Sarasota PC Monitor
Review Chairman's Industry Comments (11/07)
The Computer Buffet
by Herb Goldstein, Review EditorE-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org
BAD HYPERLINK?? Occasionally for reasons beyond our control, a hyperlink provided here will not work. After carefully checking your typing (needs to be 100% accurate), the only suggestion we can offer is that you go to Google and enter the name of the software. If a more current hyperlink is available, this is the best place to look for it. Please also note: Most of the software mentioned below is freeware. It is gathered through researching usually reliable sources. I do not personally try most references, time being the obvious factor.
WHAT IS THAT RED X? If someone sent you an email with some pictures, but instead of seeing the pictures in the email, all you see is a red “X”. What is going wrong? Actually there are a few potential fixes for this problem. Here are some things to try:
- You might just be offline. In many cases, you can read your email without being connected to the internet (such as with Outlook or Outlook Express) but the images won’t show up. Solution: check your internet connection and make sure you are online.
- Outlook Express may be “protecting” you by blocking images from downloading. Solution: In Outlook Express, click on Tools - Options and then click the Security tab. UNcheck the box that says “Block images and other external content in HTML email”. Click OK. Close Outlook Express and open it again.
- The image that is not displaying may be hosted on a website that is down at the moment. Solution: not much you can do here except wait for the website to come back up.
- “Show pictures” may be turned off in Internet Explorer. Solution: Click Start - Control Panel and double click on Internet Options. Choose the Advanced tab, then scroll down to the Multimedia section. Check the box that says “Show pictures”.
- Your firewall may be blocking the images. Solution: Turn off or disable the firewall and see if the pictures appear (the steps for disabling the firewall are different for different firewalls). Note: if you use a router for your network, that has a hardware firewall built in. You don’t really need a software firewall such as ZoneAlarm or Norton.
- The website where the image is hosted is up, but your internet security settings are set too high for that website to get through. Solution: Click Start - Control Panel and double click on Internet Options. Click on the Security tab, and click the button that says “Default level”.
- One more potential cause is that the sender is not sending the images correctly (the email has to be sent in HTML format, not plain text). Solution: tell the sender to change his or her email sending mode to HTML.
EXPSTUDIO AUDIO EDITOR FREE allows you to edit your audio files as easily as editing text files. It displays a waveform window of an audio file and allows you to cut; copy; delete silence; paste from file; mix; mix from file; apply different effects (amplify, delay, equalize, fade, flange, invert, normalize, “noise-ify,” reduce breath, reverse, multi-tap delay, silence); and convert voices from female to male, male to female, chipmunk, and Zeus. The following audio formats are supported: WAV PCM, compressed WAV (ADPCM, GSM, DSP, A-LAW, U-LAW, ALF2 and others), MP2, MP3 (MPEG Layer-3), VOX (Dialogic ADPCM), WMA (Windows Media Audio), RAW(PCM, A-LAW, U-LAW), CDA (Audio CD Tracks), OGG (Ogg Vorbis), G.721, G.723, and G.726. www.expstudio.com STEGANOS LOCKNOTE. Everybody has a secret. Keep your passwords and personal information safe from prying eyes with LockNote. This program works like Notepad, but it adds password protection and strong AES 256-bit encryption. To open a LockNote file, double-click in and type in your password. Anyone who doesn’t have the password is locked out. If you’d like to lock up your existing text files, you can drag and drop them into LockNote to secure them. https://www.steganos.com/us/products/home-office/locknote/overview/
VISTA SP1 COMING SOON. Microsoft plans to release Vista Service Pack 1 in early 2008. It will launch a beta version in a few weeks. The updates will improve performance and enhance capabilities. It won’t include many new features. It may encourage businesses to upgrade to Vista. FEEDREADER. This very good, free, simple RSS reader does everything you want a reader to do — it makes it simple to subscribe to feeds, to manage your feeds, download podcasts, and more. Particularly helpful is that it includes an auto discovery feature that will find feeds on any Web page, and subscribe you to them. www.oldapps.com/FeedReader.php
eMULE. This file-sharing program lets you search for, download, and share files with others. It’s exceedingly popular, and so there are a vast number of files available to you. In fact, it’s the most downloaded file of all time from the Open Source site SourceForge.net — more than 332 million downloads and counting. www.SourceForge.net
LOOKING FOR QUALITY VIDEOS? If you’ve spent any time exploring YouTube, you know there are many bad videos available online. Sure, you’ll find plenty of entertaining video clips. But how many of them provide information that really matters? Finding quality videos that are informative can take a bit of work. A good place to start is ResearchChannel’s site. The site claims more than 3,000 videos spanning a variety of topics. And they all present new insights and discoveries. www.researchchannel.org
DVD SHRINK. Here’s one for anyone who wants to make backup copies of their DVDs on their hard disk. That way, you can use Windows Media Center or another DVD media player to play the DVDs on your PC. The program lets you rip the DVD to your hard disk in a variety of formats, including a lossless one that keeps the image and audio quality intact. You can choose from other formats if you want to save hard disk space. And you can also customize the quality on any DVD you rip. DVD Shrink will preserve all your DVD content, including menus, trailers, subtitles, and so on. If you’d like, though, you can eliminate any of that content as well. Maybe best of all, it’s free. www.dvdshrink.org/
STELLARIUM. Whether you’re a long-time, hard-core astronomy buff, or are just a part-time stargazer, you’ll find something in this astronomy program for you. It displays whatever celestial objects you want, including stars, planets, nebula, and constellations, and will display the sky in various grids and from different points of view. www.stellarium.org
WORLD WIND. A highly detailed 3D map of the Earth enhanced with live satellite imagery. World Wind is NASA’s most ambitious software project to date. This global information system pulls together a high resolution map of the entire world and layers into it satellite information from a variety of sources. The program’s Web page says that World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data to experience Earth terrain (or any planet with the data) in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there. Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps or along the African Sahara. http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/download.html
INKSCAPE. If you’re looking for a graphics program that lets you create illustrations and graphics, much like Freehand or Illustrator, then give Inkscape a whirl. It includes a surprisingly powerful set of tools for creating graphics from scratch, or for editing existing graphics or photographs. You’ll find numerous drawing tools, the ability to create layers and combine them, and more. www.inkscape.org/
K-MELEON is a return to the days of lean, mean browsers. It’s fast and lightweight, so won’t take up much memory, and loads pages quickly. The browser is built on top of the Gecko engine, which Mozilla uses for Firefox. It gives you all the features you’ve come to expect in a modern browser, including tabbed browsing, and some nice extras as well. http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/
KRUPTOS 2. Worried about someone getting access to your most private files. With the free Kruptos 2, you’ll worry no more. It uses powerful, 128-bit encryption to encrypt files and folders so that only you can read them. It’s particularly useful for USB flash drives and portable storage devices, because you can encrypt the entire device, so you need not worry if the device is lost. www.kruptos2.co.uk/
E-ZSOFT IPOD VIDEO CONVERTER. Video to iPod Converter provides an easy and complete way to convert to iPod video and iPhone from all popular video formats. All encoders/decoders are built in, so you can convert all supported formats once downloading the Video to iPod Converter software. www.e-zsoft.com/
SHUANGZ AUDIO EDITOR. Shuangz Audio Editor is a free audio editor tool. It can accurately split WAV, MP3 and WMA files, and you can also design specially good effects for audio files, such as setting volume, fading in and fading out. www.shuangzsoft.com/
SHUANGS_AUDIO_EDITOR.ASP EXPSTUDIO AUDIO EDITOR. This powerful free tool allows you to edit your audio files as easily as editing text files. It displays a waveform window of an audio file and allows you to cut; copy; delete silence; paste from file; mix; mix from file; apply different effects (amplify, delay, equalize, fade, flange, invert, normalize, “noise-ify,” reduce breath, reverse, multi-tap delay, silence); and convert voices from female to male, male to female, chipmunk, and Zeus. www.expstudio.com/audioeditorfree.htm
RAPIDTYPING. This free program helps you learn quick and blind keyboard printing without mistakes. Program benefits: training statistics; keyboard emulation; uses a simple and colorful interface; personal exercise creation; free lesson choice; multiple users support; game. www.pinokiosoft.com/
YAHOO! TOOLBAR FOR IE. Yahoo! Toolbar is a free and convenient search tool that now includes a pop-up blocker. Stop annoying pop-up ads, search the Web, access Yahoo! Mail, and games. Customize your toolbar and save your bookmarks online for one-click access from any computer. http://toolbar.yahoo.com/ie
HOW TO CHANGE FILE ASSOCIATIONS IN XP. Sometimes when you install a new program, it may change the file associations. For instance, if you install a graphics program such as PhotoShop, you might find that it is now the default program to open picture files like .jpg and .gif, even though you prefer to have them opened by the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Luckily, it’s easy to change the file associations so that files with the selected extension will open with the program of your choice. Here’s how: 1. Right click the Start menu and select Explore. 2. In Windows Explorer, click the Tools menu, then click Folder Options. 3. Click the File Types tab. 4. In the list of registered file types, scroll down to the file extension whose association you want to change and highlight it. 5. Click the Change button. 6. Scroll through the list of programs that can open the file type and select the one you want to use as the default. Be sure the box labeled “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” is checked. Click OK. You can click the Browse button to look for the program if it doesn’t appear in the list.
ABIWORD. Tired of paying megabucks for Microsoft Office when all you need is a good, solid word processor? Then you’re in luck. If you’ve got straightforward word processing chores, including inserting and handling images, you’ll want this freebie. It features a simple straightforward interface; you won’t need to spend hours trying to wrangle your way through ribbons or multi-level menus. www.abisource.com/download/
TRANSACTION GUARD. This freebie from commercial security vendor Trend Micro is actually two pieces of security software in one. First, it’s a spyware detector and eradicator, and monitors your system in real-time for spyware, and will kill any it finds. In addition, it has a “secret keyboard” that helps ensure that passwords and other sensitive information won’t be stolen over the Internet. When you visit a site that asks for a password, instead of typing in the password, enter it on the secret keyboard. The password then gets copied to the clipboard, and is pasted directly into a Web form. The software runs as an ActiveX control, and runs in the System Tray. www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/free_security_tools/transaction_guard.php
AUDACITY. All-purpose audio editor lets you record, play, and edit digital files. If you want to create media, not just consume it, try this open-source program, which includes audio recording tools and sophisticated editing functions. You can even create audio soundscapes from scratch. You can add any of several dozen effects, use a sound mixer...in short, the app has everything you need. While you don’t have to be well-versed in sound editing to use it, people with some experience will particularly enjoy its power. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
MEDIACODER. Convert files between many media formats. If you need to transform media files between formats, shrink files with little quality loss, extract audio from video files, and much more, this is the program for you. It’ll convert files between media formats, giving you a great deal of control over the output. So, for example, if you have a file that you’d like to convert so it can be played on a portable media player, MediaCoder will do the trick. It can also save you plenty of hard disk space by shrinking media files. There are also lots of extensions you can download that expand the program’s abilities, such as make it easy to transcode files for specific media players. Note: this version may or may not play in Vista. Author requests bug reports. http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/
HANDBRAKE. Easily grab and convert video and audio from a variety of different sources. Got a DVD that you want to turn into MPEG-4 format so that you can store it on your hard disk, or make a backup to disc? Then you’ll want HandBrake. It grabs video from a variety of sources, including a DVD, and a DVD image, and grabs audio from sources as well, including MPEG audio tracks. You’ll then be able to output a digital file in a variety of formats, including MPEG-4, AVI, OGM for video, or AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis for audio. There are some very nice extras in here, such as being able to select individual DVD chapters, grabbing subtitles, and more. You get plenty of control over your recording, including selecting the bit rate, maximum file size for video, and bit rate and sample rate for audio. http://handbrake.m0k.org/
ROGUESCANNER. Think your home or small office wireless network is safe? Do you have any idea whether there are any intruders on it? This free program is a great way to find out. Run it on a PC attached to your network via Ethernet. (The program won’t work in Windows Vista, so you’ll need Windows XP.) When you run it, it immediately does a network scan, finding the wireless and wired devices attached to it. For each device, it lists the unique MAC address (a kind of serial number), the IP address, the manufacturer if it can figure it out, and model number if it can find that. It also tells you what kind of device it is, such as a router, printer, PC, and so on. And it will also flag any suspect devices it finds. Just compare the information it finds to what you know of your network. If there are any wireless devices connected that you don’t know about, you may have an intruder. www.networkchemistry.com/products/roguescanner.php
DOES VISTA TAKE FOUR OR FIVE MINUTES TO START? For the average user, a PC running Vista should take no more than two or so minutes to boot. If you’re experiencing excessive boot times and have an external USB hard drive or USB expansion hub connected to your PC, try turning off your PC, disconnecting the drive or hub, and restarting your PC. Many users report startup delay problems with these connected devices, and in many cases, disconnecting them will solve the slow boots. With any luck, this problem will be addressed by Microsoft in a future patch or service pack. If you’re dual-booting Vista and another operating system, you can also decrease the time that Windows displays the OS options before actually booting into Windows. Right-click Computer, click Properties, click Advanced System Settings, choose the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Startup And Recovery. Under System Properties, adjust Time To Display List Of Operating Systems to a smaller number, such as 15 seconds. Note that by doing this, you will have a smaller window of time in which to manually instruct your PC to boot either into Vista or your other OS.
DEVICESCAPE enables your Windows laptop to automatically connect to Wi-Fi hotspots and home networks without having to enter usernames, passwords, and security keys. Just open your laptop and you’ll be surfing the Internet or downloading e-mail in mere seconds. There’s no need to hassle with wireless settings, or look-up your username and password. Support for over 160,000 paid and free hotspots around the world. Plus, you can securely give friends access to your home Wi-Fi network, and they can easily share their Wi-Fi with you. www.devicescape.com
WISE REGISTRY CLEANER is one of the safest Registry cleaning tools available in the market today. Its scanning engine is thorough, safe and fast. It is so easy to use, even the least experienced user can easily repair registry with this tool. It scans the Windows registry and finds incorrect or obsolete information in the registry. By fixing this obsolete information in Windows registry, your system can work better and more quickly. www.wisecleaner.com
VIRUSTOTAL.COM is a free site that will analyze any file you let it inspect for viruses. It uses a combination of several leading antivirus agents to give you a very thorough and authoritative diagnosis of any file that you may be suspect of.
BENT PIN FIX. If you accidently bend a pin on a port or cable, don’t try to straighten it out with a plier. Use the tip of a mechanical pencil which is usually about the same size of a pin and a lot less riskier.
FILEZILLA. FTP lives! This file transfer protocol may seem old-fashioned and ancient, but the truth is, it’s often the simplest way to transfer files between PCs, or between a PC and a server. It’s especially useful for transferring large files, because ISPs often block email attachments over a certain size. And it’s great for transferring groups of files. FileZilla has just about every FTP feature you need. It’s a breeze to set up and edit new FTP connections. http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
FRESH UI is a kind of tweaker’s heaven: With it you can change scores of settings in XP, many of which you no doubt never even knew existed. Want to alter most any aspect of the Windows interface? Go ahead. Customize the Start menu? No problem. Change global menu settings, the way applications work, and dozens of network and Internet settings? You can do all those things, and a whole lot more. Fresh UI is a fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with hundreds of useful settings for Windows Vista/XP/2000/ NT4/98/95/Me, it covers the customizing techniques that you’ll be glad to know. This software is 100% free, no banner, no spyware. www.freshdevices.com/
FRESH DIAGNOSE is a utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It detects many kinds of hardware, such as CPU or hard drive performance, video or motherboard information, and much more. This software is 100% free, no ads, no spyware. www.freshdevices.com/
FRESH DOWNLOAD is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite mp3 files, software, picture collections, video, etc. Unlike other similar utilities, this software is 100% free, no banners, no spyware. www.freshdevices.com/
FRESH VIEW is a multimedia browser that makes organizing image, audio and video files much easier. Use it to watch movies, listen to music, view graphics in a slide show, print, create an HTML album, and more. This software is 100% free, no ads, no spyware. www.freshdevices.com/
STARTUP GUARD 1.0. Monitor your system’s auto-startup programs with this lean program. Startup Guard will inform you when new programs are added to the startup, in real time, and you can approve/disapprove the new entry. Block worms, spyware, adware, trojans, and other virus-type malicious programs that may affect your system. It can also monitor your browser home page and search page hijacks. www.acelogix.com/freeware.html
COMODO FIREWALL PRO. ZoneAlarm may be extremely popular, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best firewall you can find. Many people believe that Comodo Firewall Pro takes that prize, largely because it was rated as the top firewall by the independent testing site Matousec. www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/
DEBRIEF NOTES. [Basic Edition is free] Manages notes for ideas, journals, tasks, contacts, issues, meetings, changes, risks, decisions, milestones, research, planning, and more. Notes, folders, and calendars are handled intuitively for organizing work. It emulates spiral notebooks, file folders, work in progress, reference material, and action items. http://debriefnotes.com/products.htm
MEMORY CLEANUP. Check the health of your system’s memory. If your system crashes often and you’re getting blue screens loaded with error messages, your problem may be bad system memory. Use this diagnostic tool from Microsoft for a quick checkup. http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp
RENAME MASTER is a FREE utility for renaming large groups of files with a few clicks. Anyone that has worked with websites, file archives, or collections of music, videos, or pictures has probably spent way too much time renaming hundreds of files. This utility will add, remove, or replace parts of the filename with ease and also supports renaming via file properties, MP3 tags, JPEG JFIF and EXIF tags. Batch renaming that’s simple to use, yet still very powerful. www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/108 doPDF is a free PDF converter for both personal and commercial use. Using doPDF you can create searchable PDF files by selecting the “Print” command from virtually any application. With one click you can convert your Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents or your emails and favorite web sites to PDF files. www.dopdf.com/
BONKENC is a free program that will help you convert your music between various formats. Or, you can rip music from CD. It even logs onto a database to download track names. Digital music players are amazing. They make it possible to carry around thousands of songs in the palm of your hand. Unfortunately, though, there are numerous formats for music files. And music players aren’t compatible with all of them. This makes it difficult if you get a new music player. Chances are you have a sizeable music collection. And you don’t want to have to rip all your music from CD again. This is a program that any music lover should have. But it won’t work with copy-protected music that you purchased. www.bonkenc.org
KEEPASS. What is KeePass? Today you need to remember many passwords. You need a password for the Windows network logon, your e-mail account, your homepage’s ftp password, online passwords (like CodeProject member account), etc. etc. etc. The list is endless. Also, you should use different passwords for each account. Because if you use only one password everywhere and someone gets this password you have a problem... A serious problem. The thief would have access to your e-mail account, homepage, etc. Unimaginable. KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish). http://keepass.info/
REMOVING NORTON TRIAL SOFTWARE. Most new computers come with trial versions of security software installed. Frequently, this software is supplied by Symantec. The trial software is helpful. It means you can get on the Internet right away. After a month or two, you’ll have to pay to continue to use the software. But you might decide to use free software. In that case, you should remove the trial software. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to remove Symantec security software completely. Symantec’s Norton Removal Tool can help. Run it after you run the regular uninstall. You can also use it if your Symantec software failed to install correctly. Simply run the removal tool and install the software again! http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039
ZONE ALARM FORCEFIELD is a security product designed specifically to protect you while you bank, shop, or surf dangerous areas of the Internet online. It does this by creating a virtual “bubble” around your surfing session, protecting your PC from fraudulent Web sites, phishing scams, spyware Web sites, and dangerous downloads. ZoneAlarm ForceField also ensures that spyware that may already be on your PC cannot steal your information while you bank and shop. It cleans the PC after a Web browsing session to prevent your personal information from being left behind. http://download.zonealarm.com:80/bin/forcefield_x/index.html
DIGITAL TV IS COMING. After the switch to digital television, will our televisions still play our analog videos? How can you tell if your VCR, DVR and satellite box have digital tuners? Did the government require them to use digital tuners? According to Kim Komando who says, “There is a lot of confusion about the upcoming switch to digital broadcasts. I’m not surprised. There hasn’t been much education on the topic. In fact, I’ll bet many people are unaware of the upcoming change. By February 2009, television broadcasts will be all-digital. Analog televisions won’t be able to receive over-the-air signals without help. I recently wrote a column about the change. It tells you how to use analog sets after the transition. Read it, if you haven’t already. Digital broadcasting should not affect your ability to watch old videos. For example, you may still have an old VCR. Connect it to your television’s analog inputs. Even televisions with digital tuners have analog inputs. You won’t get digital quality picture and sound. But I’m sure you already knew that. As for the second question, satellite boxes are easy. Call the satellite company. If you don’t have a satellite box, the company will supply one. DVRs and VCRs are more difficult. You may have to do some research. I would start with the manual. The manual should list the type of tuner. Digital tuners may be listed as ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). They may also be listed as DTV or HDTV. Analog tuners will be listed as NTSC (National Television System Committee). If you can’t find the information in your manual, check with the manufacturer. Visit the manufacturer’s Web site or call. The FCC required digital tuners in televisions as of March 1, 2007. You may have purchased your equipment after that. It doesn’t necessarily have a digital tuner. Stores can sell old stock, even if the tuner is analog. Effective May 25, 2007, retailers were required to notify customers if a television receiver does not have a digital tuner. Some of you are probably using your computer as a DVR. Don’t forget that it must also have a digital tuner to receive over-the-air broadcasts!”
WINDOWS ESSENTIALS CODEC PACK. If you’ve ever come across a media file that wouldn’t play in your media player, this freebie is the answer to your needs. It installs the codecs—short for coders-decoders—that your media player needs in order to play back many different kinds of media. Play any media file you can find with this add-in to your media player. This isn’t actually a standalone program. Instead, it gives your media player access to the codecs. So just install it, and you’ll be able to view or listen to a wide variety of media files with your existing media player. And if you’re not happy with your existing media player, it includes a copy of Media Player Classic, a simple, stripped-down media player that looks and works much like the first versions of Windows Media Player. www.mediacodec.org/
PHISHING TEST. Hey, have you ever heard of phishing? It's those emails you get that look like they're from a real company, but are actually fake. Well, there's a new Fight Phishing Challenge that can show you how good you are at spotting the fakes. I just took it. You should try it - I earned a badge by scoring a perfect 5 out of 5. Open a new browser and type www.paypal.com/fightphishing. :
Return to Herb Goldstein's Index
Copyright 2007. This article is from the November 2007 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.