iCopy is a free and open source software that lets you combine your scanner and printer into a powerful, yet easy to use photocopier by only pressing a button. It let you tweak scanner and printer options (eg. brightness, contrast, number of copies) in a simple interface in just a couple of seconds in a small and no-installation-required application.

Features

System requirements

Download from here.

I lots of files in my hard drive and i burn out gigabytes of data every month to keep my already overcapacitied hard disk from blowing. This translates into hundreds of CDs/DVDs. One thing I’ve noticed is that there is only so much space on the disk label to write down what files are contained within and I hate searching through CDs/DVDs and popping each one in to search for a particular file (despite my best efforts of labelling).

If you are having the same difficulties to locate a file in a CD/DVD and placing then removing a CD/DVD from your CD/DVD Drive a couple of time before you finally found what you’re looking for then Visual CD is the fast and easy way to help you out. What Visual CD does is to help you manage your CD/DVD collection by indexing/cataloguing your CDs/DVDs. You can also catalogue floppy disk (if you happen to still use them), hard disks (thought I think Google desktop should be your default search tool). You can then either search or explore the disk catalogs, searching for files and folders without actually having the physical disks in the drive. It has an intiutive explorer-like interface.

Visual CD is freeware. Download from here

TrackIDâ„¢ is a feature available in most of the newer range of mobile phones from Sony Ericsson. It’s a feature that allows you to record a few seconds of a song using your mobile, and get track, artist and album information sent to you in seconds. While it’s a handy tool to help you identify the song name, it’s considered under hyped in a sense that many haven’t tested it or aren’t even aware of it.

In this article, I’ll demonstrate step-by-step how to use TrackID via my Sony Ericsson W880i

First, I play a song in my WMP11, let’s try with a Cantonese song and see if TrackID is able to recognise it or not..

Then, while the song is being played, I launch TrackID from my W880i main menu..

Press start to identify the music track currently in play..

Recording in progress..

And wait for the sample track to be uploaded to the Internet..

And here you go, you’ve got the song info! And surprisingly it can recognise Cantonese songs too. You can also send the info to your friend via SMS :-)

But one thing to take note, the success rate is definitely not 100%, I’ve tested it quite a number of times and it doesn’t always work. Anyway, have fun with it if you’ve got your latest Sony Ericsson Walkman phone with you.

A widescreen LCD is excellent for watching widescreen format media such as TV series, movies, application development IDEs, but the same doesn’t apply to browsing the web.

Due to the plethora of cross-browser issues, many web designers/developers have resorted to restricting the width of web pages to 800 pixels which is somewhat the minimum resolution which most users displays has been set to. As such, opening these web pages end up with a lot of blank wasted space on the left and right of the content on widescreen LCDs.

One way of getting around this is to have 2 browsers open side by side like this:

To get to that state, you would have to resize each window to fit half of the screen besides positioning it. Fortunately, there is an add-on (extension) called Split Browser which enables a single Firefox window to be split up to house multiple tabs. Screenshot of it in action:

Instead of 2 separate Firefox windows, they’re both tabs within one.

Opera users would probably be pointing out that this capability is already built into the standard Opera browser, but I guess this entry is targeted towards Firefox users who would like to have this ‘feature’ without having to switch to another browser. ;)

User Account Control (UAC) is a feature introduced in Windows Vista to improve the security of Windows by limiting applications to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in privilege level. For instance, you’ll see a notification like this every time you run an EXE file.

While it could be an useful security feature for inexperienced users, there have been complaints that UAC notifications slow down various tasks, such as new software installation when the user sure that the installation file is 100% safe.

To disable UAC, first go to Control Panel\User Accounts, then click on “Turn User Account Control on/off”

Un-tick the check box and proceed by clicking OK

And finally, you’ll be asked to restart the computer, the usual way of how Windows works :-)

After that, you’ll be able to enjoy the level of freedom and convenience you had in Windows XP, of course you must still practice caution and prevent any malicious files from running on your system.

Open up a command prompt:

1. Start | Run | type cmd | Enter
2. Type netstat -aon | findstr “[port number]“
3. Take note of the numbers on the last line. This is the PID or Process ID.
4. Type tasklist | findstr “[PID]“ and this will return the application corresponding to that PID.
5. Once PID is determined, you can now kill it in Task Manager or kill it typing tskill at the command prompt.

For example:

1. I type netstat -aon | findstr “8080″ at command prompt (I’m on a proxy by the way)
2. I see that the PID is 3624
3. I type tasklist | findstr “3624″ to find what PID 3624 is and it points to msnmsgr.exe which is MSN/Live Messenger.
4. I can now kill MSN Messenger from Task Manager or type tskill 3624

Unfortunately, I absolutely loathe iTunes (slow and clunky) and am already perfectly happy with foobar2000 as my music player. Thankfully, I’m not the only one with that mindset..

One software which I’ve been using for quite awhile now instead of iTunes is called YamiPod. An acronym for ‘Yet another iPod manager’, it is a freeware application with versions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It does not require any installation and basically runs straight after extracting it to a location of your choice.

For the first start of YamiPod, you would be prompted to select the type of iPod you have (and/or the generation). This would only have to be done once and it would remember the next time you connect your iPod. Once that’s sorted out, you would be presented with a simple interface which supports drag and drop from Explorer/My Computer (for Windows). Screenshots of it can be found here.

A list of other iPod managers can be found here. I have yet to try any others, so if you have tried another which you think is much better, feel free to let us know. :)

And for those of you who think iTunes is the best music player, do try out foobar2000. It’s highly customisable, extensible and not bloated with crap. You can check out the configuration I’m using here.

First off all, download the plugin from here and extract the content to your root of your UltraVNC folder (defaulted to “C:\Program Files\UltraVNC”). Note: extract to the root of the folder and not the plugin folder (that’s just a container).

Server Configuration
Now on your UltraVNC Server and you should see MSRC4Plugin in the DSM DSM plugin drop down box.

Check Use and hit the Config button.A MSRC4 Plugin Configuration window will pop up.

You will notice that there aren’t any encryption plugin keys present(naturally since we haven’t created any) so make your first key. Select the default 128 bit hit Gen Key.The configuration tool will close after generating the key and this key will be used from now on on every client computer to allow you to view your server running on that specific key-based encryption. You will notice a new file in your UltraVNC installation folder called rc4.key.

Important: Make sure you bring along this key file (rc4.key) along with your UltraVNC or the client will not be able to interact or see the server.

Client Configuration
Copy this rc4.key to your UltraVNC client’s root directory as with the steps in the Server. When you launch your UltraVNC client, check the box called “Use DSMPlugin” and enter your server’s IP address. Click on connect, enter your password.Done!

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia’s entry on quality control of LCDs:

Some LCD panels have defective transistors, causing permanently lit or unlit pixels which are commonly referred to as stuck pixels or dead pixels respectively. Unlike integrated circuits, LCD panels with a few defective pixels are usually still usable. It is also economically prohibitive to discard a panel with just a few defective pixels because LCD panels are much larger than ICs.

I’m not going to bore you with more explanation of what stuck and dead pixels mean (click on the links to check the Wikipedia entries on those), so I’ll get on with the nifty tool which would allow you do easily test your new LCD monitor you just got is free of dead/stuck pixels which is called Dead Pixel Buddy.

It’s a small zip file download which just contains the executable and does not require any installation. Just unzip and run it and an application similar to what is shown below should appear:

A hassle free way to test is just to hit ‘Test Cycle’ and it would cycle through all the colours from 1-6 every 10 seconds (default value, can be changed to whatever you want). Alternatively, you could hit the numbers on your keyboard one by one to go through all of it or by clicking around with the mouse.

Happy testing! :)

Part One
By now you should have VNC installed and you’d be able to connect via LAN. Make sure you register the VNC Server as a system service if you want it to run automatically on Windows start-up.

Now lets expand this control over the Internet. To control your PC over Internet you’ll have to;

1) Know your IP address. If you’re on a static IP then all’s well, if you’re given a dynamic IP by your ISP then you will need;
a) take note of your IP whenever you leave home.
b) register with any of the numerous free dynamic DNS services. What this service does is offer a service to keep a domain name linked to a changing IP address on those who are on dynamic IPs via a dynamic update client that runs on your local computer and updates the dynamic DNS service site. Logging into the site will give you your ip.

2) Permit traffic on the SSH port 22 on the server (the pc you want to control) and if you’re on a router you need to port forward the VNC traffic to your server in which VNC Server is listening. How this is done depends on which firewall and/or router you are using. eg. in Windows XP SP2’s Firewall, go to Start | Control Panel | Windows Firewall | Exceptions tab | Add port | port name SSH, port 22, TCP.

If you’re behind a router or your bridge-modem is in router mode, you’ll need to forward TCP port 22 to the server. This means that any traffic coming in through port 22 (the SSH port) will be passed through the router and directed to the server. Here’s a useful site detailing on how to port forward on popular routers.

This is what port forwarding looks like on my Linksys AM300 modem/router.

Part Two
Because access to a VNC Server allows access to your whole computer, security is of upmost important. VNC is inherently unsecure, thus the need to encrypt the traffic moving between both machines (client and server) as encryption in VNC is only used when the initial connection (when you login). Once connected, all VNC data is unencrypted, and a malicious user could snoop your VNC session with a number of scanning programs available that will scan a subnet looking for PCs listening on any ports which VNC uses.

The purpose of VNC + SSH is to remove this security risk. SSH, or the Secure Shell, allows secure (encrypted and authenticated) connections between any two machines running SSH. The wide variaty of connections supported by SSH include file transfer protocols, TCP/IP port forwarding, terminal sessions et cetera. SSH is capable of using a number of encryption algorithms like AES-256, TripleDES, and-so-forth (I think that’s enuff tech jargons to throw around). By tunnelling VNC over a SSH connection, you will be able to acces the host and have all traffic strongly encrypted.

Getting & Installing OpenSSH
There’s two ways to go about this. You can either get the standalone installation file of OpenSSH here or download Cygwin and grab the relevant OpenSSH packages. Cygwin is a powerful *nix API emulator which has many uses that can replace the usual cmd.exe of our windows. What this means is it allows *nix programs/binaries (or bin) to be run in Windows. Maybe a tutorial for this will be up next on the power of Cygwin.

After downloading Cygwin, hit the Set-up exe file. Cygwin is actually an installation and update utility that retrieves the bin packages from the Internet. As you can guess, the package we’re interested in is called OpenSSH and can be found in the Net category. After Installation is complete you need to add Cygwin environmental variables to your server to add the OpenSSH service and point to the bin file. Do this by right clicking on My Computer | Selecting Properties | going to the Advanced tab and hitting the | Environment Variables button and;

1. Add the variable CYGWIN and ntsec tty by using the Add button.

2. Add C:\cygwin\bin (or whatever your installation directory is, for me it was C:\Program Files\Cygwin\bin) to the at the end of the existing line of the PATH environment variable by using the Edit button. (Warn: Don’t remove the existing lines, just append this line to the end of the line or you’ll screw your paths)

3. Configure OpenSSH on Cygwin by typing ssh-host-config at the prompt with the following answers;


“Privilege Separation?” Yes
“Create local user SSHd?” Yes
“Install SSHd as a service?” Yes
“CYGWIN = ” enter ntsec


4. We can now start the SSH daemon (thats service to you Windows folks) by either typing net start sshd within Cygwin, typing cygrunsrv.exe -S sshd or simply rebooting the machine. You can check if SSH is runningby by typing netstat -a in the command prompt and look for the line with ssh. To stop the SSH service type net stop sshd

Connecting to VNC thru SSH
Adjust the VNC server settings.

1. Select allow loopback connections on the VNC server.

2. Create a local forwarded tunnel using the command ssh -p 5900 admin @60.49.120.110 -L 5900:127.0.0.1:5900 command to forward port 5900 (the default VNC port if you haven’t changed it to another, if so replace this with your specified value instead) on the client where the public IP of your router is 60.49.120.110. The loopback interface address (that’s 127.0.0.1 to you) must be used.

Connect to the VNC server over the SSH tunnel
To complete the procedure, start the VNC viewer on the and point to the server at 127.0.0.1:0:5900. At this point, the connection is forwarded from the client machine to the VNC server over SSH and you should receive the VNC authentication prompt. All network traffic is transparently encrypted by the SSH tunnel.

Troubleshooting Checklist
Since this involves multiple setups and an unususally long guide, here is a brief troubleshooting checklist should you run into problems.

1) If you can SSH from the server to the server (SSH locally) = SSH server is functioning.
2) If you can SSH from a computer over LAN to the SSH server = IP and LAN connection is functioning.
3) If you can SSH from a computer over WAN (i.e. on the other side of the NAT router) to your SSH server, then you know that the router’s port-forwarding is working.

The same rules apply to VNC.

Securing UltraVNC is much easier but that’s for another article. :)