Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

……We’ve all been there, one day your PC is humming along nicely the next day you’re greeted with the Blue Screen of Death and that backup disc you’ve been meaning to make for the last 3 months is lying next to your unused gym card. Usually this happens the same day that you have some urgent online banking to do or an important report is overdue, either way, to avoid those sleepless nights and fist clenching screams at the crescent moon…..Back Your Stuff Up!

How? you ask…..well, have no fear my dear digital peasants all shall be revealed Firstly we can do things the old school way and manually copy the most important data on your computer either to a DVD Disc or to an external drive or perhaps a flash drive. The most important things you wanna save are your E-mails, Address Book, Desktop and your My Documents folder, these are the most common places Windows users store there stuff. Yes, I know, you can use a backup program to do this automatically for you but it’s always good to know where your data is actually stored on your machine.

If you use Outlook Express your e-mails are stored in following folder: C:\documents and settings\ “users profile name”\ local settings\ application data \ Identities\ Microsoft\ Outook Express

If you can’t find the local settings folder that would be because it is hidden by default on Windows XP, to unhide the folder you need to open up a folder, any folder i.e My Documents, click on the Tools menu, click on Folder Options, click the View tab and half way down the white text box you select the “Show hidden files and folders” radio button and click Apply and Ok. When you copy the Outlook Express folder to a backup location just remember to not have Outlook Express running at the same time otherwise you won’t be able to copy the folder.

The Outlook Express Address Book is kept in a separate location which you can find here: C:\documents and settings\”users profile name”\application data\ Microsoft \ Address Book.

If you use Microsoft Outlook for e-mail your e-mails will be stored in the following location: C:\documents and settings\”user profile name”\ local settings\ application data\ Microsoft\ Outlook . Outlook stores your contact information ( address book ) in the same file.

To copy your My Documents folder and all the files you keep on the Desktop you need to copy those folders from the these locations respectively: C:\documents and settings\”users profile name”\ My Documents

C:\documents and settings\”users profile name”\ Desktop

It’s always a good idea to have a printed copy of all your usernames, passwords and e-mail settings that were given to you when you first setup your e-mail account, it’ll save you the hassle of phoning your service provider when it comes time to setting up your mail account again.

Okay, so now that you know how and where to manually backup your most important information lets look at one of the ways you can backup your data automatically. These days flash drives and external harddrives are the most common form of storage media simply because they can hold so much more data than a dvd, plus they are relatively cheap. I use a little freeware program called Universal Backup Tool to automatically back my stuff up to an external drive, you can download the software for free HERE.

Once you’ve installed UBT and clicked the icon to run the program the first screen that comes up will ask you where you would like to backup your data to, click on the blue arrow and select the backup drive where you would like to copy your data to. I usually create a new folder on my external drive called Daily Backup or Weekly backup that I backup my data too, it just makes life easier when it comes to restoring a backed up file.

Just keep in mind that UBT backups up your data into a database and not as as straight copy and paste which means that if you need to restore your files you will have to use UBT to restore them back to their original form. To do that is pretty straight forward as well, just open the program, Select restore, browse to where you have your backed up data, select the most recent backup from the list, which is dated from the most recent backup to the oldest one, Tick the box, Click the button “Restore To” which allows you to select where you would like to save your restored files to and then click restore, wait for the message that says the restore is complete and you’re done.

There we go, no excuses…..now go and back your stuff up!

Facebook pages have been getting lots of search engine respect lately. Learn how to create a Facebook page here, since it’s rather difficult to figure out how to do it on your own as a newbie!

It’s 2010, and I’ve completely updated this tutorial…enjoy …more

Facebook is the most popular photo sharing site in the world, but its photo upload tool has always been clunky and frustrating to use. No longer, thanks to a prototype New Photo Uploader that will hopefully displace the current upload tool very, very soon. Instead of the slow, tough-to-navigate system that loads up thumbnails of every. photo. in. your. pictures. folder. by default (ugh!), this new version has navigation that looks a lot more like what you’re used to in Windows Explorer or the OS X Finder.

Facebook ditched the old-school Java uploader they’d been using since 2005, and built a plug-in from scratch with newer tools. Aside from looking better and running a lot more smoothly, the new uploader can also run in the background, so you don’t have to stop browsing while you wait for your pics to upload. The first time you try to upload photos after turning on the prototype, you’ll be prompted to install the Facebook plugin. It doesn’t take long, and it’s well worth the extra 30 seconds to get a better, faster photo uploader.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Trying to extract clips from a DVD is usually a roundabout process that involves a lot of waiting. Free utility DVD Knife makes it easy to extract clips from any part of your DVD.

Generally, in order to extract a small clip from a DVD, you’ve got to rip and convert the entire movie—or at least a specific chapter—before you can work with it. DVD Knife does away with this lengthy process with a quick, four-click solution. When you start it up, you just open the disc, navigate to and mark your start and endpoints, and click save. DVD Knife will extract the clip (without compressing or decompressing) into a small VOB file that you can then convert into whatever file type you need, giving you more time to actually concentrate on the goal at hand (or to finish up that project quickly and go do something else).

DVD Knife is a free download, Windows only.

It still amazes me that most small business’s are willing to fork out thousands of Rands for software that is freely available on the Internet that does everything they need it to do and more. What’s worse is that we’ve been conditioned to believe that if it’s free it must surely be inferior especially when it comes to software, no doubt the marketing genius who thought that one up is laughing all the way to the bank.

Maybe I’m a bit of a cheapskate but if I’m looking for some software either for a client or myself, the first thing I do is a “google” search to see if there’s a free software program that fills the criteria, 9 times out of 10 I find exactly what I’m looking for, it also gives me the chance to test the software out myself without having to open my wallet. You may have heard about the OpenSource movement…..for those who haven’t, it is basically a worldwide network of software programmers, network gurus and other computer geeks who collaborate via the Internet to write software that is freely available to anybody who’s interested…. to use, distribute, change and tinker with as long as those changes and improvements are made freely available to the community once again. The difference between “free” and OpenSource software is the licensing. A lot of programmers allow other people to use their software for free but won’t allow other programmers access to the underlying code of that particular programmer. With OpenSource software their is no licensing cost so you don’t have to worry about the Business Software Alliance dragging you from your home in the middle of the night because you didn’t bother to check if the software you have is legally licensed.

I use quite a bit of OpenSource software in my own business and have definitely saved myself a few bucks in the process. Here’s a list of programs I have on my Windows XP machine with a brief description of what each program does:

Mozilla Firefox: I love FireFox, as far as I’m concerned it’s the best Web Browser on the planet. I don’t know what I would do without tabbed browsing. What is tabbed browsing I hear you ask? Well for the uninitiated Ttabbed browsing lets you load Web pages in separate tabs of a single browser window, so you can jump between them quickly and easily instead of filling your desktop with new, unorganized browser windows. If you use Internet Explorer for web browsing you’ll know what I mean. Firefox also has a built in ad pop-up blocker and loads pages a lot faster than Internet Explorer does plus it doesn’t attract every single virus and spyware program under the sun due to the fact that it isn’t intergrated into the Operating System. Security holes are patched before you even realize you were at risk because you have a whole bunch of programmers from around the world checking and updating the code.

Thunderbird:is an e-mail client similar to Outlook Express except that it comes with a built in Junk Mail filter to block all that unwanted spam. You can also import all your mail and address lists from Outlook Express into Thunderbird at the click of a button.

OpenOffice: compares to the Microsoft Office Suite which includes things like Word ( for word processing ), Excel ( for spreadsheets ),PowerPoint ( for presentations ) and Access ( database ). The OpenOffice equivalents to those programs are: Writer ( for word processing ), Calc ( for spreadsheets ), Impress ( for presentations ) and Base ( database ). The great thing about OpenOffice is that it can read and save documents in the Microsoft Office formats i.e .doc, .xls, .ppt. It also comes with a built in PDF converter which means you can export any of your documents to .pdf which is fast becoming the standard of choice as far as reading documents goes. The only problem you may run into with OpenOffice is that sometimes it may not read a Microsoft Word or Excel document the same as it would in Microsoft Office. The reason for this is that Microsoft doesn’t like to play nice as far as Open Document Standards go because it’s more profitable for them to lock-in customers to a continuous upgrade cycle than to be compatible with other office applications, especially ones that are free.

PDF Creator: Now for those people still using Microsoft office, which doesn’t have a built in PDF Exporting tool, this is what you need to get. PDF Creator installs itself as a printer so when you want to create a .pdf file from an excel document for example all you need to do is go to File – Print – select the PDF Printer – click OK – and a dialog box pops where you can name you new .pdf file and where you would like to save it – click save – wait a second or two and voila you’ve just created a .pdf file from an Excel spreadsheet. The great thing about PDF Creator is that you can do this with just about any file you like.

Nvu: Nvu (pronounced N-view) is a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” website editor. If you can operate a word processor you can use Nvu, in fact I made this website with Nvu and I am certainly no Guru Web master. All it takes is a bit of time to get familiar with the interface and off you go. I took half an hour reading through the tutorial at thesitewizard and got started straight away, my idea was to keep it clean and simple. If you’re a small business not wanting to fork out big bucks to have a professional design your website, why not do it your self.

ClamWin Anti-Virus: As you guessed by the name, Clamwin is a free Anti-Virus scanner. The difference between Clamwin and other commercial Anti-Virus programs is that it is yet to incorporate a realtime scan engine, meaning you have to manually click on the scan button to do a scan or setup scanning schedules, either daily, weekly or monthly. However the developers of this software are busy writing the code for that as we speak so expect to see a realtime scan engine for ClamWin in the next few months. What I like about Clamwin is that it doesn’t hog resources like some of the more well known Anti-Virus packages out there, so you can load it on older machines without it slowing everything down to a crawl. The virus definition file sizes are lot smaller than more well know commercial programs. I know that Nortons’ virus update file is 10mb as opposed to 3mb for ClamWin which makes a big difference if you’re still on dial-up.

TurboCash: Looking for a free fully featured accounting package that compares to Pastel or Quickbooks? then look no further. TurboCash used to be a commercial package that was sold on the shelves of computer retail stores but the company that writes the software decided to OpenSource the code to increase their customer base and development resources. What that means is that you are free to download the program from their website and if you like you can pay a nominal fee for support or training. Their are quite a few TurboCash support consultants around the country, you can check the TurboCash website for a list of people in your area who I’m sure would be more than happy to help you get your books in order.

The Gimp: I know what you’re thinking…wasn’t that the leather clad dude stuck in a cellar on Pulp Fiction?…Yes but No…….GIMP stands for Graphic Image Manipulation Program. The Gimp is the OpenSource equivalent of Adobe Photoshop, it may not be as intuitive as Photoshop but it certainly isn’t lacking in power. If you’re willing to take a bit of time to learn how to use it properly and not willing to refinance your house to pay for a copy of Photoshop then the Gimp is definitely for you…..the program not the dude in the cellar!

These are just a few of the programs available to you for free courtesy of the OpenSource community. Enjoy

The Computer Guy