sparx

As a chap who's really one shy step away from being called paranoid, I was wondering why I couldn't get the Chat feature (as it's officially called) to work, inspite of getting the welcome screen indicating that I was now one of the fortunate few who had access to this novel feature. Finally figured it out by looking thru the knowledge-base, where it's quite clearly mentioned that the Chat feature isn't supported yet for secure connections. So I had to go from typing https://gmail.com to https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue= https://mail.google.com/mail/ . A slight compromise and deviation but well worth it (at least for this initial testing phase). I can't wait until full secure connection support is enable for the Chat feature.

I'm afraid I'll have to agree with those of you who have tried and subsequently moved away form cjb.net and dot.tk. Their phenomenal popularity allows them to get away with forcing pop-ups and other ad banners to gether revenue. Agreed, they *do* inform the user of these pre-conditions, so the user is fully aware of what s/he is signing up for. As an alternative I'd like to present these two options: Uni.cc ne1.net both have similar ad-free URL redirection and of course they're quite short.

Out of the free Anti-Virus solutions available ( and I'm talking obviously for the win32 platform), we have four main contenders: 1. Grisoft's AVG 2. Avast 3. AntiVir 4. The OpenSource ClamWin All of them have their pros and cons like memory usage, interface design and of course the detection rate. In any case, I think it's safe to say that all of them protect the average user quite well from the most commonly rampant viruses/trojans/worms floating around. Constant vigilance is the best way to keep your system free from threats and running as it should. An independent review of the antivirus applications made in 2005 is available here. In the end, the choice is for you, the end user to make.

Google has released a BETA version of its toolbar which will debut as version 4. It's currently being tested by users feeling adventurous enough to try out the new features. One of the unfortunate points to be noted is that the Beta is currently available only for users of Internet Explorer 6 on Win 2000 or Win XP. Support for Firefox and Ie 7 will be introduced soon. To take full advantage, you must have a Google account. If you have a GMail account, you're already part of the Google family <insert evil laugh here> New Features: - Suggestions while typing search queries = What's new is that it suggests results from your previous search history too as well as from probable speeling errors you might have made while typing in your search query. Firefox users currently have a similar feature with the Google Suggest extension - Customizable buttons = You can add buttons from Google's Button Gallery to allow you one-click access to search engines on various sites like amazon.com / slashdot.org / gmail.com etc. There are also buttons which can carry out other functions and users are always creating more. - Bookmarks = Users can now add bookmarks. The bookmarks are stored as your search history and can be starred to denote importance. As yet, there's no option to do a manual import of your existing bookmarks. - Send stuff = The new toolbar v4 allows you to send the existing page you're seeing in the browser window using Gmail or post it to your Blogger blog or to send the link via SMS (this feature is restricted to users in the USA). Of course, all the older features are still present like pop-up blocking, highlighting search terms, auto-fill, translate, spell-check etc. Quite a few improvements, but things do need to be polished especially with the Bookmarks section.

xboxrulz: Although an ISO image of a CD would normally be 650 - 700 MB ( the size of the full CD capability), this one is less than 100 MB in size! So don't expect so many patches. See this page. The size is mentioned in the blue box. The small size is due to the fact that only the major January patches are included. If you want an all-in-one solution, refer to the autopatcher link included in my first post in this thread.

At the moment, none of the most common audio apps for Palm have what you're looking for. PocketTunes and AeroPlayer are supposedly the most feature-rich players around but they don't have the stereo swap feature that you're looking for. A newer player that a lot of people are appreciating is Busker or as it was called earlier GoMP3. Even this one though doesn't have the stereo swap feature. So. I', afraid you're currently out of luck. If you do run into a solution, short of re-encoding your music files and swapping the channels, do let us know by posting here.

I'd have loved having a link included to the site in question, but thankfully, Firefox came to the rescue. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Like the other users have said, the vast majority of imageshack users are more than willing to give other services a try. it's free after all.

jipman: Unfortunately, it isn't a perfect world we live in. Users will continue to disregard safe computing practices and click on things they never ought to have in the first place. More so with the current disturbing trend that malware has of spoofing email addresses to make a naïve person believe that it's come from someone they know and trust.Continuously hammering them with the right procedures is the only way people will learn. Keep repeating things etc.In any case, thanks for the heads-up! <-- marretas: this means you.

How would you rate this game when compared to EA's versions? The EA version allows you to play the match if you have the corresopnding FIFA Soccer game installed. Also, is this a PC game or is it made available for other gaming consoles like the PS2 / Xbox etc.? Any links available with some in-game screenshots?

To all posters who don't have the button as yet - patience.Even I didn't see the button, when the first reports came trickling in.. but it takes time for features to be rolled out across all domains ( one of the negative points of being in a Beta Test) ;-) The very next day when I logged in I saw that it was available.The delete button is NOT dependent on which browser you use so feel free to stick to or change over to Firefox ! Just kidding - you can use the mainstream browser of your choice - IE, FX or Opera.One last suggestion - clear your cache or press CTRL-F5 to force-refresh the content of the page, just to be sure your browser isn't serving up a cached version of the AJAX interface.

Like I said in my earler post, the Gresemonkey extension allows the user to change what is displayed in the browser. This extended functionality can range from adding/removing buttons, changing font sizes and font types to changing background colours and adding helpful links etc. Have a look at the wide variety of scripts that are available for GMail alone and you'll have a brief idea of how powerful and customizable an interface a user can get when s/he uses the appropriate script. Shadow: Take a look at the other scripts and you'll see for yourself.

A new feature (and this time I've checked to make sure it's new) has been debuted on the GMail service. A separate DELETE button has been added to the button bar resulting in the user's saving one click while intending to delete messages / conversations. Ordinarily, the option to delete was hidden away in the Action drop-down box resulting in an extra click. Knowledgeable Firefox users have for quite some time taken advantage of the GreaseMonkey extension coupled with the correct script to customize their displays and add this functionality.

hatim: are you certain about this ? Yahoo's Mail Alerts were available for quite some time. But I hadn't heard a peep about this service. Of course, I'll ask around some more too. But If you specifically have used alerts.yahoo.com in the past, I'll take your word for it.

Yahoo has kicked off a brand new service called Yahoo! Alerts. It enables users to create alerts based on existing categories or from separate discrete RSS feeds and send them in a variety of ways. - Alerts can be sent via email to a mailbox that has been registered with the user's Yahoo account - The service can also be configured to send the alert via Yahoo! Messenger, so you get it as a message as soon as you login to yahoo messnger. This is due to the fact that Yahoo Messenger supports offline messaging. - You can arrange to have the alert sent as a text message (SMS) to your mobile phone. Naturally, the mobile phone must be registered with your Yahoo account. There are links that allow you to register quite easily. Alerts are available for a wide variety of categories which can be seen on the front page. However, what interests me is the fact that one can personalise the delivery method of the alert and more importantly the ability to add discrete RSS feeds is absolutely glorious. If you've already subscribed to certain feeds in your My Yahoo! page, those will be automatically displayed allowing you to pick from them easily. A very nice touch, IMHO. I do however want to see what charges will apply should a user decide to subscribe to alerts to be received on one's mobile phone. I suppose I'll have to ask my carrier and send in a request for clarification to Yahoo. More on this later....

xboxrulz: Perhaps Mandriva is better suited to you bearing in mind the responses to the quiz that you provided. Even though you prefer SuSE, Mandriva might have all the characteristics you were looking for. Out of curiosity, where was SuSE placed in the list of recommendations ?

UPDATE: MS has now increased the support period to two years after the next version of Windows (Vista) is released. Details here

I tries it on Firefox and IE 6 on a Win XP SP2 system and successfully completed the test. Perhaps it was traffic or you have some restrictions on Javascript and/or cookies? Also, clear your cache and then try again.

Link here Symantec has released an advisory saying that the Norton Protected Recycle Bin which is used to recover deleted files as an added safety net underlying Windows' Recycle Bin will now display the NProtect sub-folder in the Recycled folder. All you need to do is run LiveUpdate, download the new version of the Symantec Common Event Driver (less than 300 KB) and reboot. This affects Norton Systemworks 2005/2006 including the Premium versions. Basically, they're just insuring themselves against possible public outcry following the discovery of Sony's DRM rootkit install and the hoopla surrounding that bad decision BTW, the above two links point to one of the funniest tech comic strips available online - Userfriendly by J.D. "Illiad" Frazer

Linux Distro Chooser ZeGenie Studios, a Norwegian development firm have come up with a very novel and immensely useful idea to help new and struggling users of Linux. Their questionnaire based selection picker asks the user a series of questions regarding what s/he is looking for in a Linux distro and accordingly makes recommendations so the user can make an informed decision about which distro would suit their needs best. The following Linux distributions are curently included : Fedora Core Mandriva SuSE Debian MEPIS Ubuntu Kubuntu Linspire Xandros PCLinuxOS Yellowdog Linux Gentoo Slackware Knoppix OpenSuSE ArchLinux Foresight Linux What I like about the test is that it asks simple questions based on your skill set level and proceeds accordingly. At the end, when its recommendations are displayed to the user, you get reasons why the candidate that is displayed has been selected for you. Another good thing is that the next closest alternatives are also displayed to give you a range of choices. Informative links leading to Wikipedia pages act as a sort of glossary so users can see the meanings of terms that they don't currently understand. All-in-all a very useful tool for newbies who want to shift to Linux but don't know which distro to install.

Microsoft has released an ISO image of its JAN 2006 Security Update CD. The image is available free to download. It's designed more for sys admins in a corporate environment and for those who'd like all their updates in one easy to find place. Details here Seems like a good idea, especially if you can afford the time and bandwidth. Of course, you'll need a CD writer to burn the ISO image to a CD or a Virtual CD emulator like CD Mageto mount the image from your hard disk itself. For home users, though I recommend the free AutoPatcher package. It's a bundle of the security updates that MS has released along with a collection of free utils that can be useful to the home user like codec packs etc. Various versions are available for use with existing operating systems - Win 2000, Win XP (both Pro / Home) , Win XP 64-bit and Windows Server 2003.

The official patch from Microsoft to combat and plug the hole in the shimgvw.dll exploit is here. It was released five days before the initially scheduled date of 10 JAN, the regular patch-Tuesday for MS products. Link here To all who have already installed the previously mentioned un-official patch, please uninstall it from the Control Panel Add / Remove Programs applet and proceed to install this official patch.

As do I. But these dates were public domain and not proprietary info which need be attributed to th author. That being said, I certainly admit that I wrote this topic immediately after reading about it in the "Langa List" newsletter sent out by noted tech guru Fred Langa. Pomjim: This acknowledgement was especially for you.

Microsoft's "Product Life Cycle" sets a series of end dates for each product. What happens is that support is gradually withdrawn, stepwise, until the product reaches "end of life," when no support for the product in question is available to the end user. Windows 98 is scheduled to go lights-out on 30 June 2006. XP Home is scheduled to become unsupported on the last day of this new year 31 DEC 2006. XP Pro, though will continue to be supported (albeit not as well as the newer Vista will be) in the form of security updates until 2011. Don't expect many new features and Service Packs any time soon after SP3 (expected mid-2006). MS isn't likely to keep extending the SP support so far like it did with NT4 SP7 and SP4 for Win2000. Microsoft has played with the end dates in the past: Win 98's demise was announced several times before public pressure from existing customers forced MS to keep postponing the inevitable date several times. Judging from past behaviour and patterns, XP Home's support should be extended another year or so while Win 98 will definitely go bye-bye on 30 June of this year. This means that there'll be no new patches, updates, or fixes after the above date. By tradition, the support pages, online documentation and knowledge base will shut down a year later in 2007

While on the subject, is it possible to offer an RSS feed of new topics posted to users who want them thru phpBB2? I read on the SMF site in the features section that one can "Export data in RSS format" Is this functionality possible or available in phpBB2 or via an additional mod/hack ?

Actually a number of security experts including the famous Steve Gibson (creator of Shields-Up!) are saying that merely de-registering the shimgvw.dll file isn't quite enough especially for users of the older Win 9x / Win ME OS. Another user, Ilfak Guilfanov has written a patch that effectively neutralises the threat in a safe and easy to use manner. Details here Another good thing is that in case, the patch doesn't work, one can easily uninstall it by going to the CONTROL PANEL > ADD / REMOVE PROGRAMS applet and picking the Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability HotFix as the prog to uninstall. Note that a reboot is required to render this patch effective !