windows Small Business Server 2003): Microsoft's Terminal Services works with the client software known as Remote Assistance or Remote Desktop Connection -- the server is built into Windows XP Professional, Media Center Edition and Windows Server 2003/2008. Client software includes:
  1. Windows XP Home, Pro, Media Center Edition; Windows Vista Business/Enterprise/Ultimate - included (under the 'Accessories' menu). If missing, get from install CD or re-download Terminal Services Client 6.0 from Microsoft.
  2. Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000 download from Microsoft
  3. Remote Desktop Connection for Mac download from Microsoft. Sometimes I also use Cocoa Remote Desktop (CoRD).
  4. UNIX/Linux (rdesktop) using the X Window system.
2. to control a Mac computer, use Screen Sharing (a.k.a. Remote Management in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard) or Apple Remote Desktop (in Mac OS 10.4 Tiger) by configuring the VNC (Virtual Network Computing) feature on a port in the range of 5900-5906. Or you can run the free 3rd party Vine Server (formerly known as OSXvnc) from Redstone Software. Client software includes:
  1. Vine Viewer - commercial
  2. Chicken of the VNC - freeware
  3. many other providers of VNC software, some commercial, some with encryption, so you may find other combinations that work for your situations (e.g. UltraVNC, RealVNC, etc.).
NOTE: Do not "poke holes" in your firewall to expose your computers to the Internet just because you find it convenient to use a free software-based remote management solution. There are numerous well-documented security vulnerabilities in many RDP and VNC implementations. Don't find out the hard way by exposing such a powerful service to the legions of hackers out there! You have been warned!
Over the Internet (using a 3rd party service provider to get through the firewall):
1. LogMeIn Free (for both Windows and Mac computers) allows you to control all of your computers at no cost! If you want the advanced features (like sound, remote printing, drag & drop, etc.) you can subscribe to their LogMeIn Pro service.
2. GoToMyPC from Citrix Online may be the market leader, but it isn't free after the trial period ends.
NOTE: Some companies have policies against using 3rd party services to remotely control your work computers. If your firm has an IT Department, check with them first, since they may require you to use a VPN and then allow the use of an RDP or encrypted VNC solution.
Sharing your screen with one other person (e.g. collaborating, coaching)
1. For individual one-on-one collaboration on Windows, AIM Pro is free with no banner ads because it's branded by WebEx as a way to promote their paid online meeting services. Once you start chatting, either of you can initiate voice and/or screen sharing. It's only for Windows and it doesn't do group meetings, but it's free and convenient for doing remote work with one person at a time who already has an AOL screen name.
2. On the Mac, apparently iChat on OS X 10.5 Leopard has a screen sharing feature -- I haven't upgraded yet to be able to try that. iChat interoperates with AIM at least for text chat and with the right firewall settings for video/audio too, but I haven't tried connecting AIM Pro to iChat on Leopard yet for screen sharing. Any comments?
3. I haven't tried GoToAssist or LogMeIn IT Reach yet but if I had more clients I would probably consider one of those solutions.

Squarified treemaps show what's taking up so much space on your hard drive

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:06:00 +0000

I've found it very helpful to use "squarified treemaps" to get a quick visual sense of what the big space-wasting files are on my hard drive. Even large groups of small files stand out in highlighted boxes (e.g. the yellow frame in this screenshot is around my 7.3GB C:\WINDOWS directory). Thanks go to Edward Ianuzi for suggesting this helpful utility!

In Windows I first tried SequoiaView 1.3 but now I use WinDirStat (a Windows port of KDirStat).

On the Mac I first tried GrandPerspective but now I use Disk Inventory X which is a Mac-native adaptation of KDirStat.

For X11 (UNIX/Linux, etc.) there is KDirStat which has a 3-pane display of summarized/browsable folder sizes, summary by file types, and the squarified treemap.

My favourite Mac OS X (10.4 Tiger) Dashboard Widgets

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:43:00 +0000

Here is what's on my Dashboard:

3 World Clock widgets (yes the analog one that comes with the OS, because they're the best at handling DST in foreign cities like Asuncion)
3 Weather widgets (yes the one that comes with the OS, because they show everything I care about with no clutter)
2 Countdown Calendars (yes the one that comes with the OS, because it's a quick way to keep track of how long until I fly out and in on business trips)
Dash Clipping (this is the best widget, IMHO since I can monitor portions of important web pages by cropping to the relative subset that is most useful to me; an equivalent is built into Mac OS 10.5 Leopard)
Fidelity Market Monitor Widget (because of the color-coded change indicator and quick access to good graphs)
iStat Pro (most detail of things like fan speed, temperature guages, battery cycles, etc.)
4 Webcams is a compact way to show images from URLs and you can click on one to exapand it to take up the full frame of the widget (covering the other 3 images)
Widget Update is a compact way to check for new versions of your existing installed widgets
Application Update is a compact way to check for new versions of your existing installed applications
3-2-1 is a countdown timer

Portable Apps are like SCUBA gear for Internauts

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:23:00 +0000

There are fewer reasons now than ever to gamble with certain kinds of freeware and risk accidentally agreeing to some kind of malware that may be bundled with the installer. Softpedia has a badging system where they guarantee that {product X version y} is 100% FREE, which means it is free for both personal & commercial use (otherwise some are only free for personal use) and that it doesn't contain any malware (e.g. spyware, viruses, trojans or backdoors). They test and retest periodically so that the award can be withdrawn if necessary.

One of my favourite sources of free software is PortableApps.com created by John Haller. His collection of open-source applications contains no spyware, ads, trial version limitations, or need to sacrifice of your e-mail address.

In the same way that SCUBA equipment is self-contained, portable applications keep their preferences, profiles and data together in folders under a "PortableApps" directory, making them ideal for use on USB thumb drives (unlike standard Windows applications which may scatter such data around your hard drive (e.g. some in the Windows registry, others under "Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data", others under "{username}\Local Settings", etc.).

But you don't have to limit yourself to running PortableApps from a removable drive; it's just as convenient to install PortableApps at the top of your C: drive and know that you can always take a copy of that directory onto any backup media and easily restore it to another computer or USB thumb drive in case of emergency.

FYI, you can get a list of all of the Softpedia-approved programs written (or in this case packaged for portable use) by John T. Haller and try them for yourself! There is an FTP client (FileZilla), Mozilla's web browser (Firefox), the productivity suite (OpenOffice), a universal audio/video player (VLC), a telnet/SSH client (PuTTY) and more!

Virtual Vista, a quick how-to guide

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 02:48:00 +0000

Let's say that you want to try out Microsoft® Windows Vista™ on one of your current PCs but you don't want to use dual-boot method. The alternative is to use virtualization. Here are the 8 steps (notice I didn't say "8 simple steps" ;-) that I've come up with based on my recent experience. There is a lot to learn about Virtual PC 2007 and Windows Vista individually, so below is just a quick to-do list (not exhaustive instructions). You'll need to set aside a couple of hours to go through this (you've been warned).

Install the free Microsoft® Virtual PC 2007, "a solution that allows you to run multiple PC-based operating systems simultaneously on one workstation, providing a safety net to maintain compatibility with legacy applications while you migrate to a new operating system."

NOTE: Don't gloss over the system requirements -- make sure that you well exceed the minimums! You'll want to use a powerful workstation (I tested using a 3 GHz CPU with 2GB RAM). No matter how loaded your computer is, it will barely be fast enough ;-).

If you're not ready to buy Windows Vista™ yet, you can download the free Microsoft Windows Vista 30-day Evaluation VHD (Virtual Hard Drive), "evaluate them for free in your own environment without the need for dedicated servers or complex installations".

NOTE: You will need a Microsoft Windows Live ID (Passport, Hotmail, or MSN e-mail address) to log in and get the 1.5GB download (in 3 parts: Vista.part1.exe, Vista.part2.rar and Vista.part3.rar). Microsoft requires you to provide your contact and company information in order to register for the VHD Test Drive evaluation program.

Run "Vista.part1.exe" -- it will extract the necessary files: Vista.vmc, Vista.vhd, etc.
Double-click the "Vista.vmc" file. It will launch Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and boot Vista for the first time. This will take a while. Then you'll create a user account and pick a country & time zone. Soon after that you'll be able to log in and it will prepare your desktop.
To improve security, turn off some features such as "Remote Assistance" and "Password protected sharing". I'm sure that there are many other things that can be done to improve security in Vista, but that's beyond the scope of this how-to guide. Now shut down Vista.

From the menu of the 'Virtual PC Console' pick "Settings" then click the 'Networking' line. For Adapter 1, choose an adapter from the pop-up list (e.g. Broadcom ... Gigabit).
Start Vista from the 'Virtual PC Console' window, and once you log in you should find that you have working Internet connection (e.g. the virtual networking adapter uses DHCP to get you connected). Pretty soon, Windows Update will figure out that you have Internet access and will start downloading lots of updates. This will take a while. The Vista.vhd file will start out at about 5GB but will grow as you install more software into your virtual Vista.

NOTE: I had some trouble with Windows Update failing to install 2 updates (KB933566 and KB931213 published 6/11/07) even after I followed the Help instructions. Please add a comment to this blog entry if you found a way to solve that problem.
From the 'Virtual PC 2007' menu (use the right-Alt key to get your mouse pointer out of the Vista window and back to your PC's desktop) pick "Action > Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions". This will mount a virtual CD, so agree to autorun the setup.exe and follow the prompts, resulting in a reboot of course. Now you should have better drivers for sound and graphics the next time you start up.

If you have any questions, start at the Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk FAQ. Now that you're on the tip of the iceberg, enjoy the view!

Welcome to the Gastown Webspace blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Gastown) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 02:23:00 +0000

This is the beginning of a technology blog edited by Kevin Hiebert, CA·IT. Topics will include things like backup advice, software reviews, and links to important security news.