confessions of a freeware junkie

Sorry for the spam, and an announcement

2012-04-03T08:49:00.002-05:00

First off, I wanted to say sorry for those of you who still have me in your RSS reader - - you probably have seen an influx of spam links, isolated to [delicious]. They have recognized the problem and are working on it.

I have deleted the offending links from my delicious account, but it appears that the problem lies within a vulnerability in Delicious' API. Hopefully they'll have it fixed soon.

Next, I wanted to say thank you to all the folks that have come to this blog over the last 6 years, I really appreciate it. As you can see, posting has been sporadic at best, and I'm not really feeling like I can keep up with the vast amounts of quality freeware review sites.

Part of my lack of time is due to personal/family obligations and a medical situation that cannot be avoided (not me or immediate family, thankfully), but definitely requires a lot more time from me. However, I am not disappearing completely from the blogosphere! Occasionally, you might see a post from me here or there at FreewareGenius and my other blog, FailDesk.

Since I run FailDesk with two other individuals (One of them is the owner/editor over at Geeks Are Sexy!), it requires far less time and concentration from me. Fortunately, humor comes to me much easier than writing informative and thoughtful software reviews.

I will continue to keep this site up, but more for a way to keep track of stuff for myself, which was the original intent. If you want up-to-date quality freeware reviews, head on over to FreewareGenius. Samer is a gracious host and posts very well thought out reviews.

If you'd like to keep in touch with me, follow me personally on Twitter, follow FailDesk, or join us over on Facebook\Faildesk...we have a lot of fun over there!

Best regards to everyone, and thanks for the great time here at CFJ...

[Web] Free Word, Excel templates and more: vertex42.com

2011-12-16T07:00:00.000-06:00

http://www.vertex42.com

Have a small budget but need access to some time-saving templates? Head on over to www.vertex42.com and get them for free. I just had a need for them last night – I needed a ready-made sign in sheet, and vertex42 had what I needed.

Not only do they have some great templates, but you can get some financial calculators, resume examples, Excel and Word tips and tricks, and much more.

Categories:

Calendars, Schedules/Planners, Business, Invoices, Timesheets & HR, Financial Statements, Project Management, inventory, Attendance, Exercise Charts/Logs and much more!

Enjoy!

Pandora for the Wii: Finetune

2011-11-15T11:19:00.001-06:00

I realize this is old news, but as I had said when I put this blog up, CFJ is a way to tell my friends about things that I use in addition to letting you all know, even though it may not be the latest software/web services out there – but you are my friends, right? ;)

Do you like streaming music via Pandora, Last.FM or Slacker? Do you have a Wii? You’ve probably been disappointed when you tried to browse to those sites using the Wii’s built-in Internet Channel. Much to our behest, the built-in Wii browser won’t support anything generated in Flash above version 8.

A workaround to your music needs? Open your Wii’s Internet browser and head on over to http://www.finetune.com/wii. From there you can select a station based upon an artist or tag, much like Last.FM.

Streaming audio is good over my WiFi connection, with no stutters, buffering, etc. – but your mileage may vary with how congested your network is, of course. I’ve been able to stream a pretty decent array of artists, and it hasn’t been very repetitive yet…what with the upcoming holidays, you can stream Christmas music (or whatever you celebrate!) with ease. Put that Wii to good use during your holiday party while you are playing your XBox 360 Kinect!

The downside? It really is a very basic interface. I don’t really see any way to save my favorite artists or tags, but hey, I’ll take it!

Do any of you listen to streaming audio on your stock Wii? How do you do it?

Zombies, IT nerds, bacon, oh my!

2011-10-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

Fresh back from Spiceworld, I present to you a small film produced by the Spiceworks staff...hilarious!
Zombies + IT + Bacon + Dinosaur = lots of fun. :)

Adobe Reader alternative: NitroPDF Reader 2.0

2011-09-30T12:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.nitroreader.com

I don’t have time for a full-fledged review, but this program is pretty good. Being a 25Mb download, the program is definitely lighter weight than the Adobe offering, well, during install, anyway!

NitroPDF Reader has gone through a UI revamp when they released 2.0 in June, and have now included a few highly-requested features such as browser integration for IE, Firefox and Chrome and an enhanced thumbnail handler to preview your PDFs.

See the release notes here: http://www.nitroreader.com/Support/Reader_2_Release_Notes_en.pdf

Features:

Web browser integration: FoxIt and Adobe have it, and so does NitroPDF. Nothing much to say here, other than Adobe provides a progress bar as you are downloading an embedded PDF, whereas Nitro does not.

Generate PDF by drag ‘n’ drop or printer: (I refuse to say ‘create!’) Of course, NitroPDF Reader has the functions you’d expect from any PDF reader, but a nice thing here is that like Adobe Reader, Nitro has the capability of generating PDFs, either by drag-n-drop or by using the ‘print to’ method. So, you can eliminate the need for installing PDFCreator (if you’ve opted for this). Adobe isn’t real specific as to where your generated document goes, but Nitro gives you the control you need.

Annotate and collaborate: The most significant addition here though is the capability to annotate and comment on the PDF content by using the typing tool. It’s dead easy to do, and you don’t have to dig through a slew of toolbars and functions to find it.

Making comments is easy, just click ‘Add note’, then click where you want the comment icon to appear on the PDF page. You can then type a comment in the exploded comment box – it has a pointer which directs your eye to where the originating comment icon is located.

You can also use the built-in ‘Markup Text’ tool to highlight, cross out or underline certain segments of text.
Like Adobe PDF Reader, you can apply a signature to a document using the ‘QuickSign’ function. This can be password protected, which is very nice.

Extract images and text: The image extract seemed to work ok for me, but didn’t grab everything out of the welcome pdf included with Nitro. Extracting text was as you would expect. I did like the capability to easily select whether or not I can extract directly into the same folder where the original PDF was contained or choose my own (or prompt as each element is extracted).

Ribbon interface: Falling in line with MS Office 2007 and beyond, NitroPDF is sporting a nice ribbon interface that gives it a very easy and modern look and feel.

Memory utilization: Interestingly, I ran Adobe Reader X and opened up a 70.6 KB file. Overall memory utilization was 43 MB. Opening that same file in Nitro yielded a result of 93 MB used. Now, our computers these days have so much memory, so this shouldn’t be your only deterring factor that keeps you from using Nitro. But, you can’t deny the fact that Adobe, who has been accused of pushing a bloated piece of software is running much leaner here.

Dislikes:

Bigger memory footprint while opening smaller files compared to Adobe
No progress bar while loading an embedded PDF through a web browser

Likes:

Easier to navigate than Adobe, thanks to the Ribbon interface
PDF Generation is easy
Collaboration tools. Have I said ‘easy’ already?
Extracting images and text is super easy
Password-protected QuickSign feature

So – if you are looking for a viable alternative to Adobe and FoxIt, NitroPDF Reader might be your bucket of tapioca. I think I’ll keep it around for awhile to run the tires off of it! This might be the perfect reader for mom & dad, who don’t have to be confronted with a ton of options (let’s face it, they get confused sometimes, right?).

Swiss-army knife for Windows: Gizmo Central 2.7

2011-09-27T20:00:00.000-05:00

http://arainia.com/software/gizmo/

You are an intermediate-to-advanced Windows user. You have a tool for editing your text files, one that burns CDs/DVDs, one that mounts ISOs as disc images, and so on…

But, there is a tool that can do all of the above (well, maybe not so much the “and so on…” part) and make your life easier.

Gizmo Central is a program that runs in your systray and allows you to quickly perform tasks that would normally be handled by a few other separate programs. Now, it should be said that Gizmo Central isn’t a full-featured tool for all of these functions, but it serves the purpose for a good portion of what it does do.
Gizmo Central really is a set of modular components, so you can add or remove them as needed to save on memory/processor use.

Here’s a list of functions that GC can provide:

Mount disc image (replacing Alcohol 52%, Virtual CloneDrive, DeamonTools)

When I download an ISO file from a site, I would typically use Slysoft’s Virtual CloneDrive to mount and access the image as a disc. But, now, I can simply mount it using Gizmo Central (let’s call it ‘GC’ for short, eh?), by right-clicking the ISO file > ‘Mount image’. Easy!

The cool thing here is that you aren’t just limited to mounting ISO images. You can also mount VHD, gdrive (Gizmo drive images), BIN, CUE, CCD, NRG, MDF/MDS and IMG files as well.

GC allows you to mount up to 10 virtual disks. You can specify which drive letters to start with, and a nice feature I found was if you drag more than one ISO file into Gizmo, you can mount them one right after another.

Make disc image (ISO) (replacing Lucersoft, ISO Recorder, CDBurnerXP)

Making an image is just as easy. Find a folder, right-click it > ‘Create ISO from Folder.’

Burn files to disc (replacing CDBurnerXP, IMGBurn)

Same process as above – Find a folder, right-click it > ‘Burn Folder Contents…’

Color coded Text Editor (“replacing” PSPad, Notepad++)

This one is kind of nice if you want to quickly view or edit a text file and have some rudimentary highlighting going on to help you visually. I have to say, being a scripting guy, this isn’t really enough for me, but for the casual user/viewer, it is definitely better than Notepad. For this reason, I can’t say that it would truly replace PSPad or Notepad++, thus the quotes. You do have the option of choosing a number of color-syntax settings, so all is not lost.

There are a number of options available once you are editing a text file, but they are all accessible via the right-click menu…instead of a handy toolbar at the top, like most editors – this causes a bit of frustration as you are constantly right-clicking to see if there is a function there that you can use instead of casually browsing the upper portion of the editor.

Database Query Analyzer

Again, another nice feature to have – it allows you to run a quick query or analyze a procedure against an ODBC/OLE compliant database connection. I tried it out, and it is handy, but you really have to know your query language from the start. There’s not really any syntax checking until the query is run.
I did not have the capability of running the procedure analyzer tool…

Hash checker (replacing MD5 Check)

This can quickly calculate an MD5 or SHA-1 (160) or a number of other algorithms against a specified file. Simply right-click the file in question and you have your values! Click on the ‘More Algorithms…’ button to retrieve additional info.

There is a nifty compare feature that will tell you if the hash values of two files match.

Dislikes

Even though GC’s website touts the capability of running integrated scripts (gs files) on your system through its interface, I didn’t see a clear way of doing so
Clicking on the ‘tutorial’ link from the Gizmo Central main page brought me to a 404 Central page – UPDATE: I did see a blurb on the site where they were improving the tutorials, but the actual tutorial page doesn’t say this
Clicking the ‘Software Updates’ link gives me an error saying it could not establish a connection to the server
Could use some more features in the text editor – TOOLBAR – but perhaps the modular nature of the software won’t allow this?

Likes

Mounting a virtual disk file is dead easy
The variety of disk images you can mount is decent
Burning a disc from ISO is even easier
Having a quick text editor built-in is handy
Good execution of context-sensitive menus in the Windows shell

Since the program is already integrated into the shell and is advertised as a central location of useful tools, why not add ZIP capabilities ala 7-Zip or IZarc?

Overall, this isn’t a show stopper of an application, but there are some compelling reasons to have it installed. For me, it eliminated the need to have CDBurnerXP and Virtual CloneDrive, as I do a lot of work with CD/DVD images and have the need to burn often. Downloaders will love the hash value check tool, and DB savvy individuals will likely pass on the built-in analyzer tools as they probably have something more powerful that they would rather work with.

Download Gizmo Central here

Article: Why you might need to root your Android phone

2011-09-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

What with the success of Android in the last year, I have definitely jumped ship and am a proud flag waver for the Droid Army. But, there’s a whole other subculture of the Android fanbase that I haven’t really been a part of…and that is of the modder community.

This is a group of Android enthusiasts that like to alter the behavior of their Android devices well beyond what the general or cellular providers ever intended. If done by the right person, this can be implemented with great results. Conversely, if done by someone not paying attention or who is in over their head, the device could end up being bricked.

I’ve always been a little skeptical of rooting my phone, and to be terribly honest, I didn’t even really understand the delineation between “rooting” and installing custom ROMS on the device.

Essentially, “Rooting” is when you work past the built-in roadblocks put in place by the device manufacturer/carriers that disallow you from having the capability of “superuser” access to the file system on the device. That’s pretty much it. You can root your phone but still run the exact same OS with the same apps as when you received it from Verizon. Here’s a bit more info if you want to sit down with a cup of hot cocoa and a fluffy cardigan next to the fireplace: Rooting – Is it for me?

Installing a custom ROM is when you replace the vendor supplied OS with an alternate one, usually for performance reasons, or you are just a control freak. You need to have rooted your phone before you install a custom ROM, but you don’t need to install a custom ROM because you’ve rooted your device. If you want to install a custom ROM for your tablet or phone, I suggest you start by checking out the CyanogenMod team’s website.

Rooting an Android device isn’t necessarily hard, but it isn’t easy, either. You need to get a hold of the Android SDK (sometimes used interchangeably with the term ‘ADB’, which is actually the executable you use to push files and commands to the device). Armed with this and a few utilities that you push to your device using ADB, you can typically gain root access in about 20 minutes (if you are uninitiated, or even if you are somewhat savvy).

Here are the reasons I rooted my phone:

I wanted to remove all the crappy bloatware Verizon apps. Really, I don’t want or even care about Blockbuster streaming videos. Why isn’t the Blockbuster name dead yet? Also, I really don’t want an evaluation piece of software that I could get from the Android Market anyway (BitBop, TuneWiki, etc.). These apps take up space, and as a result, utilize resources I could dedicate to other apps, you know, like Angry Birds.
I wanted to run the Cisco Anyconnect VPN client on my device (this was the impetus).
I wanted to have the capability of completely backing up my ROM using Titanium backup.

In any case, rooting an Android device is not for the faint of heart, and requires specific attention to detail while performing the steps. Also, keep in mind, rooting your device voids your manufacturer’s warranty.

Monitor your disk health: Acronis Drive Monitor

2011-09-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/

Does your PC respond slowly for no apparent reason? Are you diligent about keeping your computer clean, free of malware, etc. and yet your PC takes forever to boot up?

There might be another reason that your computer is deathly slow: a failing hard disk.

It really is something we don’t think about too much. Performance has always been something we achieve by slugging a ton of RAM at our PCs or by keeping it pristine by using a variety of malware and AV scanners. But, there comes those times when you are just humming along just fine with the “perfect” computer and then the PC just HANGS.

Here are some symptoms of a failing disk:

You’ve not changed anything but you start receiving random Blue Screens of Death (BSoD)
You hear unusual clicking/clunking coming from your hard drive, especially rhythmic or evenly spaced patterns of noises
Your computer just hangs, especially when browsing for files or any other task that needs to read from the disk
You run a chkdsk and it ends up repairing an inordinate amount of files

The good thing is that most newer hard drives have a nifty little feature called ‘S.M.A.R.T.’ or “Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology” built in. What this means is that these disks have the capability to self-monitor and report back to you if something is awry with the overall health of the disk.
With that in mind, that doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t have a way of interpreting that diagnostic data.
That’s where a tool like Acronis Disk Monitor comes in.

I apologize in advance for the screenshots, for some odd reason they look a little funky on my XP laptop – I believe they are optimized for the Windows Vista/7 aero interface.

Essentially, ADM is a hard disk nurse, checking vital statistics constantly and keeping track of them to get an idea if something goes a little wonky. More specifically, ADM can watch for a variety of S.M.A.R.T. (from here on out, called ‘SMART’) statistics and alert you either by email or popup stating that something just isn’t right with the disk. These statistics include max temperature, invalid read counts, reallocated sectors, power on hours, uncorrectable sector counts, and many more.

Each of these statistics has a threshold that must be exceeded before an alert is raised. When it does – it affects the overall health of the disk, as shown by a simple percentage graph under the ‘Disks’ menu option. Easy.

ADM also monitors ‘Backup’ statistics, which integrates fully with Acronis’ other backup products – but this can be disabled so you aren’t warned about something you may never purchase.

ADM can monitor critical events from your event log as well.

Not only can you be notified about events as they happen, but you can be updated on a regular basis of the overall disk health…

All in all, it is a very good diagnostic tool if you want to analyze a disk given to you by a friend, or perhaps you are going through your computer stockpile and want to find out if any of the disks are failing and shouldn’t be used.

Licensing:

Free for home and commercial use, including servers!

I couldn’t really locate any viable alternatives for such an awesome tool. If you have any (and they’re good), let us know in the comments!

Getting into IT? Here’s some great info [Web]

2011-08-22T07:00:00.002-05:00

http://www.udemy.com/desktop-support-specialist-free-training/

If you are looking to get into IT, typically the ‘Help Desk’ is considered a ground level position (although my experience was working as a QC tech for a local PC business). But even then, you have to have some decent knowledge of PCs, networking and customer service to really excel at it. The job isn’t for anyone, and as far as IT is concerned, it is in my opinion, a job that requires you to be half socially adept; half technically adept.

So, where do you get all this magical information? Is this something that is just bestowed upon you after reading a tome of nerd knowledge? Well, kind of…

Udemy, a kind of do-it-yourself education site, has a good course to help you get your feet wet…or at least it helps you know what you are getting yourself into!

Side note: A Facebook Connect pop-up will appear when you open the page. Simply click ‘Browse Anonymously’ to get around this.

The course goes over some (but is not limited to) of the following:

Essential Communication Skills
Introduction to the Support Industry
Understanding Customer Satisfaction
Telephone Communication Skills
The Call-Handling Process
Dealing With Difficult Customer-Service Situations
Developing and Practicing Assertiveness in Customer Support
Human Resource Issues in the Support Environment
Ethics in the Workplace
Team Building Practices, Principles and Issues
Tools, Problem Solving, and Processes
Staying Current in the Industry
Tools and Technologies for the Support Center
Overview of Network Administration
Disaster Recovery Procedures
Understanding Computer Telephony Integration
Creativity and Problem Solving
The Six-Step Problem-solving Process
Support Processes and Process Integration

[Web] Great resource for free-to-play MMO games: MMOHut.com

2010-12-20T07:00:00.006-06:00

http://www.mmohut.com

For those of us who have kids or other financial burdens, it can become difficult to find time and money to pay for subscriptions to World of Warcraft (or other premium online games). Indeed, we watch enviously from the sidelines as everyone has a grand time while we are left playing our dusty copies of Baldur's Gate or other RPG (Diablo II?).

My problem with these monthly subscription games is that the gaming model requires you to pay a sum and you feel obligated to play x amount of hours per month in order to get your dollar's worth for that month. Sometimes things happen, and you just can't get the time needed to play...then your $14.99 per month (or whatever the cost) goes down the drain.

But, it doesn't have to be that way. As it turns out, there are some very HIGH quality games out there that require no financial obligation if you just want to hop in and play...making you feel guilt-free about abandoning your character for 35 days while you handle your personal life.

Recently, a few friends of mine and I started getting interested in some of these free-to-play MMORPG games. I personally started playing Lord of the Rings Online, but there are a number of others that even could be considered "WoW replacements".

I discovered MMOHut.com as I was surfing for some WoW gameplay videos (yeah, I'm a geek, so what?). The site is a FANTASTIC resource for all MMO's out there, and offers a comprehensive listing of the best free-to-play games out there. Not only that, but they provide in-depth reviews and analysis of all the games listed. Want to know the strengths and weaknesses of LotRO? Check the site.

I like the gaming model that Turbine (LotRO's publisher) runs...free to play indefinitely, but you can purchase a card containing in-game credit so you can buy premium items to augment your free character's loadout. Nice.

One thing to remember, most of these games have a side to them that caters to paid subscribers, and as such, free-to-play subscribers may find that the game limits them to some degree. MMOHut takes this into consideration and lets you know just how limited you might be.

They break out their games into the following categories:

Sci-Fi
Fantasy
3D
2D
Shooter
Sports
Racing
Browser
MMO
MMORPG

A valuable resource for those who can't afford paying the monthly WoW fees.

Check out MMOHut's top 10 free-to-play breakdown:

Antivirus Update: Microsoft Security Essentials updated to version 2.0

2010-12-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials

Microsoft’s free AV, ‘Microsoft Security Essentials’ has been updated to 2.0, with a few compelling new features.

Heuristic scanning
Firewall integration (Sorry, Windows Firewall only!)
Network intrusion detection
Improved engine and scanning performance

Not a new feature for this version, but if you run a small business of 10 computers or less, you can use Security Essentials for free (note that you will still need something different to protect your server).
Check out the full article over at Ghacks.net.
[via Ghacks]

Back up your blogger.com blog: Blogger Backup Utility 1.0.9.23

2010-12-16T07:00:00.000-06:00

http://bloggerbackup.codeplex.com/

If you run a Blogger.com blog (like CFJ – come on, it’s a freeware site!), then you might be interested in this app.

If you weren’t aware, CFJ and countless other blogger.com blogs were affected recently by either an errant automated spam-blog autodetection script on Google’s side, or by the fallout caused by the Gawker account compromise. Blogs affected is an understatement, they were deleted.

After a day of doing some research on the Google forums, and posting questions, the blogs were restored less than 24 hours after they were deleted – but this brought up a good point: Even the mighty Google can wreak havoc upon it’s users in more ways than just a gmail outage.

In that I had no access to the blog, I decided (obviously I should have done this way earlier) to find a tool that could back it up for emergencies later.

The Blogger Backup Utility (available at CodePlex) is a handy utility that can backup your entire blog and save it locally to your hard drive in the form of xml files.

Connecting to your Blogger account is simple, just click the drop-down menu by ‘Available Blogs’ and then ‘add…’ and it will ask you for your Google credentials to access the listing of blogs available under your account.

Using the automatic method of logging into Blogger, I can see all the blogs that belong to me.

Clicking ‘OK’ will bring you the backup window, where you can click that drop-down selection again and pick the blog to back up.

You can adjust some parameters such as where to save the files, whether or not you want to back up a date range, grab the comments, etc.

One major “gotcha”

One thing I would like to see here is a way to grab the images as well and store them in a subfolder off of the main blog backup directory.

Since we are talking about Blogger.com blogs, by default, the images for a blogger.com account are stored in a Picasa web album. There are utilities that exist that can download these web albums in full, or you can simply go to the web album online and download it from there. So, in a way, you can overcome a couple issues…but then, if you happen to restore your files, you may need to manually repair the image links – that doesn’t sound like fun.

Save your settings

You can save your settings for a future backup session if need be – one thing I noticed here was that if you have created a backup session but haven’t saved it yet…then click ‘save as’, you will get an error about using an empty path. Simply clicking ‘save settings’ first mitigates this.

A nice feature to add might be a set of command-line parameters which could allow me to reference a settings file for a scheduled task.

Restore!

A good backup program isn’t good unless it has a restore function – and this one does. But, it is limited to Google’s “50 posts per day” limit. So, this is no fault to the program. This process is just as quick as it is to backup, but I didn’t see a way to restore posts to a different blog.

Summary

Overall, this program is handy in cases of emergencies, but could use a couple additional features to push it to be something extraordinary.

The image backup thing could be a big deal if they were linked to Picasweb and the album got removed somehow. Restoring these links would be tedious.

Likes:

Easy to use, finds all associated blogs automatically
Decent featureset
Ability to save settings
Ability to restore posts

Concerns:

Bug when clicking ‘Save Settings As’ before clicking ‘Save Settings’ – minor
Need a way to restore posts to a different blog – minor
No way to schedule backups – medium
No image backup – major
No development activity since 2008 – major

...and we're back (with a Gawker rant!)

2010-12-14T06:00:00.005-06:00

Well, apparently, whether this was fallout from the #gawkerfail fiasco, or if it was plain coincidence, CFJ is back up.

What happened?

From what I could gather, it appeared that my blog (as well as a lot of other legitimate blogs), which is hosted via Google's Blogger service, was deleted...possibly due to an automated 'splog' deletion program. This being the case, it's very strangely coincidental that it occurred during the Gawker fallout.

The following bit is my conjecture:

While I don't think they "got in" per se, my guess is that the Google services spotted the uptick in unusual activity and marked it as 'suspicious'. This is where things get fuzzy. I'm not sure if this in turn placed my blog with a higher score with the automated splog removal tool, or if it was a series of other circumstances, but the direct result was that my blog was completely deleted. Not only that, but another donation-funded site I maintain for a friend who is hospitalized was also removed (CFJ is obviously a bigger blog, but this really made me mad). Two others, set up as tests...were fine. Not sure what that was about. Could be a page-rank thing, I dunno.

Connect the dot.coms

The problem is, it's not all that hard for someone malicious to link all these things together if you are fairly active on the Internet, whether that be with social sites like Facebook and Twitter or if you run a fairly popular blog or service.

Sure, with regards to being "Gawked" (you heard it from me), I've taken some measures and have re-thought my current password scheme. Obviously, the one I was using was not good enough. Now each service will have their own independent password. Harder to maintain? Certainly. But it will cause less work in the long haul when the next eventual hack occurs.

Battlefield, Google Earth

Things have definitely changed in Cyperspace -er, the cloud. What was once seen as an annoyance to some web-sites/companies has now become a vast battlefield filled with soldiers of all ages, nationalities and goals, and everyone is a victim. Small groups can take down powerful entities with little effort. As such, it isn't hard for the nefarious coders to utilize openly available API's to link these services together and very quickly perform attacks against them, aggregating and assembling what they find with each subsequent result.

The Internet is becoming like Inception; you won't know where Twitter ends and Facebook begins, and you'll forget exactly how you got there in the first place - when really, all you wanted to do was look up a recipe.

Web 1.0 was so much...simpler. You remember, don't you? Remember when the site you visited didn't plug into everything else?

Me? I'm mad at myself for not backing up my blogs and having them at the ready. Rest assured, you will see me at least search for and hopefully review such a solution here in the future.

What about being Gawked?

I (presumably we) are mad at Gawker for not notifying us as soon as they found out they had been hacked. Let's not minimize the fact that they provide so much information about the blogosphere, technology, getting things done, video games, sci-fi (and yes, porn) that someone there would have some sort of inkling that "hey, our system ain't that secure, maybe we should do something about it?" As it was, a third-party site, hint.io (who?) sent out an email to all of the compromised accounts stating that they should change their passwords immediately. A THIRD PARTY. Come on.

As it is, you can't even delete your Gawker account.

I'm irresponsible, but Gawker, you take the cake.

Here's the email from "the Team at Hint":

Hi there,

Hint wanted to let you know that your email address and password that you used to signup for Gawker (or one of its sites) were hacked. Forbes' coverage is here
In situations like this, time is of the essence, which is why we were surprised & shocked to find that Gawker Media hadn't taken the initiative to notify you of this privacy breach immediately. We HIGHLY recommend you change all of your online passwords as a precaution.

-The Team at Hint

Thank you to Hint.io.

"He who controls the information, controls the world." - Source unknown

Article: Quick matrix of free online storage services

2010-12-10T12:00:00.005-06:00

I’ve professed my love for Dropbox many times, and have often wondered, is there something else better that I should be using instead of DropBox? It’s kind of like when you get serious with a girlfriend…”did I make the right choice?” Heh. Anyway! My conclusion was that while there are many tools out there that have some very compelling features, I will remain loyal to DropBox. This got me onto the line of thinking: “what are the limitations for the freebie online storage services?

I've taken the major free services that I could think of and laid out a matrix of features - you can decide what is best for you based upon some basic critera:

How much free space you get (base minimum) when signing up for a FREE account
Do you get more space based upon referrals?
How much space you get from each referral
Desktop client available (Windows only in my criteria)
Synchronizes automatically
What mobile clients are available – i.e. Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile or WEB only
File size limits
Public sharing availibility
File versioning
P2P (Save on bandwidth if you have multiple clients on the same LAN)
Encryption

I compared the following services:

ADrive
Box.net
DropBox
Google Docs (they can support any file type now)
IDrive
Microsoft Live Mesh
SpiderOak
SugarSync
Syncplicity
Windows Live SkyDrive
ZumoDrive

See the full spreadsheet here: Free online storage comparison matrix (Google Doc)

Maybe this can help you decide which online service is best for you.

Got any other experiences? Share them in the comments!

Rename multiple files easily: Batch File Renamer 0.6.3

2010-12-06T12:00:00.000-06:00

http://www.ronsplace.me.uk/Professional/Products/BatchFileRename/

I hate having to rename files. It usually means I’m going to have to do some scripting or creative file copying, or just lots of manual renaming. There are ways to rename many files using built-in Windows commands or even a creative use of the File Explorer through Windows, but nothing beats using a well-crafted piece of software – and this one can do it with style.

Aaron Stewart’s Batch File Renamer is a program that does what it says, but it does it so much better than what you expect.

What makes it so different? BFR has the ability to rename files based upon rules like adding specific text to the beginning or end of a file, changing letter case, numbering, etc. Bonus? You can save your ruleset if you have a particular rename process you need to retain for later use.

In my test, I wanted to take all my various named wallpapers and name them ‘Wallpaper_datecreated.ext’, I can do that quickly with BFR.

The rules are very specific and can insert a wide variety of information in the form of variables to your file names - i.e.: rename files based upon creation date, modified or last accessed date of the file, or name with a numerical value ordered by creation date.

You can also stack the rules so maybe you want to replace text (or spaces!) generated from a prior rule with text from a new rule. In my example, the date text insertion rule creates spaces, so then I would create a replace rule to swap out spaces for an underscore.

So, in my case, I set up the following rules:

Remove all prior text from the file name, leading up to the extension
Add the text ‘wallpaper_’ to the beginning of each filename
Add the creation date at the end of the file name
Remove any spaces and replace it with an underscore
Convert all filenames to lower case

With this rule set, BFR would rename 03.jpg to wallpaper_4-7-2009_1.09.59_pm.jpg’. Very handy indeed.

I can’t even begin to cover how granular you can get with these rules, it’s quite astounding, and you must check it out for yourself!

I almost forgot! You can apply rules to extensions in addition to file names themselves. Truly a versatile little utility. Great for any photographer or system admin to be sure.

Likes:

Saves rulesets
Stackable rules
EASY to use

Dislikes:

Crashed once on me and the ‘send report’ function failed, but…your mileage may vary!

Limited Offer: Free Dungeon Hunter for Android, 24 hours only!

2010-12-03T12:00:00.005-06:00

Spied this at Droid-Life (one of my favorite Android news blogs) today.

For free (for 24 hours, I've heard), Gameloft is offering up Dungeon Hunter for free for Android. I'm pretty sure I'm late (but not too late) to this party, so download it while you can!

Download link: Dungeon Hunter HD

Be sure to have 130Mb of free space on your SD card (and a WiFi connection!).

[via Droid-Life]

Test Exchange server connectivity from the outside: Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer

2010-11-29T07:00:00.017-06:00

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com

Being a network/systems manager can be tedious, especially when the holidays arrive and new mobile devices hit the scene (and your manager's wallet). iPads, Android, WinMo, new laptops, etc. They will all keep us challenged throughout the season, and we are expected to get these devices to work no matter what - right?

Perhaps the biggest test of a device's mettle is the capability to bring forth your user's email...!

Microsoft supplies developers, admins and end-users alike with a fantastic web service that can test the connectivity to an Exchange server to determine if everything is working as it should.

Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity
Exchange Web Services Connectivity
Office Outlook Connectivity
Internet E-Mail

Essentially, the server acts as a client to your Exchange server/mailbox and logs any errors it discovers while connecting. This takes out the step of trudging through event logs/errors, etc. so you typically will end up with a clear direction of where you need to go if there is an issue.

The two tests that are of particular interest to me are the ActiveSync and Outlook connectivity tests. Why? Mobile devices these days use Exchange ActiveSync (or the Outlook Web Access), while many people on PCs away from the office are using Outlook "on the go" (RPC over HTTP). Either way, if you experience difficulties getting email on your mobile devices, this may be the best way to figure out what is wrong.

Many times, any issues discovered are related to incorrectly configured firewall ports or perhaps the NAT isn't correct for your mail server IP address. Other times, the error can be quite difficult to track down. That's where this service really shines.

Take a look at the images below showing a connectivity test (one successful, one not).

Note: these images are from the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog - they are marked 'Beta', but these screenshots are a bit old.

The service is secure and is run by Microsoft, so you shouldn't have to worry about this being a phishing site - prior to testing your connectivity, it will prompt you for logon and mail server details. I suppose you could try things out with a test account/mailbox, unless you are running into an issue specific to a particular user.

Archive your GMail, Live, Yahoo! or other eMail: MailStore Home 4

2010-11-22T07:00:00.003-06:00

http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx

I recently had one of my users request me to make a one-off backup of his entire Yahoo! mailbox as he was noticing some funky stuff going on with his contacts (they disappeared). He was fearing that the server where his mail was stored was going to give up the ghost soon.

While I half-heartedly doubted that, I did want to accomplish what he requested.

Another use? Merging mail for when you want to retire that AOL account.

Enter MailStore Home, a very nice freebie application that can connect to your mail accounts and download the entire thing to your computer to search or export to another client.

Archiving = good, searchable = better

Archiving is nice and all, but MailStore also grants you the capability of searching and exporting archived messages. Searching would be very useful for road-warriors who do not have online connectivity and need to do some email scanning. The exporting function is useful for those times when you need to pull some content out and use it for something else.

Backing up an account is a simple affair. Just pick your provider, start the wizard, and let ‘er rip! Typically, the setup consists of no more than you entering you email address and account password. Once that’s done, the program takes over.

Back it up!

When you start the backup wizard, you be able to review and change some options that allow you to control the backup process. For example, you could allow MailStore to back up your spam/trash folders in addition to the normal set of emails that you would really want.

It seems that with Windows Live mail (this may be true of other cached email clients specified) that MailStore backs up what has already been synchronized offline to the client. for example, when I backed up a Hotmail account (yes, I still have one…old habits die hard), it only archived the messages that I have viewed locally. Ok, I've archived from a local cache, and while efficient, this doesn’t quite suit my needs. If you want to make sure you have everything, you may need to tell the client (Windows Live Mail is ‘Shift’+’F5’) to download all mail content, which could take awhile, then run MailStore.

Another thing I noticed: There isn’t a way to export contacts. This may be due to the inconsistent way that the various providers store them – they aren’t standard mail objects, after all.

I would like to see a way to schedule MailStore to perform backups? Has anyone done this?

Restore into another mail system

This is BY FAR the most useful feature, although you couldn’t take advantage of it if the rest of the features weren’t here… :)

Like any good archiving program, MailStore does grant you the capability of exporting backed-up email. The cool thing is that you can export mail directly into another supported mail configuration: for example, export your gmail content into Exchange, your Yahoo! mail into GMail. A custom IMAP account into your POP account. Now THAT is way better than exporting to a comma separated values file.

In my exchange configuration, MailStore created a folder called ‘MailStore Export’ > name_of_mailstore_profile > name_of_folder_exported.

Insanely useful.

Server product available

MailStore does have a server product that you can use at your workplace for number of server platforms (incl. Exchange, Groupwise, Courier, MDaemon – no Notes?) which allows for email archiving for multiple clients and PST files…this also features the same Home version advantages on a managed level.

Likes:

Export archived mail into a different mail setup - major
Specify individual folders to back up. Although for some clients, if you’ve not cached the folder structure, it might be unclear that you are really getting everything (I’m looking at you, Windows Live) - medium
EASY backup wizard. You usually just supply an email account and password - major
Can archive an Exchange account. NICE - major
Allows you to delete from your mailbox what you’ve archived (not available for Exchange account backup) - medium
Only archive a date span if you wish - major
Search everything at once - major
Ability to search attachments, although you need to specify which attachments you’d like to index - major

Dislikes:

See above ‘like’ about individual folders for backup (cached clients might garner incomplete folder structures) - medium
A little unclear exactly where you are backing up from (Windows Live Mail) - medium
Needs more prevalent ‘Home’ button. Took me a bit to get out of a sub screen which almost looked like a home screen to the true ‘Home’ - low
No apparent way to schedule backups? - medium
Doesn’t download contacts or calendar – minor (after all it is called ‘MailStore’) - low

The Home Computer Freeware List

2010-11-16T07:00:00.007-06:00

Subscribe to CFJ

Rob's great freeware list (aka "toolbox" for building a Windows-based (I know, I know :) ) computer for as little money as possible.

Note that this is a list that I recommend for every baseline installation...I will recommend various specialty applications over the course of my musings, but this is something that I believe everyone should install.

Enjoy - every product here is one that I use, or have used (and liked!) :)

System cleanup utility (good for routine system maintenance) - CCleaner, nCleaner Second - both are quality, but I would say CCleaner is a more intuitive to use. You can do a lot of damage with nCleaner Second if you are not careful!

Defragmenting your hard disk - MyDefrag (for more of you techie folks), Defraggler - Windows defragment is OK, but MyDefrag is light years quicker, and does a lot more optimization (move large files to the end of the volume, for example). Defraggler is a bit more user-friendly when it comes to appearance. Both are quality products.

Create PDFs - PDFCreator - Creates a new printer in your control panel, and allows you to convert anything that you print to a PDF. Note that this is not an editor, but you can create a PDF from any image, document, etc. simply by printing it to PDF (note that OpenOffice can save a document to PDF).

Read PDFs - Foxit PDF reader - Nice non-resource intensive PDF reading software.

Antivirus - Microsoft Security Essentials - Honorable mentions: Avast! Antivirus, Avira AntiVir. You should NEVER surf without some form of AV installed. Avast! is nice because it can scan your system for viruses while the screen saver is active, and protects your PC against multiple vectors. Want free AV for a Windows server? Use ClamWin (no real-time scanner, so you will have to run scheduled scans, but it works well).

Spyware Protection - ThreatFire, SuperAntiSpyware, MalwareBytes AntiMalware - Spyware sucks, and these tools do a great job of cleaning them up. I would recommend installing a combination of these utilities, using one to clean-up after the other.

Firewall - Comodo - Very configurable, excellent reviews.

Remote Control (Technical Support) - CrossLoop - This one is great for consultants and other at-home tech folks - totally secure and SO easy to use. Crossloop makes remote controlling mom's computer a dream. TeamViewer is also great.

Remote Control (Extending your office) - Logmein - Access your computer from a secure (256-bit encrypted) connection. You don't need someone on the other end to approve your connection (like Crossloop).

Screenshot Utility - FastStone Capture 5.3. If you can find it, use it. Newer versions are not free. Can't find it? Use Gadwin PrintScreen. Are you an advanced user? Screen Captor is superior to both utilities.

VPN - Hamachi - Connect two disparate networks together with little trouble. Great for hooking up with your buddies for online gaming, or home "family" support over the Internet.

File Recovery - PC Inspector File Restore, Recuva - Did you accidentally delete your files from your digital camera? Use this to restore it. Good for system drives as well.

Internet Browsing - FireFox - Tabbed browsing, all sorts of great add-ons available, spyware/popup blocker, best of all NO activex support. Chrome is my browser of choice for some no-frills fast web surfing.

Email Client - Thunderbird - Built in spam protection, RSS reader and more.

FTP Client - FileZilla, WinSCP - Secure FTP, save your sessions, easy drag & drop interface.

Office Productivity - Microsoft Live Office (online), Google Docs (online), Open Office (local install). The non-MS apps are MS Office compatible. Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation software -These will do for 90% of your low to middle of the road users.

Zip Archiving - IZArc - New to the list is 'IZArc', recommended by fellow freeware addict, Carputers. I have to agree. If you use WinZip, then you can use IZArc. Excellent interface, supports the widest amount of archive formats, great features, just great all around!

Keep track of startup programs - Sysinternals AutoRuns - Excellent tool to discover what the heck is running at startup - definitely for advanced users. Can produce a CSV file for viewing later (or to post to online support forums), etc. VERY thorough. You can use this to help you clean up malware that is slowing down your system. Also recommended is Hijack This, which features a huge user-community.

Graphics Editing - The Gimp - EXCELLENT freebie editor with a lot of built-in effects and layering capability. If you like the Photoshop interface, you can try GimpShop. Want something simpler? Use Paint.net.

Image Touch Ups, Photo Processing - Picasa - Easy to use program that can help you catalog, view, burn, and touch-up photographs. Also, you can use Picasa to upload photos to your blog, and submit them to online digital image printing services. A digital camera's best friend. This program is fantastic for Grandma. She can quickly burn CD's of the grandkids with little instruction.

Image Thumbnail Viewer - The classic, Irfanview, my personal favorite - FastStone Viewer and another popular one, XNView.

CD Burning - CD Burner XP Pro - Supports burning from/to ISO image files, audio CD's, DVDs, etc. - Especially nice if you have a burner, but no longer have the OEM burning software that came with it. Other quality apps are Infra Recorder and Express Burner Free.

Backup software - Syncback - Backup to/from an FTP location, compress and encrypt data, supports directory synchronization, and much, much more.

Mail Archiving/backup - This is more or less a subset of 'Backup' above, MailStore is fantastic.

Online storage - DropBox - get 2Gb free, and for every person you recommend (and they sign up and install), you get an additional 250Mb of free storage. I love DropBox because of it's cross-platform support (I can get to my files on my Android phone).

DVD viewing (video) - VLC Media Player - Play your DVD/VCD/MPEG videos from a single player. Works GREAT! You can use VLC to watch DVDs without re-installing the OEM DVD software. You can also use it to convert videos (transcode).

Video conversion - Any Video Converter Free. Convert a video file to a myriad of different formats, great for copying videos to your IPod, Zune, or other personal media player.

Video codecs - K-Lite codec pack - this will enable your computer to play just about any video type out there.

RSS News Reader - Google Reader (online). Keep up with your online news and blogs (*ahem*, like this one?). I'm really liking the new Google Reader Play feature.

Multi-IM/chat client - Pidgin, and if you don't use IRC, then Digsby is for you!

More as I find 'em.

-Updated 11/16/2010

Spiceworks add-on: Cilantro 0.4.2

2010-11-16T07:00:00.001-06:00

Way back when, I wrote an applet that accessed Spiceworks data and allowed you to run local tools & utilities against computers directly. The utility was called 'Cilantro' (in keeping with the spicy name!).

New version!

Finally, I decided to do something with that code that had been sitting around for the last couple of years. Version 0.4x beta is out and needs some people to test it.

Running local apps from a web link is problematic

One of the issues with running a web application such as Spiceworks is that it is difficult to run any kind of locally installed program against any of the items found in the database driving that web application...at least not without some way to bypass the web interface and access it directly.

Sure, you can perhaps write a configuration file at the server level, then download the file via web browser and run with your default application, but some programs don't support this approach.

Access the DB, do some stuff

It is for this reason that I created Cilantro. It is a program that access the Spiceworks database directly to pull computer names and details so you can run whatever tools you want against them. That means if you use Dameware, VNC, etc. - i.e. programs that can take a computer name as a command-line option and use Spiceworks to keep track of your network inventory, then Cilantro is the program for you.

Cilantro consists of an HTA (HyperText Application) which runs with a .HTA extension.

Those local apps? Those are add-ons.

The add-ons are added dynamically to the interface as soon as you start up the program. This means that you can write your own. They are XML based, are not difficult to write, and I have full documentation available for those that want to try it themselves.

One cool addition is the inclusion of a new table-filtering javasript, written by Max Guglielmi - this allows you to view large tables of information, type some criteria at the top and filter out the stuff you don't want to see..all very quickly.

Cilantro resources:

RIP Goog-411

2010-11-11T12:00:00.005-06:00

As of tomorrow, Goog-411, Google's free caller assistance service, is going the way of the dinosaur. But with much less of a "BOOM". On November 12th, 2010, they will be discontinuing the service to focus on other core services and offerings.

Here's the official word:

Back in 2007 we launched 1-800-GOOG-411, a voice-powered directory assistance service that connects you quickly to businesses across the U.S. and Canada. On November 12, 2010, we will shut down the service.

GOOG-411 was the first speech recognition service from Google and helped provide a foundation for more ambitious services now available on smartphones, such as:

Voice Search - search Google by speaking instead of typing.

Voice Input - fill in any text field on Android by speaking instead of typing.

Voice Actions - control your Android phone with voice commands. For example, you can call any business quickly and easily just by saying its name.

Our success encouraged us to aim for more innovation. Thus, we’re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.

If you don’t use a smartphone, and you’re trying to call a business, you can send a text message with the name and location of the business to 466453 ("GOOGLE") and we’ll text you the information, or on Gmail you can use the new phone-calling features to call any U.S. business free of charge. Also, if you don’t have the free voice search app pre-installed on your phone, you can download it here.

Thanks for all the calls, and keep an eye out for all the innovation to come.
The GOOG-411 Team

Don't get me wrong, I think that expanding and changing technology is wonderful and all that, but I really used this service a lot as it allowed me to quickly dial a contact (Goog-411) and simply say who I wanted to connect with, and it just worked. No fumbling with texting, No fussing about with performing searches or getting my voice transcribed wrong through my phone's speech-to-text feature.

This was something that I could turn my parents or anyone else of the older persuasion to, and they could use it with little trouble.

Some of us don't have have texting enabled on our phones *gasp!*- why should I, I have email, instant messenger, and a plethora of other services included in my data package to use. I use Google Voice to do all my texting.

But, you can't use the shortened numbers to text to/from Google Voice - - try it. You know the ones - those 5 or 6 digit numbers? You can't text for those free coupons. .*sigh*

I guess Google Voice Actions are going to be my new robot best-friends. :)

As an alternative, Microsoft has their own voice caller assistance program - use it by dialing 1-800-Call-411 (1-800-225-5411 OR 800 BING411) *Special thanks to my readers!

Tip: Getting a ‘MyBrowserBar’ screen when you should be 404’ed? Here’s the fix.

2010-08-13T07:00:00.003-05:00

So, every once and awhile lately, I had noticed something peculiar. When I was surfing around on the ‘Net and hitting pages that were no longer there...I should have been hitting (and I did for about 1.5 seconds) a site hosted 404 page or error, but then was redirected to a page that is hosted by ‘MyBrowserBar.com’. While this wasn't terribly annoying - there are indeed some 404 pages that are actually useful, and I really want to see them – Microsoft’s site comes to mind.

So, what the heck – Surely I’ve not let rogue bit of software on my system?

Upon doing a little bit of research, it appears that as a result of a PDFCreator installation, the 'PDFforge toolbar' somehow got installed, which like 99% of all other toolbars is not useful in any way.

The fix:

If you see this screen instead of the typical 404, hit up your add/remove programs applet and perform a search for ‘PDFforge Toolbar’. I need to do a bit of testing to make sure it doesn’t install itself even if I select not to – which I am pretty diligent about doing.

Request to PDFforge: Remove this "helper" program from your install.

Source: [Enghiong]
Image courtesy [Homestarrunner.com]

Quick Look - Multi-Platform Mobile Chat: PingChat!

2010-08-12T07:00:00.014-05:00

http://www.pingchat.com/

After my transition from BlackBerry to Android, my wife and I have been missing BlackBerry Messenger a LOT. BBM was great for sending photos quickly between the two of us (she still has a BlackBerry). For IM’ing, we’ve taken to Google Talk, and while it works, it’s just not there in terms of functionality if you really need something that can perform the additional things that BBM is just so darned good at.

Why I miss BlackBerry Messenger:

Send photos, voice notes easily to chat recipient
Send broadcasted messages to multiple recipients
Create groups and interact in group chats with multiple recipients
For others (I didn’t use this), group chat calendar and picture repository

An alternative? Almost.

Full disclosure: At the time of this writing, the BlackBerry client is in beta.

Currently at version 2.0 (BB beta notwithstanding), PingChat! is a client that has some compelling features to make it, in some ways, a viable alternative to BBM if you and your friends/spouse have mixed devices. Currently PingChat! supports Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and iPod Touch

So, I installed PingChat! on my wife’s BlackBerry Tour 9630 and on my Droid Incredible. The first thing I noticed right away is that the initial setup screen isn’t quite consistent (at least between these two platforms). For example:

When signing up on the Android phone, PingChat asked if I would like to use my mobile number as my id or create a new id using PingChat!’s system. On the BlackBerry, it asked you to create an account, but no option for using the mobile number.

On the Android, I could easily link my wife’s ad hoc contact to my address book. On the BlackBerry, it was a bit difficult noticing when the ‘link to contact’ option was highlighted to click on. There was no menu option either (its just good interface design to include a menu option for any major onscreen function)...

Sending a photo is easy enough on the Android…just click the attachment icon, then browse for your photos via the built-in photo browser. This is NOT the case on the BlackBerry, and is a major shortcoming in my opinion. On the Tour, we had to browse the folder structure of her SD card in order to find the photo to send, and to top it off, there are no thumbnails, so unless you’ve named your pics something useful, good luck finding the right one….

I could see where you could send a message to multiple recipients, but I’ve not been able to test how well this works. There did not seem to be a way to save a group if you created one.

Also, it appeared as though I could add a contact and just start chatting away, even though I don't recall seeing a prompt to accept the contact...

Multimedia files, pics, vids (yes!) and voicenotes were received easily from device to device, and over the WiFi, response was great.

A not-so-serious and very serious concern:

I like the fact that PingChat! will allow my Android device to create an account with my mobile number, but I’m curious as to what happens if I decide to change my number? Do my contacts get updated on their side, or will the person who eventually gets my number have the potential to login and receive chats destined for me?

One huge concern for me is that you don't get a confirmation for a new chat buddy. If someone knows your mobile number or userid, they can just start chatting it up with you. With the lack of a 'friends-only' feature or block capability, this has the potential to cause some serious mental harm to people. Think of it - bad break ups? Stalkers? Sure, you can delete the conversation, but if they keep messaging you...well, then PingChat! isn't the app for you (at this point).

So, some requests:

Themes - Minor
Make ‘Link to contact’ a menu option – Minor
On the BlackBerry, when sending a file through PingChat!, show a dialog for ‘Photo, Video and Audio’ like on the Android - Medium
Example taken from Android: ‘Share’ menu option to easily transfer a pic or other media file from the picture/media viewer via PingChat! Note that this is different than sharing a picture from the PingChat! application itself – Medium
Tell us how the chat infrastructure works – some people might want to pay for an enterprise version of this for their workforce, and would likely want to know how secure the chat is - Medium
Give us an option to buy the application to remove the ads - Medium
Grant the ability to create a group from the main window (i.e. like a new contact) where you can quickly assign multiple contacts - Major
On the BlackBerry, add a link from the ‘Send/Share’ menu option while in the media application, akin to sharing via Twitter/Facebook, etc. The current way is not user friendly at all (tweet from @PingChat! states that this will be better in OS 6.0, what about 5.0?) – Major
DESKTOP CHAT client – this would be a HUGE benefit over BBM – Major
Block a contact. If you have no way of confirming a new chat buddy, then certainly, a 'block' function would be very useful - Major
Add a verification prompt for the other user when adding a new contact. This seems rather unsafe, especially if people decide to start harassing or stalking you, coupled with the lack of 'block' feature...you get the idea - Major

Summary:

There are some pretty glaring shortcomings after being held to the very high standard that BlackBerry Messenger has now achieved...namely, the inability to block a contact, no confirmations for chat buddies to be added to other's contact lists, and no way to create a group for later (please prove me wrong on this point - anyone?) makes for some good fodder for Enflick's programmers to work on.

With all that said - don’t get me wrong, I love the thing that PingChat! has going on here. This is a niche that NEEDS to be filled as sending/sharing media via IM is not easy over multiple platforms. If you can make this easy to use for all platforms and make a DESKTOP CLIENT, you will own BlackBerry Messenger.

--- update 10:40pm 8/12/2010 ---

The latest BB build fixes the 'link to contact' oddity I expressed above. Good news!

Install:

Things I love: DropBox

2010-08-02T07:00:00.011-05:00

DropBox - slightly updated 8/2/10
http://www.getdropbox.com/

I revisited this post as I installed it for my new Android phone (and now there is a beta BlackBerry version - slots filled, sorry!).

Now, DropBox isn't like every other online storage service - - or at least not like the Microsoft SkyDrive service which I used previously...DropBox works like this:

You sign up for service, install client utility on computer 'A'
Client utility creates 'My DropBox' folder under 'My Documents'
Client copies/synchronizes contents of My DropBox to your DropBox account
You install client utility on computer 'B'
Client brings all files down from your DropBox online account to your 'My DropBox' folder on this computer (B)
You change a file on Computer B, files get uploaded and then synchronized to Computer A as soon as the client utility connects from that computer

The files and folders inside your DropBox directory get a handy little sync indicator showing if the file has been uploaded or if it is pending upload to the online service. Nice!

Share your DropBox files

The beauty of DropBox is that you have the ability to share an individual file or a whole folder to a user. Simply right-click a file or folder under the 'My DropBox' directory to see the option.

You share a folder with another user (who has a DropBox account and client loaded)
Your contents are dropped to their computer - any changes made by them or you is synchronized to/from all computers that are shared (I'm not sure how it handles conflicts as of yet).

When you share a file, you do so via your Public folder. You drop a file into your public folder, right-click it > DropBox > 'Copy public link' then email your recipient the link and thats it! Your recipient can click the link on their side and download the file.

FYI: When you share a folder, your recipient will get a local copy of your shared folder - so, it goes without saying to try and not share a folder with more contents than what your recipient has in free drive space!

Download your folders as a ZIP file

A cool feature that the web site provides is the ability to download a shared folder as a ZIP file. So, if you don't have DropBox installed on a PC, you could download your folders as needed.

Refer to DropBox, get more space

The only downside to DropBox is that the free account is limited to 2Gb - but there is a cool offer for those who send referrals to DropBox. When you refer other users to sign up for the service and they create an account and download the client, you and your friend automatically get an additional 250Mb of free space!

Referral-related free space is limited to an additional ~~6Gb~~ 8Gb (thanks Rarst!) total, so if you exclusively use a free account, you are limited to ~~8Gb~~ 10Gb! You can sign up for a 50Gb plan for $99 a year, which really isn't bad, so if you have a lot of data to synchronize, this might do the trick for you!

Available across multiple platforms

There's an app for that...OS. I've personally used the iPad (ok, I've opened it on my friend's iPad), Linux, Android and iPhone app in addition to Windows - and they all work without any learning curve.

Gotcha:

If you share a folder with someone and they delete an object, it will delete in your folder as well! Be warned!

Idea: Pyramid scheme!

How about a pyramid scheme type of system for referrals? User 'A' refers 'B', User 'A' gets 250Mb of space, User 'B' refers User 'C' - User A gets 125Mb, B gets 250Mb? Or, if a referral purchases a year's worth of space, the referring member gets a significant increase in space?

I love DropBox and use it daily. It is like an Internet attached USB drive where I can keep all my stuff that I really need synchronized (and backed up if my system crashes!).

Idea #2: Poor man backup for small business or home office

Fun backup tip for small businesses/users (not necessarily small users...!): Have a backup run and create an archive in your Dropbox folder. After it synchronizes to another PC, have that computer move the file to an archived or other backup device.

Do you have any other ideas about how to cleverly use Dropbox (or other online storage solutions)? Post them in the comments section below (I apologize for the dates of some of the comments, I updated this article so some comments are related to the original post from March of 2009).

BlackBerry to Android: I’m making the switch

2010-08-01T00:19:00.004-05:00

(Android costume pic courtesy of www.mydisguises.com)
Well, it’s been a fun 5 years, but I have made the switch from BlackBerry to Android. Since I am on Verizon the iPhone isn’t really a viable option. Also, I’m not fond of how Apple has been handling their PR…eh…"problem" as of late).

We had a good run – over the years since ‘05, I had 5 different ‘Berrys: 7280, 7290, 8700c, 8703e, 9530. Out of those, I think the 8703e was by far the best.

By the time I got my Storm/9530 in 2008, freeware applications were plentiful and memory was not. I loved it at first, don’t get me wrong. But as time went on, the device was plagued with various issues. Then OS 5.0 came out – it acted like it wanted to be a good touchscreen BlackBerry…At first, it ran a lot better, but as apps were installed, the thing ran out of “oomph”.

So, after using it for nearly two years, I’ve decided to kick it to the curb and jump on the Android bandwagon.

When the Droid X was announced, I thought for sure “I gotta get that”, but then got it, and…I hated it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very nice phone, but it is way too big for my purposes (insert Michael Scott joke here). My Storm could fit into the screen dimensions (almost) of the Droid X. I have big hands but I still found that I had to shift the device around in my palm if I wanted to navigate with my thumb to even perform menial functions like dialing. If you want a phone that is fantastic for multimedia, then the X is the phone to have.

I ended up with the HTC Incredible. It’s the perfect size, and it packs a lot of punch. The phone is slightly taller and not quite as wide as the Storm – depth is about the same after I got my snap-on case installed (picture below courtesy of www.phonearena.com).

The compelling reasons for the switch to Android:

Google Maps Navigation. I’m selling my GPS. Now I don’t have to update my maps for $60 a year (not that I did, but you get the idea). You can integrate satellite and topographical features with navigation. It’s pretty cool to "GPS" that way.
Great marketplace, and free Google Android App Inventor offering. Sounds fun (and a little easier than developing for the BlackBerry)
Fresh interface, thanks to HTC (in this case) for their Sense UI. Not that everyone likes it, but I do.
Slick and powerful handsets not limited by one manufacturer (makes you think of someone else, eh?). C’mon – the Incredible and the Evo are stylish. The Droid X is a monster. The Nexus One (RIP) is/was FAST as all get out.
WiFi tools. I didn’t really see a lot of these for BlackBerry (even for WiFi enabled devices)
Open sourced OS
I just don’t feel…constrained any longer with the Android OS (yes, I know BB OS 6.0 is around the corner, but somehow I have my doubts about how contemporary it will really be).

Things I’ll miss about my BlackBerry:

Very granular notifications. I could set up notifier sounds/vibration settings for just about everything that has a notification feature.
BlackBerry Messenger. The group chat and broadcast feature were awesome.
Easy to use universal inbox. You had notifications showing how many emails you’ve not been made aware of since last time you checked your mail (which is different than how many you’ve not read).
If your phone was BES-connected, you had some very effective ways of controlling your device (policies, security settings, application deployment, etc.) – I only hope that something like this is coming to Android (I can’t see why not).
Single location for all your settings, advanced, basic, whatever – it was easy to tweak just about any setting on the BlackBerry.

In my effort to be as productive as I was on the BlackBerry, I had to find all my apps that I had previously or find an alternative version on the Droid. So here we go:

BlackBerry App	Purpose	Android version?	Comments
YouMail	Visual Voicemail	yes	Great Visual VoiceMail alternative to the VZ Mail app.
Poynt	Directions, yellow/white pages, movie times, gas prices, etc. (GPS)	yes	I used this application when I was trying to get to a destination, and knew I was close…Poynt always helped me hone in on my destination.
Google Maps	Maps,directions, GPS	yes	Android version has a super-slick GPS Navigation feature that works very well.
Opera Mini	Web-Browser	yes	Always could use a second web browser…
Facebook	Social network	yes	Still need to passively stalk people I hardly know…
Twitter	Social network/News	yes	Still need to passively stalk people I don’t know…
Evernote	Note taking and information archival, sync between computers	yes	This application hardly worked on my Storm. Not sure why.
Slacker Radio	Streaming audio of favorite and similar artists.	yes	Actually am using Last.fm right now – this might be my app of choice. Last.fm wasn’t available on BlackBerry
Google Voice	Can use as visual voice mail with transcription, receive SMS messages, etc.	yes	YouMail is my visual voicemail of choice, Google’s transcription is AWFUL. I actually use this solely because of the ability to receive SMS for free (we have it turned off on our phones).
BB Messenger	BlackBerry’s very own IM app. You can only talk to other BlackBerry owners with this application. Features group chat and broadcasting capabilities.	no	Google Talk is the only viable solution so far (need to research this). There is the capability of creating group chats, but no broadcast feature. Trillian might be a good app - - we’ll see.
Viigo	RSS Newsreader and much, much more.	no	FeedSquare is a decent free offering for RSS news. It plugs directly into your Google Feed Reader subscriptions. Would like to see a good one that has a similar layout as Viigo.

With all that said, the Incredible (as does the Droid X, and I’m sure, others) has a FM tuner which makes it an invaluable tool for emergency situations (weather, etc.). You need to remember that you have to have headphones or other speakers hooked up to use it (the cord is the FM antenna).

I’m looking forward to next week when Android 2.2 (Froyo) comes out and grants me additional Exchange support, 720p video and hotspot capability (well, I probably won’t use the latter, but my *gulp* mom and dad might…looks like a support call will be in order…)!