A new version of Firefox will be launching tomorrow on November 8 although you can now get the official download via Mozillas FTP server. The new version of Firefox 8 brings several new features to the browser which includes a more secure environment for add-ons. Prior to the release of version 8, the 7 versions have all automatically allowed add-ons to be installed. More security is now in place so you can more easily monitor this.

As well as having more control as to what gets installed or updated, Mozilla has also added the ability to stop new add-ons working on the first start of the browser as well as Firefox providing details of what might not work due to incompatibilities.

Tabs can also be set to activate as and when they are loaded up. You might have 10 tabs that auto load when starting up the browser, but now you can select an option to only load the tabs when selected thus saving time to start browsing when first launching it. These options are set in Tools > Options > General.

Twitter is now embedded in to the address and search bars. When doing searches it will automatically bring up content from Twitter if desired. Thanks to the sheer size of Twitter, it is now quite a decent real-time news source about events that are happening around the world.

The downloads are available now direct from the Mozilla FTP server with the Mac version of the browser found here, and the Windows version over here.

Some time tomorrow, you’ll also be able to check for updates within Firefox or visit the home page to find the latest version available.

Source 1,2

It was a number of years ago that mobile phones were limited to storing just 10 text messages. Now that the smartphone has arrived, there’s generally a lot more storage space to store messages with some people having hundreds or thousands stashed away more than likely never to be read again. In some cases this can be a bad thing though as more messages means a larger database which in turn, means the device can become a little sluggish.

For Android smartphone owners there is an answer and that is SMS Backup. SMS Backup is an app that you can install and configure to communicate with your GMail account. Once configured, you can instruct it to backup your SMS messages to your Gmail account which in turn, get labelled as SMS messages for sorting purposes.

All you need to do to get the SMS Backup app working is enable IMAP in your Gmail account:

To get started, first enable IMAP in your Gmail account available under Gmail Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> Enable IMAP

When this is done, you need to load up the app on your Android smartphone and provide it with your Gmail username and password. Once done, you can check your Gmail account for the messages and when you’re happy it has them stored safely you can remove them from your device. By having your messages in your Gmail account it also makes them searchable although removing them from your device will mean you need to use Gmail to access the old text messages.

Thanks to Labnol for the tip!

The Google Docs viewer is a handy tool that lets you preview files that are emailed to your Gmail account. The reason it’s so handy is that you don’t need to download a file and clutter your hard drive if you just want to read the attached document.

Google has announced that it now supports both ZIP and RAR files. The Docs Viewer makes it easy to look inside the compressed folder of files and only download the specific file within that you want. The screenshow of what it looks like can be found below:

When the list of files loads up in the viewer, you simply need to hover over one of the items to reveal a drop down menu. Here, you have the choice to upload that specific file to Google Docs (if compatible), download the specific file to your hard drive or print the document as a PDF file.

Google also reports that compressed ZIP files stored within a ZIP file can also be viewed in the Docs Viewer working in the same way in that you click on the file within the file and it loads it up in the viewer. Another handy update also sees the Docs Viewer on mobile devices also functioning in the same way.

Google has asked for feedback on other file formats that you want to see made usable in the Google Docs Viewer. To provide feedback, visit the Google Blog.

I had a look at some statistics for one of my blogs just now and saw that only 23.18% of visitors in the last 6 weeks are using the latest version of Internet Explorer. The numbers are below:

The numbers above are only for Internet Explorer. Looking at the other popular browsers we see the following:

Firefox

Google Chrome

I wont go on with the full list, but from looking at the screenshots above, you can see that there’s many people who are using older versions of a browser.

Problems with Older Browsers and Benefits with New Browsers

Older browsers are more vulnerable to attacks than newer browsers. When Microsoft, Google or Mozilla find out about a security issue they fix it and make an updated browser available. By not installing the latest browser you are leaving your computer open to potential script attacks and other problems. This is one of the main reasons it’s good to keep your browser current.

The second reason which is also just as compelling is that new browsers use newer technology which means you often get a better browsing experience in terms of speed/performance as well as compatibility. This is evident in statistics in that users who are on Internet Explorer 9 tend to browse around my site more than when they are on Internet Explorer 6, 7 or 8. I believe this is because IE9 is a far better browser than previous versions in terms of speed. When web pages load quicker, it’s easier to browse around a website.

How to Update your Browser

Updating your web browser is relatively easy. If you use Internet Explorer then visit the Microsoft Website which always has the latest browser ready for download. In some cases, you might need to run through the Windows Update process to install a more current service pack or other software to allow it to work. The IE install will let you know if you run in to any problems.

For Google Chrome, open up the browser and click on the tool icon (top right) and then click About Google Chrome. In the box that loads up, a check will be done and let you know if you are running a current or older version of the browser. Here, you can select to update if needed (pictured below):

To update Firefox you don’t really need to do anything if you are moving within the same version number… ie, 3.1 to 3.2 for example. Each time a new update is available you automatically get the option to upgrade. However, if you want to move from an older version (perhaps version 3) to the latest which is version 5 then you need to visit the download site found over here. The new version is 5 and brings a number of enhancements such as security updates that we mentioned above as well as some interesting new features such as synced tabs, popup blocking and ad blocking.

Let us know if you run in to any problems with updating your browser by commenting below. Just remember that newer browsers run better, are more secure and can give an overall better browsing experience.

One of the handy features of Windows XP, Vista and 7 is the System Restore utility. I’ve shared quite a bit in the past on how to remove a virus or malware by using safe mode and various other means, but one of the easiest ways which often is successful, is to use the built in System Restore tool on Windows 7 (or below).

System Restore comes built in to Windows and is switched on by default. What it does is makes a backup of your “system state” each time something changes. These changes could be Windows updates or other software you install. Take a look below to see how many “states” have been saved since I reinstalled Windows a few days ago:

To use System Restore effectively, you need to make sure you are restoring to a time period before you were infected with a virus. In some cases, a virus or malware is obvious in that you load up a web page, get an infection and your computer breaks. In these situations, click the Windows button, do a search for System Restore and restore the last backup before you were infected.

It gets more complicated if you’ve had a virus for months and only just realised as you need to dig deep in to the archives of System Restore and try find a point in time when your system was virus free. This could mean you lose some installed programs. The good news is that only the system state is restored which means all your documents, images, music etc… should be just fine.

How to Use System Restore

This (and most other tutorials here) focus on Windows 7, but older versions are very similar in regards to system restore.

1)Click Start and type in to the “search programs and files” box – System Restore. At the top of the list the System Restore program should be listed under Programs. Click on it.

2)You are presented with the screenshot above. Here you need to select the restore point you will use. If you are confident the date showing is before the time you were infected then restore that. Otherwise, select “choose a different restore point”.

3)Click Next. If you selected the provided date then system restore will begin. If not, you will be presented with an option to choose from several (or more) restore points. Here you need to select one that you know for sure is before the virus hit. Select it and click next.

4)Click Finish and your PC will go through the restore sequence.

After booting, your PC will be rolled back to the restore point but at the same time, it will keep all documents/images/music etc… in place. However, you might need to reinstall some applications if you have rolled back past the installation points.

When the restore sequence is complete we recommend updating your virus scanner/malware scanner as well as checking for Windows Updates to ensure your PC is up to date.

Also, check to see if there are any updates to your web browser. If you’re running Internet Explorer 6 then this could be a good reason you got infected with a virus. Update to Internet Explorer 9 to be more safe while browsing online.

I needed to get rid of an old PC this past week. My main worry when disposing of an old computer is not the hardware, but the software and files that get left on the hard drive. Normally I just end up taking the hard drive out and storing it at home to be never used again. I then came across a handy tool called the Ultimate Boot CD which contains a number of useful diagnostics tools one of which is called DBAN. The main menu of the Ultimate Boot CD can be found below:

The Ultimate Boot CD allows you to boot from CD (or USB if you use the software to configure that) and run a number of tools and utilities that make some admin tasks a lot easier. A few examples include repartitioning your hard drive or perhaps reformatting or downloading NIC drivers when you are installing an older OS (such as XP) which doesn’t recognise your hardware.

For the purpose of this tutorial I’m going to look at a simple method of completely and securely wiping data from your hard drive. You might be aware that if you delete all the files on your computer, they are not actually deleted. Only a reference to them is deleted so they don’t show up. Files can be wiped over, but as fragments are spread across a drive, it’s hard to know for sure if data is deleted.

On the Ultimate Boot CD is a program called DBAN (can be downloaded separately but I recommend downloading it as part of the Ultimate Boot CD). What DBAN does is wipes data off your drive by filling it with data (zeros) and making several passes. By doing this, you completely wipe ALL data off the drive so that if someone hunts around they wont actually find anything that’s personal or needs to be secure.

Using the tool is simple. All you do is load up the Ultimate Boot CD and when it loads up, select HDD and then the “Darik’s Boot and Nuke” option. When there, you select the hard drive you want to delete (NOTE: Remember that if you have more than 1 hard drive in a machine, you’ll need to specify the correct one. Once it’s started you’ll lose everything on the selected drive… ie, make sure you select the right option).

For a relatively large hard drive (300GB), the process took a few hours on my computer to complete. When done, you’ll get a message and then your PC is ready to be disposed of.

The Ultimate Boot CD is a free download that can be found over here. As well as offering DBAN, it also has a number of other handy tools and makes an ideal companion for any computer repair technician.

If you are looking for a SCSI driver for your Adaptec AIC-7850 SCSI card then you probably have been hitting a brick wall trying to find it. Most sites I could find tell you that they have the link, but unfortunately they just send you to the Windows Update website.

The AIC-7850 chipset is quite old now which makes it difficult to find the drivers. Luckily, I came across a post on the official Adaptec website that hinted that the Adaptec 2906 card utilises the AIC-7850 chipset which means you can actually install the 2906 drivers to get the card working.

I’ve just tested now installing the Windows 7 driver for the Adaptec 2906 card and after a minute or so of waiting the card was installed and the attached device (a Kodak DS 3000 scanner) was identified.

The official Adaptec AIC-7850 SCSI download can be found over here. You’ll notice in the screenshot above that the SCSI card is listed as being different after the 2906 drivers are installed. Either way, the AIC-7850 works with the drivers linked to above. Drop a comment below if you run in to any problems.

If you have updated your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to iOS 5 beta and use Evernote for capturing notes, you will have noticed that all notes are now blank. Unfortunately, while iOS 5 is still in beta, Evernote will not function as they are only developing for the public release of version 5.

For those who are premium users of the Evernote service, all is not as bad as it sounds though as users have found that if you put all your notebooks in to off line mode on your iOS 5 device, the content is available once downloaded.

This tutorial covers how to get Evernote working with iOS 5. As mentioned above, you need to be an Evernote Premium user to take advantage of this fix. If you want to upgrade, it’s $45/year so I’ll leave you with the option of upgrading or not. For those of you who have or who use the premium service already, read on:

We’ll be using the iPad version for screen shots here as they look a little better when in landscape mode vs what the smaller iPhone screen shots would look like.

First step, load up Evernote on your iOS device. For those with an iPad, click the small antenna at the bottom right of the screen. For iPhone or iPod touch users, click the settings button at the top of the screen.

When here, click the Offline notebooks option. At this point, you’ll see a list of all your notebooks and next to each an on/off toggle switch. For those notebooks that you want ALL notes fully downloading, click the button to the On position. When done, Evernote will start to download all your notes for offline usage.

When the download is complete, you’ll now be able to see your text, PDF’s and other files that you were previously unable to see.

The release date of iOS 5 is not known at the moment, but I expect it will be sometime within the next couple of months. If you can’t wait that long you can either choose the option above or upgrading to Premium (if not already), or look at options of downgrading back to iOS 4.

Google Docs received an update yesterday that brings pagination to the word processing part of the service. The new feature is activated by default and basically lays out the page just like you’d see on a desktop word processing package… ie, in virtual pages. By doing this, it allows you to see the document as it is on the page so that when you come to print it, you know exactly what will be printed.

For those who want to see documents the regular way, ie in a long stream of text, you can switch off pagination by clicking through the menus as pictured below. Throughout editing the document you can switch back and forth as needed.

We also learn that headers and footnotes can be used on each page and when in pagination mode, these are made visible.

As well as updating Google Docs with pagination, Google has also worked with the Google Chrome team and between them, they have created a system where you can preview a document within docs and Chrome and when you go to print, you print the document. This might not sound all that fancy, but prior to the update yesterday, when printing documents you actually had to save the doc as a PDF file which then opened as a preview which could then be printed. The new method streamlines this a little.

At the moment, the printing option only works in Chrome, but Google has invited all other browser makers to adapt their code to use the new system. The browsers invited include all the big names such as IE9, Safari and Firefox and we assume a number of the smaller browsers also. Whether or not MS, Mozilla or Apple will update to use this functionality will be up to them.

Google has announced that the service is fully rolled out now and all Google Docs users should now be able to use pagination.

If you have recently updated to WordPress 3.1 (or later), you will probably have noticed a new feature called the Admin Bar. The bar shows up on regular public pages of your site and sits at the top of the screen for users logged in to WordPress. Since the 3.1 update, the admin bar has arrived and is set to ON as default.

If you prefer not to have the admin bar visible, there’s a couple of ways to disable it. The first way (which is easy), is to simply log in to www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin and click on Users. Once there, select your user and uncheck the options as seen below:

If you run a members site with a system such as amember, this can automatically set up WordPress users when payment is received. When the users get set up, they then see the admin bar by default.

If you want to switch it off by default for all users there is a way, thankfully. The code edits come via Yoast who managed to figure out what parts of code you need to edit in order to set the defaults to always off for all users.

All you need to do is add the following code to your functions.php file of your WordPress install. Note that this goes in the theme’s function.php file which means that when you upgrade WordPress to a new version, the change will still be in tact. Also note that if you upgrade your theme then you’ll need to reapply this modification unless you use a custom functions file like in Thesis, or if you preserve your functions file when updating your theme.

/* Disable the Admin Bar. */
add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );

function yoast_disable_admin_bar() {
add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );
add_action( 'admin_print_scripts-profile.php',
'yoast_hide_admin_bar_settings' );
}
add_action( 'init', 'yoast_disable_admin_bar' , 9 );