Free Useful Software Reviews

Best Free Chinese Chess Game Program - HOXChess

2012-02-07T11:27:00.000+08:00

HOXChess is an open source Chinese Chess (i.e. Xiangqi) program and so far it is the best free Chinese chess program that I have played. There are few Chinese Chess program that I have played before, their algorithm are not as good as HOXChess. lol, basically the rest I can win easily except for HOXChess.:D

You can either play with computer for practice or you can also play with online real players through the server. For playing with computer, you can select different A.I. algorithm. Some A.I. algorithms are pretty stupid too, not all of them are smart. Go to "Tools -> Options -> AI" and you will see the following screen:

You can set different difficulty level range from 1 - 10 while you're playing with computers. You may need to wait a little longer if you set the difficulty level to 10.

The most awesome feature about this program is you can also play with online random players! There are 2 online server websites:

www.playxiangqi.com
www.chesscape.com

You can go to "File -> Connect Server" and you will see these 2 websites. What you need to do is go to the website to register a user name. After that, you can login with your user name and password. When you first login, you will see a list of tables. You can either join the existing table or create a new one. The screen that you're seeing is very similar to the one that you play with your computer - just without the "LOCAL_" prefix in your opponent's name.You can also be a watcher and not playing. Anyway, the GUI is self-explanatory and very user friendly. Enjoy!

There are Windows, Mac OS and Linux version. Here is the download page of HOXChess. It also available at iTunes. You can just do a "HOXChess" search in iTunes or AppStore, you should able to find it and it is completely free.

Fastest Way to Check Currency Conversion with Google

2012-01-14T17:28:00.000+08:00

Do you know that we can use "Google" search engine not merely for searching purpose? You can use Google for dictionary and also use Google for world time clock. Cool isn't it? There are a lot more other cool stuff in fact and what I want to share with you today is "Currency conversion with Google".

For example, if I want to check 1 USD equals to how much of MYR (i.e. Malaysia Ringgit). I just need to search for "USD in MYR".

If you want to check how 1MYR equals how much of USD, you can just do the reverse "MYR in USD".

I find this the fattest way you check for currency conversion especially if you know the currency symbol. Hope you will find this useful! :)

Using WebPageTest to Test Your Website Performance

2011-12-17T23:29:00.000+08:00

I just came across this website - WebPageTest.Org which I think is useful to test your website performance especially you're maintaining your own web server. Since I"m using Google blogspot, there are not much performance tweak I can play with. However, you can still see your overall webpage performance and look at the area where you can optimize for.

It is very simple. The first thing you need to do is to key in your website. After that, select the test location and finally just read the test report. There is the quick start guide that you can go through but I think The more important part is interpreting the test result.

In summary, the webpage performance are categorized into the following categories:

First Byte Time
Keep-alive Enabled
Compress Text
Compress Images
Cache static content
CDN detectected

If you get the green color or "A", and look for the rating such as above "C" and "D" and check if there are anything that you can do to improve those rating.

For detail of how to interpret the result and what you can do to improve the rating, please refer to here..

P/S: Hope this is something useful to you especially you're the webmaster or hosting your own web server.

Best Battery Maintenance Tips for iPad and iPhone

2011-11-27T20:43:00.001+08:00

Since the battery for iPad and iPhone is not replaceable, it is a good habit to make sure that your battery have the maximum lifespan. Here are the few tips that I always follow to make sure my iPad/iPhone has the maximum lifespan.

(1) Disable Location Services

One of the useless features in IOS is the location services. It is only enabled for the rest to track you down. The funny thing is some photo applications also use this service which I do not understand. Probably they just want to track you. The only useful application that needs this service is Google Map but you don't need it unless you want to locate your current position. Let's disable this is you really do not need such service.

(2) Turn Off Push Notifications

This is only useful if you use email or instance message for 24 hours and you want to get notified immediately for any new incoming email or new messages. If you are like me, just to check email once a while, you basically do not need such feature. Let's turn it off if you really do not need it because it consumes power.

(3) Set Fetch Data Less Frequently

Your email can be set to fetch data at specific internals. As I mentioned above, I prefer to check my email manually. So what you need to do is go to "Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calender->Fetch New Data" and set it to "Manually".Again, you do not need such feature unless you're really an active user of email or you can set it to hourly to save your battery life if really need to.

(4) Turn off Bluetooth, Wifi, and 3G

If you rarely use Bluetooth, wifi or 3G, you should just turn it off. I often use the "Airplane Mode" if needed to disable all these at once.

(5) Reduce Brightness to < 1 Quarter

The brightness of the screen consumes a lot of power. Unless you're really under a sun light and in most of the cases, you can reduce your iPad or iPhone brightness level less than 1 quarter. You can also turning on the "Auto Brightness" as well.

(6) Turn Off Equalizer Setting

Another useless feature, please turn it off. :) You can set it here in case you do not know: "Setting->iPod->EQ"

(7) Charge Your iPad/iPhone Regularly

iPad or iPhone uses lithium based battery where you need to charge it regularly to keep the electrons inside the battery moving. At least you "MUST" discharge and charge at least once per month. .Please discharge it to less than 20% and then charge it to full (i.e. 100%).

Hope this battery maintenance tips are useful for you and I think this should be the complete one. Please feel free to share with me if you have any other signficant tips to increase the battery lifespan.

Faster GPS Detection Trick Using Garmin Mobile XT

2011-11-06T22:38:00.001+08:00

If you have difficulty to get your GPS lock for your Garmin Mobile XT device, then this post is for you. The GPS "very" slow detection problem happens usually when you travel from one country to another. For example - my last visit to Ireland from Malaysia, when I first turned on my Garmin Mobile XT just after my landing at Ireland, it took me more than 30 minutes to lock. What the heck?

The good news if I found a way or workaround to make the GPS lock to be faster. Here you go the trick you can do before you land at your destination:

(1) Click on the “Satellite Status”

(2) Click “Disable” to disable the GPS and click “GPS Info”

(3) After that, click “New Location”

(4) You will see the map. Browse and move this map to your destination.For example, if your destination is at Ireland airport. Move the map as close as it and then click “OK”.

(5) Turn your Garmin Mobile XT off. You’re now all set.

When you turn it on later at your destination, the GPS detection should be a lot more faster (e.g. less than a few minutes). This is how I work around for getting the GPS faster detection. I”m not sure if other Garmin devices have such problem but this definitely works for Garmin Mobile XT (i.e. mobile version of Garmin). If your Garmin devices have such "very" slow GPS detection problem, you can give this method a try. Good luck!

Best Free FLV to MP3 Conversion Tool

2011-10-22T22:11:00.001+08:00

I was looking for FLV to MP3 conversion tool and my friend recommended me "FreeCorder". So I gave it a try and you know what, it really sucks! It is basically not a FLV to MP3 conversion tool but is a youtube downloader program. The FLV to MP3 is just one of the features. Never mind, I tried it and it just didn't work. Talking about youtube video downloader, it still can't able to compare with Ant Video Downloader which is the best video streaming downloader software that I've ever used! :) The worst part is this software screw up and doesn't allow me to uninstall. Thanks to the "System Restore" feature in windows!

Anyway, I found this piece of software from www.smallvideosoft.com. You can just look for "Freez Flv to Mp3 Converter" to download the FLV to MP3 converter! In case you do not know, the FLV is the video format (i.e. flash video) that you download from youtube for example. :)

I love this software simply because of 2 things.

Very user friendly. You just need to install it and run it. The software is self-explanatory! Just check out the GUI below by yourself!

It is a very small program! Well, this is exactly what I need which is a software to convert FLV to MP3. Please do not give me the extra stuff that I don't need. :)

Well, the sound quality is good too,. I tried to convert the MP4 to MP3 and it worked too! Now I can listen to MP3 directly and no longer need to open FLV! Yeah, hope you will find this free software useful too!

TinyChat - A Web Based Video Chat Room

2011-10-09T12:07:00.001+08:00

If you're lonely and feel like want to video chat with someone, you can try this out TinyChat software. The good thing about this TinyChat is you do not need to install any software into your PC. It is all web based application. I love web based application!

Unlike IMVU, you're dealing with all the real person not "Avatar". :) I tried this software last night when someone shared that in Facebook. So this is what you can do to kick start the fun:

(1) Go into this website, www.tinychat.com. You will see this page:

(2) What I like is, it shows the current real time snapshot of the person in each chat room. You can do the following:

Click on "An Instant Chat Room". This will create a room for you and you will be the moderator. For beginner, you do probably don't want to try that now.

Click on any faces that you like and it will bring you to them. :) You will then can chat with him/her. :) This seems more fun!

(3) It prompts you to enter your user name as follow. If you would like to be anoymous, I will suggest you just to put a nick name and click "Go". Otherwise, you can login using your Facebook or Twitter account.

(4) When you're in the video chat room, you can see bunch of broadcasting video streaming. These are the things that you can do:

"Hide video" for those person that you don't enjoy to see. :D This is especially useful if you find the video streaming is lagging badly.

Click "Start Broadcasting". You can choose either to broadcast your voice or your camera + your voice. When you do that, everyone sees your face and hear your voice!

Chat in the public or chat using private message to person that you would like to talk to. However, people usually ignore the private message.

At first, I thought those person are not real or probably is a video chat bot. So I asked them to raise their hands and do some actions for example to confirm they're real. Yes, in fact they're all real. So there is no cheating here.

People there somehow doesn't talk much but they like to video broadcast themselves and chat using the keyboard. Perhaps they're shy? Anyway, hope you enjoy this! Have fun!

Unable to Remove or Delete Folder due to Outlook Synchronization?

2011-09-16T18:55:00.000+08:00

Sometimes Microsoft Outlook just can’t able to give a better user friendly message. This clear offline items issue is a good example. :)

Yesterday when I was trying to organize my folders in my Inbox, I moved one of my Inbox folder to my PST folder but I got the following error message:

“Outlook has not finished synchronizing local changes made to items in this folder. You can not remove this folder until the synchronization with the server is complete.”

FYI: In case you do not know, PST folder is the personal outlook file that stored in your hard disk rather than your email server. The file extension is *.pst. Your folders or all your emails in your Inbox are stored in the email server not in your hard disk.

So, what will you do after you see this message? Yes, you will wait until the synchronizing is done then you only proceed to move your folders. Unfortunately after 2 days, the error message remains the same. What a crap?

Workload Solutions

Well luckily I found a solution. I don’t know there will be any data lost due to synchronization. But hey, what did you do with the synchronization until 2 days also haven’t finished? Let’s check it out my solution.

Basically the workaround is very simple. You just need to disable “Cached Exchange Mode”. After that you can move or do whatever your want with your inbox folder. You can enable back the “Cached Exchange Mode” after that if you wish.

(1) Go to Menu Tools –> Account Settings…
(2) Double click on your email account.

(3) You will see this (Microsoft Exchange Settings):

(4) Just uncheck the “Use Cached Exchange Mode”. You're now done!
(5) Do whatever you want (e.g. delete or move) your MS inbox folder.
(6) Repeat step (1) –> (3) and check it back the “Use Cached Exchange Mode”

Note: Cached exchange mode basically allows you to view your outlook content during offline. This is extremely useful if your connection to your Microsoft Exchange email is very bad. This is usually for a laptop or mobile users where most of the time you want to view your outlook content offline. If you’re a desktop user and the connection is always good, you may consider not to use this cached exchange mode feature at all.

P/S: Also, I don't see any data lost after moving the folder. So I guess it should be safe? Hope this helps!

Find Source of Original Photo or Image - TinEye Review

2011-09-10T17:01:00.002+08:00

I came across this TinEye website which helps you to search a similar image or photo in all over the internet. This is something useful especially if you wonder where the origin of the photo or image comes from. Let’s check it out!

It is very user friendly. You can either upload your image or enter the image address. After that, , it lists out all the URL website that have a similar image. Then, you can click on those URL links.

What you can use TinEye for?

Copyright Protection - You can know who copy your image. You can then take actions to inform the website owner to take it down for example.

Image or Photo information – For example, you want to know who are those pretty girls in the photo. Probably using this TinEye will able to get you the answer. :)

Image Tracking – Some images (e.g. buttons and banners) are meant to be shared and passed around especially for marketing campaign. You can then use TinEye to track how many sites display those images.

The only drawback with this TinEye which is also sad to say that is, you still do NOT able to find the origin of the photo or image. You still need to look all the URL links by manual and figure out by yourself (e.g. when the image was posted). Anyway, this is still better than nothing right? Probably Google can tell you the answer if Google has created such tool!

P/S: Well, if you have other better software or website that does a better job than TinEye, please let me know. I”m interested to know.

Using Notepad++ to Do File Comparison

2011-08-14T12:14:00.002+08:00

In my previous post, I blog about the “Best File Comparison Software” that there isn’t really any freeware out there can compete with the Araxis Merge software. I’m surprise this is still true until today…

I introduced ExamDiff and TKDiff in my previous post but what is really missing for these 2 tools is the programming language editor (e.g. C++, Java and etc.) You can compare but you can’t highlight those programming syntax and edit those files. This is because both tools are just mainly designed for file comparison tools and not designed for you to edit the files.

The good news is Notepad++ can do both! With Notepad++, you can edit almost all programing and scripting languages and most importantly you can perform file comparison as well without open another tools or software!

To download this Notepad++ freeware, please go to notepad-plus-plus.org.

The file comparison feature is not enabled by default. It is the plug-in that you need to install. To install, you need to go to the “Plugins –> Plugin Manager –> Show Plugin Manager” from the file menu. Check the “Compare’ and click “Install” as you can see in the following:

Once it is installed, you will need to restart the Notepad++...

Steps to Compare

Open files that you would like to compare.
Go to "Plugins -> Compare -> Compare".

Good: What is interesting here is you can compare more than 2 files at once! This is really cool but may not be practical as I seldom compare files more than two. Perhaps this could be something useful to you?

Not So Good: The other thing that I encounter is when you compare a large file, the performance is pretty slow. It takes quite some to load the comparison result and it shows “Not Responding” rather than the “hourglass”. Something to improve on…

Alternative to Google Toolbar PageRank – WebRank

2011-07-31T14:04:00.000+08:00

For some reasons, the Google Toolbar is no longer can be used for the latest Firefox version 5 and above. So you may consider NOT to update your Firefox if you really like Google Toolbar like me. Dear Firefox, I hope I don’t need to make you the top 1 reason that I don’t want to use you like Google Chrome.

2 key features I love Google toolbar are “PageRank” and “Bookmark” as mentioned in my previous post. For bookmark, I think the easiest way is to access “google.com/bookmarks” directly and I think it is still okay without the toolbar. Unlike for Google Page Rank checker website, it is very inconvenient. First, you need to copy and paste the URL to the website. Second, you need to key-in the words verification. Third, you need to click and wait. I really feel this is very not efficient at all!

So I found this awesome “WebRank” toolbar as an alternative to the pagerank feature in Google toolbar. To install this in Firefox or Goole Chrome, please check out the following download links:

Firefox Add-Ons
Chrome Extension (has bugs)

When I tried on the Chrome extension for this WebRank toolbar, it seems like the Google Page Rank cannot be shown for some of the web pages (e.g. my blogs). It seems to me there are still bugs with Google Chrome extension. So, my recommendation is use the Firefox Add-Ons first.

List of Useful WebRank Features

This fella has a lot of SEO related features such as Google Pagerank, Alexa Rank and Pages Indexed in search engine, number of backlinks, bookmarks, whois lookup and not forget the toolbar customization. Out of all these features, only 2 features that I think are useful

Google PageRank
Whois Lookup

Honestly, the Google PageRank is the only feature that I use most often. I disable those seldom use features so that the browser loading speed can be faster. In fact, I configure the WebRank to show “Statusbar” button instead of “Toolbar” which I think it is neat since I only enable 2 features. The status bar button is located at the lower right of your Firefox browser. I feel pretty convenient for this "Statusbar" button. :)

Good luck and have fun playing with this WebRank toolbar!

Best Free Watermark Software from TSR

2011-07-10T16:56:00.001+08:00

I know I may be too bias because I just tried 2 watermark software that recommended by my friend. Obviously TSR is the winning! But still this is the BEST free watermark software that I have tried. lol

Well, 2 key things I like about this Watermark freeware from TSR:

I can watermark many photos or pictures at once automatically. I used to manually open each single picture or photo to perform the watermarking by myself using MS Paint. Stupid isn’t it?
I can customize the watermark such as transparency percentage & color of the watermark, watermark location, and customized watermark image.

The default setting is not really useful. So, after you make the changes to the software you will need to save the setup file (i.e. WMI) or else all your settings will be lost! You just need to go “File->Save Setup As”. You can save as many as setting as you wish and you can later open it.

I also don’t like to resize the image so I uncheck it. I like to use 70% transparency and location at the lower right. I also uncheck the “Add Border” which is enabled by default. I also use text as I don’t have the watermark image yet. Anyway check out the before and after image below!

Original Picture

After Watermark

Is it cool? Or the lizard is cooler? lol. Opps… I just realized I forgot to at the link. Here you go, you can download this free watermark software from TSR Watermarker.

This piece of awesome software is developed by Anders Pedersen and it is only FREE for PERSONAL USE. Enjoy!

Remove Pending Friend Requests in Facebook

2011-06-19T10:49:00.000+08:00

In Facebook, it used to allow you to look at who are your pending friend requests and you can remove those pending friend requests respectively. However, don’t know since when this feature has no longer available. If you go the friends section, you no longer can see who are still in pending friend requests. It is still okay if you still remember who you have requested to be your friend. You can still go to our friend's profile page and cancel the friend request. But what if you have forgotten who you have requested to be your friend?

Thanks to this “Pending Friend Requests” application in Facebook. You can just go there and install this application in your Facebook. This application allows you to look at who are you pending friend request. There are 2 main tabs in this application:

(1) My Pending Requests

Click on the “Remove Request”, it goes to the friends profile page. Of course if you can also “Send Reminder” if you still want to add him or her.

(2) Remove Requests

In your friends' profile page, you can click on the “Cancel Friend Request” to cancel your friend request.

Hope this is useful! Good luck and I hope you don’t get too many “Pending Friend Requests! You don't want to have too many pending friend requests as Facebook may think that you simply request even you do NOT know the person in real and possibly to get your account banned. Happy facebooking! :)

Bypass Malaysian Banned File Sharing Websites

2011-06-12T16:59:00.000+08:00

This post is meant of educational purpose.

If you stay in Malaysia, you may realise that you won’t able to access those file sharing websites anymore. The most famous one will be “Thepiratedbay Dot Org”. Apparently all internet service providers (ISPs) in Malaysia have been ordered to block all these file-sharing websites.

Technically speaking, file sharing has nothing wrong and it should be something legal. What it makes it illegal is the copyright content of the file. So banning this website, you are basically ban everything which includes the legal content as well. Is that fair? It seems to me it doesn’t address the root cause…

How to bypass?

Well, interestingly those banned website can be easily bypass at least for this point in time. First you can perform the DNS lookup through network-tools.com. For example, you can key-in “thepiratebay.org” and you will get an IP address “194.71.107.15”

What you need to do is to enter this IP address “194.71.107.15” into your web browser URL and click enter. Now you should able to access the website. Guess what? Yes, the ISPs (e.g. Streamyx) blocks the website through their DNS server. That’s why you can’t enter “URL name” directly but using the “IP Address” instead. So another workaround probably you can guess now is to change the DNS server!

How to Change DNS Server?

Well, you can refer to my old article on changing the DNS server here. At the same time you will also able to speed up your web browser by changing the DNS server. You have 2 options here. First option is use the Google Public DNS server and the second option is use the OpenDNS server. Since Google public DNS server runs faster, I would prefer to use Google one.

Google Public DNS Server

Preferred DNS server: 8.8.8.8
Alternate DNS server: 8.8.4.4

OpenDNS Server

Preferred DNS server: 208.67.222.222
Alternate DNS server: 208.67.220.220

Hope this helps! Please use this for the right purpose and I strongly discourage you to download illegal copyright content. :)

Copy Saved Photos or Images to Your PC from Ipad

2011-05-29T15:14:00.000+08:00

If you own Ipad and perhaps Iphone too, I bet you definitely save photos or pictures that you like while your browsing the web. The bad thing is the iTunes won’t synch up these “saved” photos by default. What you need to do is manually copy over to your PC.

The fastest way you can do here to manually copy the images from “saved photos” folder over are:

Connect your Ipad to your PC through USB
You will see AutoPlay windows. Click on “Open device to view files”
Browse to “\Internal Storage\DCIM\800AAAAA” and all your saved images from Ipad should be there.
Just copy or cut and paste to your local drive.

Thanks to Windows 7 and Windows Vista! :)

How to Upgrade Jailbreak IOS version?

2011-05-01T11:36:00.000+08:00

When you first jailbreak you iPhone, iPad or iPod, the next thing that you want to worry is how to you upgrade to the latest IOS version. For example, how can you upgrade IOS version to 4.3.2 since your previous jailbreak IOS version is 4.2.1?

Before You Upgrade

You need to do research before you upgrade your jailbreak IOS. You may not need to upgrade at all or else you will only upgrade for troubles!

Check for the latest IOS version. When you turn on your iTunes and click on the update, it tells you what is the latest IOS version release. (e.g. 4.3.2.). Don’t update your IOS firmware yet through iTunes
Go to iClarified and check for whether the “untethered jailbreak” IOS version is available for the latest IOS version that you plan to upgrade. If the website doesn’t have a warning stating the the current jailbreak version is the tethered jailbreak, then it is the untethered jailbreak version.
If “untethered jailbreak” is available for your IOS version that you plan to upgrade, you can now upgrade your IOS version. If no, just stick back to your original jailbreak IOS version and wait for the “untethered jailbreak" IOS version release.

Note: If you don’t know what is tethered vs untethered jailbreak, read my previous post: Should I Jailbreak?

How to Upgrade?

Unfortunately, you can’t upgrade your jailbreak IOS version directly. You need to upgrade to the original IOS firmware and perform the jailbreak process again. Here I list down the steps to upgrade your Jailbreak IOS version.

Connect your iPad, iPod or iPhone to your PC.
Turn on your “itunes” if it is not automatically run. Click on “Check for Update”. Follow on-screen instructions to upgrade your IOS version to the latest release.
Perform jailbreak on the latest IOS version that you have – See my previous post for instructions how to jailbreak: Should I Jailbreak?

Note: If there is problem with step (2), try to click the “Restore” and follow the on-screen instructions to update to the latest IOS version. If it still doesn’t work out (e.g. the iTunes gives you an error “Fail to Update the Firmware”), what you need to do is to re-jailbreak your iDevices again with your original IOS version. After that, perform step (1) and step (2). It works for me.

Summary

In short, just upgrade only when the untethered jailbreak version is available or else just wait for it. To upgrade, you must upgrade to the original firmware and perform the jailbreak again. Good luck!

Best Video Streaming Downloader – Ant Video Downloader

2011-03-20T22:26:00.000+08:00

In the past, I talked about using GreaseMonkey Script and also RealPlayer for youtube downloader but the disadvantage of this script is only for downloading video from YouTube and RealPlayer also seems doesn’t work anymore.

However with Ant Video Downloader, you can download any video streaming as long as you can play it from your browser. That’s cool isn’t it?

You can download Ant Video Downloader here for Internet Explorer or Firefox. Click on either Internet Explorer or Firefox to install the add-on. Once you have installed, everything is done. You just need to restart your web browser.

Go to any video streaming page (e.g. youtube.com), click on and play the video. While the video is playing, click on the Ant Downloader at the status bar as shown by the arrow in the picture below and it will show you the videos that you're currently downloading:

P/S: Any video streaming will be automatically downloaded by Ant Downloader as long as you’re playing through the web browser. When you close the browser or close the browser tab, the video will stop downloading. I really love this guy that can download any videos on web (not only just youtube).Have fun!:)

Should I Jailbreak my iPad, iPhone or iPod?

2011-02-17T01:42:00.004+08:00

I just bought iPad few weeks ago and the first question that comes to my mind is, should I jailbreak my iPad? So, should I? Yes, I should and let me tell you why…

Reasons why you should jailbreak?

(1) It is now legal.

First of all, it is LEGAL to do that (under Digital Millennium Copyright Act - DMCA of 2010).

(2) Access to more applications.

You can download or purchase third-party applications or games that are not approved by Apple. After you jailbreak your iPad, iPhone or iPod, there is an application called “Cydia” which consists of list of third-party applications. So jailbreaking your iDevices not only limit yourself to applications that approved by Apple.

(3) It is reversible.

Anything that goes wrong with your jailbreak, you still can reverse back to the original firmware. This also means Apple claims it to void your warranty is no longer a concern. To do that, you just need to “Press Restore” in your itunes. There is an option to backup your data before you restore but what I wouldn’t want to do that as I”m not sure whether what would happen to your non-approved applications after you restored them back to the original firmware. Just make a clean restore will do…

Reasons why you should NOT jailbreak – Really?

(1) Download paid applications for FREE

A website such as “AppTrackR dot ORG”and “iPhoneCake dot COM” are pretty famous for you to download cracked applications or games. However, you shouldn’t jailbreak your iPad, Iphone or iPod just because you can download those paid applications for free. That is in fact ILLEGAL in my opinion. So, don’t do that! :) Of course this is subject to argument as some said this is in fact legal – something similar to “thepiratedbay dot org”? Well, make your own judgement! I would recommend you NOT to do that.

(2) Voiding Warranty

I’m not sure if this is still valid as you can now reverse back to original firmware. Honestly, I don’t think you need to reverse back because I’ve never heard people complaining any issues (due to hardware failure) after they jailbreak their iDevices. So this is what I will recommend you to do before jailbreak your iDevices:

Make sure all the hardware functionality are working (e.g. microphone, speaker, wifi, audio jack in (headphone, earphone) and etc.).
Try to play around with your original iPad for a week before you jailbreak, then it should be safe enough that you shouldn’t encounter any hardware failure.

(3) Untethered jailbreak has not been released

I mention this is because this was one of the reasons I worried before I jailbreak my iPad. In case you do not aware, there are 2 type of jailbreaks – tethered and untethered jailbreaks. Tethered jailbreak is usually released first which means you need to boot in iPad, iPhone or iPod from your Windows or Mac. Well, this seems troublesome but you shouldn’t worry at all because you shouldn’t reboot your iPad very often. What you really want to do is to close those unused applications:

Double touch your “Home” button and it shows you a list of applications run at background.
Touch and hold the application until you see the negative sign (i,e. “-“) on the upper left of the application icon.
Touch the “-“ sign to close those applications. Go back to home screen by touching the “home” button again.

[Update: 27 April 2011] Okay, I experienced the hang issue during my travel 2 weeks ago and caused me unable to reboot my iPad due to the tethered jailbreak. So, this my real life bad experience of using tethered jailbreak. One reason for you not to go for tethered jailbreak...

[Update: 27 April 2011] However, the hang issue still can be avoided. The reason why it hanged is because I always turn the iPad to the "Standby" mode (i.e the power ON button) when I'm in the middle of something (e.g. playing the games halfway). To reduce the chances of hang (i.e. almost 100%, I don't experience the hang issue anymore), pause the game, quit & save the game or go to the main menu of the game, and lastly click the the "Home" button before you standby your iDevices. Hope this helps! :)

(4) Security Issues

You worry about your iPad security issue because those applications that you install no longer are certified by Apple. But, let me ask you this – have you every installed applications that are not from Microsoft when you use windows OS? If yes, then you shouldn't worry much about security issues in iOS (Apple) then.

Jailbreaking is just enable enable your iDevices to support third-party applications and not only limited to applications that are certified by Apple. This is exactly same with installing your Microsoft Windows OS in your laptop by default which allow you to install any kind of applications. So you shoudln’t worry much about this.

If you really concern on security, please pay attention to the applications that you download and make sure it is from the reliable source just like the way you do in Windows. For me, I’ve never trusted Safari web browser, so I will never use sensitive information (e.g. email account, credit card, bank account) with my iPad.

Conclusion - Jailbreak or Not?

So, what is your decision? Jailbreak or NOT? No, if you intend to download illegal crack applications or games. Otherwise, I think you should. Agree? FYI - iClarified is the best reliable source to jailbreak your iPad, iPhone or iPad. This is what you need to do:

Select the device that you would like to jailbreak
Select the software that you would like to use to jaibreak (e.g. GreenPoisnOn or RedSnOw). Personally I have only tried using RedSnOw and so far it is perfect. So I will suggest you to use that as well.
Make sure you follow the exact instructions after you have selected to software to jailbreak. The instructions listed in iClarified are very clear and useful.

Happy Jailbreaking!

[Update: 1 May 2011] If you want to know how to upgrade your already jailbroken devices, see my latest post: How to Upgrade Jailbreak?

Use PageRank to Detect Fraud Website - Secure Web Browsing

2010-12-27T10:50:00.000+08:00

One of the very useful ways to check whether a web site is reliable (such as is this website a fraud website?), I always use the page rank to determine them. PageRank is the Google’s view of the importance of the page and it gives the ranking from 0 to 10.

Those fraud websites are usually new and have no PageRank (i.e. grey out) or have PageRank “0”. So, what I usually do is I check the PageRank of those website whenever I have doubts (such as bank website and etc.) If you go to any bank website that has no PageRank or PageRank “0”, you may need to be be careful as those website are usually fraud.

You can see the PageRank of each website using the “Google Toolbar”. Check out my previous post on how to use and install the Google Toolbar in your browser. Most famous website (such as bank or large corporation) usually have PageRank > 5. Just move your mouse cursor over to the PageRank bar (in green color), it shows you the PageRank of the current page. Of course, please wait until the web page is finished loading.

This is what I call secure web browsing using PageRank. Good luck & happy browsing!

Windows Movie Maker is Not Available in Windows 7

2010-11-06T15:28:00.000+08:00

Very funny that Windows 7 has removed this Windows Movie Maker by default. I guess the reason is MS now package this fella as part of the Windows Live Essentials. Therefore, it is now called Windows “Live” Movie Maker. As usual, Microsoft likes to change their products name….

To check whether you have already installed Windows live Movie Maker in Windows 7, just go to the Start Button and key-in “Movie Maker” . If the “Windows Live Movie Maker” program appears, then you already have that installed in your Windows 7. If no, you will need to download and install it from here: Windows Live Movie Maker.

See one of my creations here! Of course this is the simple form of movie making but it is good enough for me. Enjoy! :)

Insert Table with Windows Live Writer for Your Blog

2010-10-17T17:24:00.000+08:00

I used to write my blog post in MS word, then OpenOffice writer and later on write directly in the Blogger platform itself. However, there is one common problem with all these methods is that to insert a table into my blog post is always troublesome. Whatever the table that I created in either word or OpenOffice, I can’t port it over to my blogspot. The copy & paste just doesn’t work or it doesn’t show up exactly the one I expected. Converting to HTML doesn’t work either. Not to talk about the blogger platform which there is no way for you to insert a table at all!

Well of course the workaround I used to do is write the HTML code directly for table. Nowadays, do we really still need to code in HTML code? So I found the best reliable to use the Windows Live Writer which generates the exactly basic table HTML code. This is exactly what I”m looking for that which is kind of simple in fact.

Windows Live Writer is completely free from Microsoft and I find it the very useful and simple enough to use. I start using it to write my draft, then later on port it over to my blogging platform. The thing I don’t really comfortable with is the “Publish” feature which allows you to publish directly to your blogging platform. It requires you to enter your “password” of your blogging platform which I don’t really trust Microsoft on this. Therefore, I don’t really use it to publish my post and instead I manually port it over to my blogging platform. Do I use it the wrong way?

You can download Windows Live Writer here.

Few Notes:

Windows Live writer won’t allow you start writing your draft until you link your blog account. Since I don’t like the “Publish” feature, what I did is to simply register the Windows Live ID. Go to “Blogs” –> “Add Blog Account…” and select “I don’t have a blog; create one Windows Live for me”. Click next and follow the on-screen instructions.

After I write my draft or insert my table (in “Edit” tab at below), I click the the “Source” tab to view the raw HTML format. I will then just copy & paste this HTML code into my blogging platform. This is as simple as that.

You need to click on the “Save draft” after you write your content. To retrieve your draft, you just need to click on the upper right of the windows.

P/S: I still do it manually for inserting the picture and image into the blogger platform which I’m perfectly fine with it. However if you use the “Publish” feature, this should be fine and you do not need to manually upload your picture. I also use Windows Live Writer to write my blog post content offline. This is very useful especially when I”m traveling to China where a lot of websites are blocked (e.g. blogger.com is one of them).

Disable Useless LinkScanner in AVG

2010-10-03T14:07:00.000+08:00

The LinkScanner feature in the AVG is a completely useless feature in my opinion. It doesn’t help at all but instead making your browser super slow! You have 2 options:

Option 1: Disable the LinkScanner feature

Double click the AVG icon on your lower right.
Click on the “Link Scanner” and you will see the following page

Uncheck “Enable AVG Search-Shield”, “AVG Active Surf-Shield”

Note: The drawback with this option is your will see the warning sign in the AVG icon mentions that your system is not fully protected. This is fine if you’re okay with this. If you don’t like the warning, then you can try the option 2 below.

Option 2: Disable the add-on in your browser

For Firefox:

Go to “Tools –> Ad-ons” and you see the following screen.
Look for the “AVG Safe Search” and click “Disable”

For Internet Explorer:

Go to “Tools –> Manage Ad-ons” and you see the following screen.
Look for the “AVG Safe Search” under AVG Technologies and click on “Disable” button.

Note: This option is preferable if you hate the warning AVG icon on lower right windows bar.

P/S: I will suggest AVG to completely remove this useless feature and I don’t think that is not really necessary but will only make the browser runs slower. Having the “Resident Shield” is good enough…

Using MSconfig for Selective Startup in Your Windows

2010-09-26T02:30:00.001+08:00

One of the key reasons why your windows is running extremely slow is because you load too many programs during your windows startup that you may not aware at all. MSconfig or System Configuration tool is the most useful software that comes together with windows that allows you to choose what startup programs that you would like to run.

Steps to Run System Configuration Tool

(1) Click “Start” and key in the “msconfig” to run program directly or go to “Start” –> “Control Panel” –> “System and Maitenance” –> “Administrative Tools” –> “System Configuration”. You will see the following screen:

(2) Click on the ‘Services” tab and disable the services that you do not like to run in your PC. You need to look at each services and understand the purpose of this services. You can “Google them” to find out more about their purpuse to run at the background. For myself, I list down some examples of services that I disable:

AVG Free E-mail Scanner (Since I don’t use external email programs

AMD External Events Utility (For Hotkeys which is not necessary)

Note: This is the advanced usage. Please make sure you restart your PC to make sure you don’t screw up everything. If really so, load the windows in safe mode and enable back the services.

(3) Click on the “Startup” tab and disable the startup programs that you do not like to run. Again, you need to look at each start up programs and decide whether you really still need them in startup. This is some examples of the startup programs that I disable:

Adobe Reader and Acrobat Manager (it is usually no needed – same to MS office startup programs that usually is useless to put them into the startup)

Adobe Acrobat (Same with the reason above - it usually loads in startup for loading the application faster later on)

Dell Support Center Updates, Google Update, Java Platform SE Auto Updater (any auto update programs that you think are not needed)

Catalyst Control Center (graphic configuration that I think I can load it manually if I want to)

GoogleToolbarNotifier (a program that run all the time to make sure you Google is always your default search engine which is not needed at all)

Synaptics Pointing Device Driver (It is my touch pad driver and I don’t feel any different if I disable it)

Note: Of course you will find more startup programs to disable but please make sure you restart your PC to make sure you don’t screw up everything. If really so, load the windows in safe mode and enable back the startup programs.

P/S: By the way this is the advance usage to selective disable the services and startup programs. The simple way before you start doing this is, you should uninstall any unnecessary programs in your system. For example, your laptop which comes together with those trail version of application or pre-install useless application from the vendor (e.g. Dell) and if you don’t need them, you should uninstall all of them. Good luck!

Best Way to Convert Word Document To PDF – OpenOffice

2010-09-19T13:15:00.001+08:00

There are a lot of of freeware out there to convert your existing MS Word document to Adobe PDF but I found that the easiest way is to use the OpenOffice. What you need to do is to open the MS Word with the OpenOffice Writer tool and export it to PDF. That’s it!

Steps to Export to PDF

(1) Open Your MS Word document with OpenOffice Writer
(2) Go to “File” -> “Export as PDF…” You will see the following screen:

(3) You can play around with plenty of options here or just let it be the default option.
(4) Click “Export” button to generate the PDF.

Useful Export PDF Options

Wait a minute! There are few things that I think that might be useful to you.

Export Note: This is especially useful if you want to retain the notes in your slides
Set Permission Password: This is probably the key reason why people wants to convert their document to PDF. Yes, security! You don’t want people can simply copy your content. Here is the place you set the security in the “Security Tab” while you’re exporting your document to PDF.

Note: Set Open Password is used to encrypt your PDF so it can't be open at all. I don't think this is something common people will usually do.

Steps to Setup the Permission

(1) Click on “Security” tab in the PDF Options while you’re exporting your document to PDF
(2) Click on “Set permission password”. Follow the on-screen instruction to set the password.
(3) After that, you will see the screen below. Of course the highest level of security is to:

Set “Not Permitted” in the changes options - NOT allow to made changes.
Uncheck/unselect “Enable copying of content” - NOT allow to copy.
Uncheck/unselect “Enable text access for accessibility tool” - NOT really sure what this is but it seems like same with above (which is not allow you to copy).

P/S: Hope this is useful to you especially the security feature. I have tried it myself and it is pretty simple. Oh yes, this is completely FREE too. You can download OpenOffice her e. Have fun!

Free Youtube Downloader - Customized Java Script from Greasemonkey

2010-08-29T13:57:00.003+08:00

I come across this extremely useful Firefox plug-in (i.e. Greasemonkey) to enable the customized user java script for any website. You can write your own java script (if you know how) or you can browse all the available user Java scripts from www.userscripts.org.

I'm going to use the "Download YouTube Video as MP4" user jaya script as an example here to show how we can install "user script" into the GreaseMonkey Firefox plug-in.

Steps to Install User Script

Install Greasemonkey here. Click on the "Add to FireFox".Follow the instructions on screen.
Install "Download YouTube as MP4" script here. Click on the "install" button.

Done. Simple isn't it?

Now, you can go to any YouTube page and you will see the "Download" button as follow. You can either download the "FLV" or "MP4" format. After that, you can use VLC - My Best Video Player to watch the video.

Notes: You can also remove or made changes to all the installed user script by going to the "Tools->Greasemonkey->Manage User Scripts...".

P/S: Have fun and I hope you did find this "GreaseMonkey" Firefox plug-in useful. Please be careful of not simply install any user scripts but only those famous & reliable one. If you can read the reviews of the script to figure that out...

[Update: 11 Sept 2011]

Now, I'm using the Ant Video Downloader. Please check it out!