Category: Software

NetPC, Low-cost AMDs, Asus Eee: Which one is best for me?

by
Inf

A number of interesting developments occurred in a short time in Mauritius. Of these, the oldest was the introduction of the NetPC by Mauritius Telecom. Recently, the Minister of IT and Communications of Mauritius, Mr. Etienne Sinatambou announced that a deal was made with AMD (yes, the CPU maker) to provide low-cost computers to Mauritius at around Rs.10,000 a machine. Again, not bad.

The NetPC and the AMD initiative as I shall call it are good moves, but they each have their respective advantages and disadvantages, which you will learn in this post. You will also learn that there are other alternatives, which are either cheaper, or offer much more value for money at nearly the same price. Ready? Read on…

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Spice up your live messenger

by
Guru

We can’t go around without having a nice chit chat. Online, Instant Messaging has bridged this gap. Google it and these will be endless lists of services providing Instant Messaging services; some for free, others for a low price that we often call premium. Without doubt we must all have heard of MSN or Windows Live Messenger; the most used free service from Microsoft. Today I will try to pave a path from a simple to a more customised Live Messenger.

What you will need?:

  1. Windows Live Messenger
  2. A-Patch
  3. Live Messenger Plus

If you don’t have a “passport.net” account head over there and signup for one. Remember you can use any email address for this purpose. Preferably, one from Google, Gmail will do.

After having downloaded Windows Live Messenger, which is a freeware, install it into your computer(s). This is quite easy, just follow the steps in the wizard. 🙂 Now, you can sign in and start chatting right away!!! But will you be doing it? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. If you are reading this it must be out of curiosity or for satisfying your needs. 😛

I will be proceeding with patching Windows Live Messenger first. Launch the downloaded patch (A-Patch) and you will be asked to tick what you will want to “power up” your “chat world”. 😛 Please note that we would be using windows live messenger 8.1 for our purpose. Personally I removed the ads as they were intruding. (I am not imposing). You can use your common sense and your requirements to tick they various possibilities available for customisation. You may like to play around with he nudge, remove the limit 😉

I can now say we have a “cleaner” live messenger as you wanted it to be. If you have not yet downloaded Live Messenger Plus do so now. It allows us to extends Live Messenger 2 ways; plugins and skins. Plugins allowing us to add on more options and automating some processes. In addition you can code plugins to suits your specific needs. Quite handy? Skins gives you the opportunity to dress up Windows Live Messenger to your taste.

Here are some of my favourite plugins that you may like to try:

  • Display Picture Changer – Allows you to have a “dynamic” like display picture. It scrolls through a set of picture and changes your display picture for a set time period.
  • Linked Chats – Allows you to share what your are chatting with friends. It is a convenient way over the traditional copy and paste.
  • LinkSaver – You often receive links from your contacts. Configure it to save them into a file directly. Thus, no need to ask again if you missed it or do not have history to revert to.
  • ReduceMem -You can often witness the memory consumption of WLM, with ReduceMem you can reduce if many folds. I have not tested it well but it seems that it works miracles.

This is a small list but keep tuning I will write more. It is a post after months of no writing. Thanks for your readership. I am back.

Firefox 3 hits 8 million+ downloads!

by
Inf

Foxkeh

Well, considering that I was supporting the Firefox 3 Download Day to help with the world record initiative, I thought I might update a bit about the number of downloads Mozilla Firefox 3 Final got in the first 24 hours.

Well folks, be amazed, for it is a whooping 8 million downloads in 24 hours, crushing the 2 million downloads in 24 hours set by Firefox 2. Mozilla has gone beyond their expected 5 million downloads. All this came at a price: The Mozilla servers were brought down to their knees (if ever they had knees), and a lot of users got timeouts or “page cannot be displayed errors”.

For the record, Firefox 3 got 1 million downloads in 4 hours, following its release.

The number of downloads is still going up, even after the 24 hours period. If you want live updates on the number of Firefox 3 downloads, check the page that Mozilla has setup here.

Also, from here, it can be seen that Mauritius registered 1055 downloads, 205 for Reunion Is., 286 for Madagascar, 4 for Comoros. So, we are the leading small island in the Indian Ocean? Sri Lanka got 2214 though!

At the time of writing, there are more than 9.3 million downloads registered, with around 2600 downloads per minute. The US folks is leading the race with 2 million+ downloads. Simply amazing!

Big congrats to the Firefox team in any case!

Ps. In case you are wondering, that incredibly cute fox above is called Foxkeh, and is the mascot of Mozilla Japan. More info available here.

Other Firefox 3 articles:

Firefox 3 Final: The Review

by
Inf

Firefox 3.0 Final has just been released today, 17th June 2008 (it’s already 18th in some countries though), and I already downloaded my copy to help establish the Firefox World Record. Now that it is installed and ready to work, I am going to review it. I’ve been using Firefox since the early 1.x versions, and I kind of saw its evolution. If I could resume Firefox 3, it would be “Shiny Search Boxes”, with respect to the glass buttons and the large number of new search boxes scattered everywhere.

FFox31

Without much delay, on with the review. But first, you might consider getting your own copy here, and help with the World Record initiative (you need to download from the official mirrors of Firefox, else the download does not count!). Beware though. Some of the pages of the Mozilla website have yet to be updated, and are still showing Firefox 2.0 downloads. Also, the page is taking a significant time to load, probably considering that lots of people are currently downloading.

A word of warning. Before installing Firefox 3, make sure all your add-ons are compatible with the new Firefox. A number of my add-ons are not yet compatible with the Firefox 3 Final. Specially Tabmix Plus, which is not yet compatible. Even Unplug is not yet compatible, according to the default install. So, check beforehand, or simply backup your Firefox profile before upgrading, in case you want to revert. As you can see below, some of my extensions are not compatible with Firefox 3.0. Unfortunately, you will have to check manually via the Mozilla Addons site.

FFox33

To backup your Firefox profile, you could use the FEBE extension (cross-platform) (doesn’t work with Firefox 3 Final yet), or you could use the MozBackup (Windows only) application. More info about manual profile backup is available from Mozilla, here.

Read the rest of the review

Firefox Download Day

by
Inf

Download Day - English

EDIT: In case you don’t already know, the Firefox 3 Download Day is on the 17th of June 2008 (expected). Yes. Tuesday. Pledge now, if you haven’t done it yet.

Firefox 3. This is ONE software the whole of the Internets is waiting for. The expected release date is somewhere in mid-June 2008.For this special day, Mozilla team wants to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software in 24 hours.

Well, I was checking the Pledge site, and guess what I saw. Apprently, 192 person from Mauritius pledged to download Firefox 3 on that day! That’s NOT enough! 😀

So, I’m dedicating this post so that you can go and pledge to download Firefox 3 on the Download Day! Follow the banner above! Let Mauritius be shown on the map!

Edit: (14.06.06) : 292 pledges and climbing! Keep it up! 😀

Hott Notes: Get virtual post-its!

by
Inf

Post-its

Post-its. For me, nothing beats these as a simple reminder tool. I wanted something similar for reminders on my computer, and didn’t really want to stick some yellow sheets to my screen. So I went for the virtual version of post-its. These are simple floating windows that get overlayed on your desktop, and can contain some text.

There are many, many applications that can do virtual post-its for you. However, they all seemed to lack one feature or another. That was until I found Hott Notes.

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Recover files from damaged media

by
Inf

I’m sure it must have annoyed you at some point. You found a CD with some very important files. Unfortunately it is a bit scratched, and your drive refuses to read the disk properly. And then? Your files are lost. Forever?

Nope! There may be a solution. In fact, there are several solutions. Some work, some are dubious, and some don’t. So, I’ll be listing some things you can do to recover files from your CD or DVD if ever it is scratched, or otherwise corrupt. Mind you, if your media has been scratched polished by something like sandpaper, you won’t be able to recover anything. What I mean is, you can get back some files provided the disk is not excessively damaged. Also, one of these solutions is also applicable to other drives, like floppies, flash disks and hard disks.

Briefly? You will be able to read files from damaged CD or DVD disks, or maybe hard-disks and other drives. As with most risky things, try at your own risk! 😀

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