Now through March 18 of 2009 Microsoft is providing free Windows Vista SP1 support to customers around the world.
Visit this link: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx?rdpath=1&prid=11274&gprid=500921
for more details on how to get free support for Windows Vista SP1.
For those of you who are fans of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the next release will be made available on Tuesday June 17th 2008.
Version 3 has many enhancements in speed and ease of use over the current version and will integrate the functionality of many popular plug-ins directly into the browser.
Some of the features include:
That is not all however, Mozilla is aiming to set a Guinness World Record for most downloads in a 24 hour period. On the 17th of June, you can participate in Download Day by simply downloading the latest full release (no upgrades will be counted). To see more about the world record attempt click here.
Lately I have been asked a few times what RSS is and to provide some examples of how it works. There has been an article posted here previously, but given the length of time between then and now I thought maybe a newer post might be in order.
The original post is here.
RSS or Really Simple Syndication allows publishers large and small to get content to their readers in a much faster fashion. The person reading the blog or website will subscribe to the sites RSS feed using an aggregator, as new items are added to the site, these will be pushed to the subscribers and appear in their feed readers as items are added.
The benefit to the blog or site publishing the feed is that the readers who wish to be kept up on what is going on receive the updates regularly. Also the site’s feed will not require an email subscription (although this is possible) and can avoid being caught in any spam filters that may be configured.
The benefit to the reader is time. Subscribing to a website’s RSS feed will allow the posted updates to be retrieved as they are posted. Reducing the amount of time that the reader spends visiting websites or trying to remember where they read that interesting tip on how to make paste (or something else).
How is an RSS feed created?
An RSS feed can be created in a couple of ways. Many blogging applications create a feed of the posts and/or comments automatically and allow the editor to make these available to readers. This makes feed generation immediate and requires no extra work on the part of the author.
Another way that a feed can be created is through a third party service, some of these will generate a feed based on any content, no matter the platform that actually publishes the information. A great reason to allow your feed to be managed by a third party application is that there is no maintenance and also there is likely to be a much more manageable URL for the feed than http://www.myblog.com/posts/feed.xml.
I understand that a feed will save time and spam, but why use it if another application is required to read RSS feeds?
An RSS feed is simply an aggregate collection of updates made to a website that is published to anyone who subscribes to it. Several software vendors have created applications which can process the XML based feed into something that a subscriber can read.
Since feeds are XML based, the application needs to make these files presentable, this is the reason an aggregator is needed. The aggregator simply formats and sorts the different XML files that are added to it. A feed will be displayed with a title and a summary. Each update is separated into its title and information, making the posts easy to read.
Some popular aggregators are:
NewsGator Online - an online based reader and account for storing and reading subscriptions
FeedDemon - a Windows desktop based reader published by NewsGator that integrates with a NewsGator online account.
Microsoft Outlook 2007 - Microsoft has Integrated Feed aggregation into the latest version of Outlook
Google Reader - An online based reader that allows users to share feeds with others and post notes about items they have read
There are many other options for reading feeds, but these are a few of the most popular and outside of Outlook they are free to use.
Now that I can get to and read feeds what else do they do for my website?
Techhelp uses a third party service provided by Google called FeedBurner. Feedburner creates a feed based on the provided URL. It also allows authors to track stats, like subscribers and views per day. Keeping track of your subscribers helps you keep an eye on the popularity of the feed you are publishing.
Feedburner also allows additional links to be inserted into both the website post and the feed post which will allow the reader to submit the post to other web services such as Digg or Del.ici.ous making it easier for them to share items they are reading with others, resulting in even more traffic for publishers. This type of exposure can generate a great deal more page views and subscribers long term simply by exposing the content to more people.
Tracking the stats of feeds will also allow a site operator to see just how much the readers are growing and even which reader they use to access a feed this can be helpful in determining if the content being published into a feed is effective. As new content is published, if subscriptions increase or decrease dramatically, it may be an indication of the effectiveness of the content being published.
Note: Techhelp does not receive any perks from Google for mentioning Feedburner. This is purely the service that is used with this blog, so it is the one we know the most about.
In addition to all of the great feed information shown to subscribers and made available as part of the feed, the status of a sites feed can be monitored. When the feed is down, a separate feed (available to the publisher) will be updated to allow tracking of a given feed.
Bottom Line: Maintaining a feed for posts on your website makes tracking readership easier for authors/editors and makes keeping up with your updates an automatic thing for your readers. This is a win/win for all involved. I have also found that once you get started with feeds, it is very easy and tempting to read alot more blogs than one might think in a day.
Many web applications besides blogs and news sites publish feeds or have an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows a thrid party to create an aggregate feed of content from a given application as well. Some of the more popular applications either posting a feed or being aggregated into a feed are:
Flickr - Photo sharing site aquired by Yahoo!
FriendFeed - newly popular social aggregation site. This site pulls in account info from many different social networking sites and pushes them out as a feed.
TwitterFeed - push your blog’s feed to twitter
Remember the Milk - an online task service that publishes a feed of your tasks
There are many other applications on the Internet that will begin making use of RSS or other feed driven technologies and formats. We here at TechHelp love us some RSS and will post here about it as new things we think you might find useful pop up.
Hopefully this post has got you thinking about RSS and some of the things it can help you accomplish. In a future post Techhelp will take a look at a couple of the aggregator applications out there for use with RSS feeds and the pros and cons of these.
I found an interesting piece over at CIO Magazine this morning that walked through some tips for blackberry users. I am not a blackberry user myself, but it seems that these devices are everywhere, and it never hurts to help where you can, as long as someone else helps with the details. The article, put together by a mobile specialist at Aflac, includes tips for keyboarding, battery life, and other things just to make your mobile life a little easier.
For better battery life, these tips are given: 1. Set connectivity options wisely 2. Examine notification profiles 3. Adjust your screen backlight 4. Use power hogging applications wisely 5. Keep battery connections clean
You can read the rest of the article here. Hopefully these tips will make your Blackberry even more productive.
Nowadays it is pretty common for most people to carry some type of cellular phone with them wherever they go. Many of these devices can access the Internet to retrieve information, but if someone happens to be driving getting online from a cell phone is not always a good idea.
There is a relatively new Internet based question answering service called Cha Cha that can take pretty much any question and return an answer. The service is twitter enabled as well as available through a website and phone number.
Note: Twitter enabed refers to the fact that the folks at chacha have setup a twitter user account for their service, allowing users of twitter.com to ask questions using twitter. You can follow @ChaCha to get started asking questions via twitter.
To access Cha Cha from your cell phone simply dial 800-2chacha (800-224-2242)and ask your question. The team at Cha Cha will send the answer back via a text message.
You can also text Cha Cha from your cell phone to ask questions.
There is a great article in WSJ.com covering Cha Cha in more detail, click here to read more
In Windows Server 2003 R2 you can centralize the storage of user data so that information stored by a user within your environment is stored on the network rather than on each of their desktops. This will allow the data to be backed up during normal disaster recovery planning and backup operations and keep everything in a central location in case the user needs to change PCs.
This tip will look at the basics for redirecting folders in Windows Server 2003 R2.
To configure folder redirection throughout your environment in Windows Server 2003 R2, you can use a group policy object.
Note: Before configuring a Group Policy Object to manage Folder Redirection, you will need to create a share on the server that will hold the redirected folders.
Here you will see the following choices for user folder redirection:
· Application Data –
· Desktop –
· My Documents –
· Start Menu –
The redirection for each of these user folders can be configured separately, allowing you to redirect only the My Documents folder for the Accounting OU and the Start Menu for the IT OU.
This will display the Properties Dialog for the selected folder providing options for the redirection.
· Redirect to The User’s Home Folder – using this option will place the contents of the My Documents folder within the Home Folder configured in the users account settings. This option only applies to My Documents.
· Create a Folder for Each User under the Root Path – using this option will create a folder for each affected user under the root path (also specified in this dialog). A common setting, this can help keep all of the user’s redirected folder data in the same location. This setting is not available for the Start Menu folder.
· Redirect to the following location – this will allow all of the redirected user folders to exist in the same location, adding %UserName% to the path can also create individual folders for each user, similar to the second option above. If a user specific environment variable such as %UserName% is not included, all of the redirected content will be moved to the same folder.
· Redirect to the local user profile location – using this setting will redirect the folder content to the location of the local user profile. This is the default setting.
Once the target settings are selected you will need to specify a root share for the data redirection. You will enter the Root Path in the format of \\Servername\sharename . This path should point to the share you configured earlier.
If you select the advanced setting for this folder in the setting dropdown you would also be able to specify settings independently for groups of users. For example, you can redirect the My Documents folder for Domain Admins to a different location than the My Documents folder for the Accounting group. This target location may be configured so that permissions prevent other users from seeing or accessing the contents. The other settings remain the same.
Using folder redirection takes only a few minutes to configure and can help keep user data in your environment in a centrally managed location instead of scattered across desktop computers.
How many of you out there have forgotten something… recently forgetting where you parked at the mall, forgetting to grab the keys on your way out the door, and things like that, we all have forgotten some things, probably both large and small, in our lives.
Well there is a web service, launched in 2005, that aims to help users remember pretty much anything. The service is called Remember the Milk and aims to provide an easy to use, fully customized task service complete with an email address and reminders via email and SMS.
Once you have created a user account and logged into the software the applications dashboard is displayed, listing an overview of the things you have set to be done today, tomorrow and the tasks that are overdue.
The overview is a snapshot of what is immediately upcoming and can be skipped for subsequent logins by clicking the always skip this page link on the right of the overview screen.
If you prefer to see the dashboard simply click the blue button labeled Continue to Tasks also in the right column. This will take you to your task lists, which by default are Inbox and Sent. These two lists cannot be deleted, but an unlimited number of lists and smart lists can be added and maintained.
One way to add a task to Remember the Milk, is to login to the web site and use the add task link which places the task on your Inbox list. Your Remember the Milk account also has an email address which you can use to email tasks to yourself, but for now, I am going to focus on the web application.
Clicking Add Task will display a single line text box at the top of the list you are currently viewing, click in this text box and enter the name of your task Tabbing out of the text box will add the entered item to your list and select the item.
As you can see from the image below, I have added a test task and it is selected, the available properties for the task are shown on the right. These options are customizable on a per task basis.
To specify a due date for the selected task, I would simply click next to the word Due: and type in the date. You can also press the D key on the keyboard with a task selected to be taken to the Due entry box.
The options listed for each task when it is selected provide a great deal of the power behind remember the milk.
The available options for tasks are:
Most of the options for a task can be updated by clicking on the area within the task menu. The only ones that cannot are:
List - which is edited using the More Actions drop down box
Notes - which is edited using the notes tab at the top of the task options list
Postponed - this count is incremented each time the postpone button is clicked for a task
Shared with - this is edited to show other Remember the Milk users with whom you have shared this task
The menu on the right of the screen shows the task options tab and the notes tab (shown below). These tabs store information about each task and will change as you select new tasks. To help with readability a line has been added from the selected task to the task options area helping inform a user which task they are seeing options for.
The items shown below the notes half of the above image are shown below either tab (tasks or notes). They provide general information about the number of tasks selected, and a key to help further define options for making productive use of Remember the Milk.
When using Remember the Milk, you can create as many lists as you need. There are two types of list, standard and smart. A standard list is similar to your Inbox and Sent default lists and will contain only items that you directly assign to the list. A smart list is something altogether different. When you use options for your tasks you can create a list that will display any tasks that meet the criteria you have defined.
For example, suppose you wanted to view all of your tasks that involved making calls separately from other tasks. You could tag each of these tasks Calls as they are added to one of your lists.
Note: You can also select multiple tasks and then press m on the keyboard to enter multi edit mode, allowing you to assign the same tag (or other options) to all the selected tasks at the same time.
Once you have a task or tasks selected, click next to the Tags option and enter Calls then tab or click off of the field (or task). You will see the Calls tag appear next to the task or tasks which you assigned Calls as a tag.
To create a list of all tasks with the Calls tag, you have two options:
1. Create a hard list called Calls and move all of your tasks with the calls tag to that list
or
2. Create a smart list based on the Calls tag
To create a smart list click in the search dialog (shown below) and enter the keyword you are searching against and press enter to see a temporary tab containing search results.
After reviewing the temporary tab of search results, you can close the tab if it is not needed any more or click the save tab which will appear on the right hand side of the page when a search is performed. There you can enter a name for the list, like Calls and click save. This will create a smart list that meets the criteria you searched for.
This should get you on your way and get you started with Remember the Milk. In a future article I will go through other menus and more features offered.
Recently I received an email from a co-worker mentioning that her laptop was running slow. She also mentioned that Windows told her that the virtual memory on her computer was getting low. Not sure what to do she sent an email asking me what might be the cause for the slowness.
First let’s define virtual memory. Virtual memory is hard drive space that windows uses as additional memory when running applications. Think of this as the swap file for Windows, a buffer area of the hard drive where items are written to while in use between saves to help memory be used more efficiently. Typically this happens when all or most of the memory on a PC is in use, Windows uses disk space to alleviate some of the load from physical memory.
Windows passes items in memory to the virtual memory area of the hard disk before it writes them to the drive for storage. When you save a document, these changes are written to disk. Virtual memory allows physical memory to operate more efficiently by allocating a set portion of disk space for use as a buffer area, allowing items to be stored there and less write operations to take place, thereby increasing performance.
Windows mentioned in an error or alert message box that the Virtual memory was full. More frequent saving should remedy this issue. Usually Windows tries to manage this disk space and will resize and allocate additional space as needed. Clearing this buffer is as simple as restarting your PC, just like things in memory, things in virtual memory are also dumped when a restart occurs.
I know several Windows users who see the amount of memory (Ram) and the amount of Hard disk Space as the same thing. Surely this has to do with the fact that they are both measured in Megabytes and Gigabytes of storage space. While they are similar in function, they are different. I will try to explain how below:
Your computer has a hard drive in it which may have a size from 20 to 100 Gigabytes (GB). About.com has a conversion table, which i placed below, to present file size differences and conversions.
Exact Conversion
1,024 Byte = 1 Kilobyte (KB)
1,024 Kilobyte (KB) = 1 Megabyte (MB)
1,073,741,824 Bytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB)
1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1,024 Megabyte (MB)
This means that a computer with a 20Gb hard disk can store 20 * 1,024 mega bytes of data. When you save files on your PC, they use up the available hard disk space. Windows typically requires 2 - 5 GB of storage for the operating system itself, which allows files needed to operate windows to be kept on your PC.
The items stored on your hard drive are written to the disk so that you can turn off your PC or restart your PC and not lose the data written there.
A note about upkeep: Windows stores things in the best manner it can when it writes to the hard disk, however these allocation tables and databases kept by windows to keep files in the best possible order can become fragmented and decrease performance. When windows writes to disk it writes sections of the file to available space on disk and tries to minimize the need to look elsewhere on the disk for parts of a file, the more times the computer has to read the disk to find pieces of a file, the more fragmented the disk becomes. To combat this and improve performance, running a defragmentation is recommended at least once per month. I will look at defragmenting a hard drive in another article.
If your PC had to get things from the hard disk every time it needed something, performance would suffer quite alot. So computers use Random Access Memory (RAM) to store files on your computer that are in use. Think of this as working storage for files and operating system components that are open.
The web browser you are reading this in is loaded into memory when you double click the icon to launch it and lives there until it is closed by the user (or it crashes for some reason). Other applications, like excel sheets and word documents are also stored there while in use. This allows Windows to spend less time reading from the hard disk while you are working on a document, improving performance.
Memory is volatile. This means that changes made are not permanent until written to disk by a save operation. Surely you have heard the addage “Save early and Save often” which means simply that your work isnt saved until your computer writes it to disk.
Many applications, like Microsoft Word and other office programs have an autosave function built right in. This allows a temporary copy to be saved behind the scenes. This copy of the document is deleted when the user saves the file. It was brought in because of user requests and to help things go smoother in the event of a crash.
Memory usually ranges from 256 Megabytes to 2 Gigabytes in a typical PC. Some Server computers have much more memory which improves their performance greatly. The amount of memory is the amount of “work in process” data your PC can handle at one time. This space is freed up as things are saved to disk and/or closed.
The afforementioned virtual memory is used to allow large write operations to be delayed to improve performance. Even though there is a cache on the hard disk to act as memory, saving frequently is always a good idea.
Hopefully the mud is a bit clearer. I am sure that I havent touched on everything, but there will be other articles to address more of this topic and other things related.
For doing something many users have been hoping they would see for the last couple releases of Office.
PDF support . 
Microsoft has included Export to PDF functionality in the beta releases of Office 2007. They have also been in talks with PDF creator Adobe about how they could get this done.
Apparently Adobe is not happy with the fact that Microsoft wants to trim some of the bloat out of the add-in and limit its features.
This is a rediculous argument. A properly configured installation of PHP on the web can create PDF documents from virtually anything you can save in Office. Also… there are a number of open source PDF writers out there that do the same thing as the MS Office addin functionality would do, enable me to not buy Acrobat.
Open Office supports this functionality (or did in the last release I downloaded) so what is the big deal… Money.
Adobe wants Redmond to raise the cost of Office to include the feature or charge for an addin… that doesnt make sense, because all you have to do is look for it and there will be a Free PDF application that you can use from any other software including MS Office.
Why not give the users of all of your products a little help (regardless what other applications they use)?
Adobe is looking to take Anti-Trust action agains Microsoft in Europe… apparently somethings might not wash here so they goto Europe to kick Microsoft in the knees?
I am not saying Microsoft is always right, but they are trying to provide a service that will likely bring benefit to both companies, not to mention a host of Users worldwide.
I was recently invited to participate in a beta for FareCast. This site predicts the cost of airfare to certain cities based on current prices, past prices and forecasts the likelihood of the price going in any certain direction or maintaining constant.
The idea is to help you find the best time to purchase your tickets, not just the best time to travel.
From the little bit of browsing I have done this service looks to be a great way to look for airline tickets.
You enter the city you are leaving from and the destination along with the number of travelers and the length of your stay, then farecast goes to work to make recommendations as to when you might buy your tickets. It also provides links to multiple airline websites. When you click to purchase the tickets, you are directed to the airlines website to do so.
The site is in private beta right now and has limitations in features. I did find a graphic showing a bit about what the results look like, and have posted it below:
I am very excited about this service for booking or planning vacations in advance. Those who travel alot on business or personal trips could gain quite alot from a service like this.
