Microsoft Security Essentials the best Anti-virus?

You dont really hear the word 'Microsoft' and 'anti-virus' together, let alone it being the best of its kind. A recent poll on a reputed website showed (at least till 10pm AEST) that Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is the best free anti-virus software for Windows beating AVG, Avast, NOD32 and Avira.

Now Microsoft has some great products but Redmond still has a long way to go when it comes to anti-virus scanners. I've used MSE and its all right but not as good as some other products out on the net. Even the free ones, easily give MSE a good run for its money. My biggest argument is its functionality, I think its not that feature rich yet to be even considered an option. Just coz MS offers it doesnt mean that its upto a certain standard.

So I think the users of the above website might be mom and dad users who use MSE coz it come pre-installed with Windows and the poll is perhaps not a true reflection of its user base. Peace. Read more

Flash Player 10 not backward compatible

Are you wondering why some online flash videos or live streams are just displaying a blank black screen in your browser. Well don't fret, as I have the solution for it.

I had Flash Player 9 on Firefox 3.5.2 running on my Win XP SP2 machine and of late I wasn't seeing some of the online videos or live streams at sites I regularly visit, I mean I was seeing just a blank black screen. I asked around, spoke to help desks and nobody seemed to know. Anyways on some research I found that if the video or live stream you are watching is encoded in Adobe Flash 10, you wont be able to see it in Flash 9 or back.

Just upgrade your Flash Player to version 10 and you will be up and running. I wonder why Adobe is forcing everybody to upgrade to Flash Player 10. Anyways you can download Flash Player 10 here. Read more

EDS is now "HP Enterprise Services"

HP has announced that EDS (Electronic Data Systems) a company it acquired in May 2008, will now become HP Enterprise Services. Nearly a year after it acquired EDS, the brand name has been scrapped which has been synonymous with outsourcing since 1962 when it was founded by Ross Perot.

EDS was renowned for its success in winning major private industry and government IT projects. The name change emphasizes EDS business unit’s global role as the enterprise technology services component of the HP portfolio. The move supports a year-long effort to transfer to HP the strong services brand equity that EDS has built over nearly 50 years and to place the global power and recognition of the HP brand behind its robust technology services portfolio.

The EDS.com website now redirects to the HP Enterprise Services page.

As of 2008, EDS employed 139,000 employees in 64 countries, the largest locations being the USA, India and the UK. It is ranked as one of the largest service companies on the Fortune 500 list with around 2,000 clients. EDS also has an active presence in Australia.

RIP EDS. Read more

Change Sunbird 0.9 event background colours

If you use Mozilla Sunbird to organize your daily schedule, chances are you might be fed-up with the blue look and feel. Unfortunately Sunbird has no flag to change the background colour of an event, so that it stands out a bit more. I reckon a colour coded calendar is much better than just one blue one. Here is the hack to change Sunbird event background colours and in turn organize your already busy life a little bit better.

Here we go,

1. Go to your Sunbird installation folder, on my PC its C:\Program Files\Sunbird\Data\profile\
2. Within the profile folder, create a new folder called 'chrome'. Now your folder structure should look like this C:\Program Files\Sunbird\Data\profile\chrome\
3. In this folder create a new file called 'userChrome.css'. Now open this file in your favourite editor and paste the following code,
   

   @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");
   .calendar-event-box-container[categories~="Creditcard"]{
    color: red                       !important;
    border-color: red         !important;
    background-color: yellow;
    background-position: center center;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    border-width: 2px  !important;
   }

4. Here replace 'Creditcard' with your category name and 'yellow' with the colour of your choice. Save it and exit your editor.
5. Now open Sunbird and all events which have the category 'Creditcard' will have a yellow background colour.
6. Now create new categories within Sunbird at Tools -> Options -> Categories. And then edit the userChrome.css file with the respective category names and colours and voila you will have a nice colour coded calendar.

Hint: Use red background colour for anything urgent, so that it catches your attention immediately. Now you won't forget to pay your electricity bill on time and also remember the important date at the restaurant :-). Read more

Firefox 3.5 Download Manager keyboard shortcuts do not work?

If you are like me, you like to perform most of your Firefox actions using keyboard shortcuts. The mouse is a mere backup for complicated tasks. Anyways I was using Firefox 3.5 Download Manager today and it seems like none of the keyboard shorcuts actually work. Am I dreaming or doing something wrong or is it a genuine (dare to say) bug.

On the Download Manager pop-up window the following keyboard shortcuts work,

• Ctrl + F - Find
• Alt + C - Clear download list.

But the following shortcuts do not work, but they should because if you right click within the Download Manager the shortcuts have underlined characters hence indicating a keyboard shortcut. The following keyboard shorcuts do not work (at least for me),

• Alt + O - Open
• Alt + F - Open containing folder
• Alt + G - Go to download page
• Alt + L - Copy download link
• Alt + A - Select all
• Alt + E - Remove from list

I also tried using the Ctrl and Shift keys with the above combinations but none of them worked.

So whats wrong here, did Mozilla forget to implement keyboard shortcuts for the Download Manager or I am just not doing something right. What are your thoughts. Read more

Why are Web Designers lazy to change websites default favicon

These days with the advent of Web 2.0 web sites are pretty slick in look and feel and functionality. Especially global technology powerhouses spend a lot of research, time and resources in developing a very good looking and functional web site. Essentially a web site is a company's best marketing and branding product. But what happens when website developers often overlook some simple and basic details.

I often visit sites where I have noticed that developers do not use a custom 'site specific' favicon. So instead of seeing the company's logo we see the web servers logo such as Tomcat, WebSphere, Solaris etc. By default if you do not change a sites favicon, the web server uses its own. I guess there is nothing wrong in it, but it shows carelessness or laziness on part of the development team. I believe no website is complete with its own favicon.

Here are at least two sites which are global brands and still use the default favicon (incidently both are running Sun servers),

• Samsung Mobile - http://au.samsungmobile.com/icon/index.do?cid=au_banner_samsungcomswf_iconrange
• Telstra bill payment - https://onlinebilling.telstra.com.au/billing/action/payment/onlinepayment?tR=3ma

A favicon is a 16x16 sized image file. If you want to do the right thing and display a custom favicon for your web application use the following W3C compliant code,
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="MY_ICON.png">

For more information on adding a favicon to your site click here. Till then keep up the good work. Read more

6 ways to relax your mind while programming

We all live/work in a highly stressful work environment especially software developers. Software projects are always behind schedule and we are nearly always expected to come up with a cutting edge, stable solution in quick time using minimal resources (duh). Such practices always put a strain on people's lifestyle and professional and married life. So if you are developer, follow these 6 techniques to improve your productivity and reduce your stress level.

I know stress is sometimes unavoidable, but try and minimize it by following some handy techniques,

• Listen to soft instrumental music - Now I don't mean high volume heavy metal music, just something calm, slow and mild. Something which will make your brain feel like its being loved. I personally prefer instrumental love songs as they make me feel quite relaxed.
• Use a dual monitor setup - Having your emails and browser open up side by side your IDE is actually a pretty good habit. You will exercise your neck, take regular breaks to check/reply your emails and most of all your eyes will appreciate the change of scenery :-).
• Do not rely completely on Google for your research - Pleassse, Googling does not equate to researching. All these online resources just make you more and more confused and eventually your brain just gets saturated. Instead use forums or mailing lists, as you will do one-on-one communication with people who are pros in their respective fields and actually learn something in the process. Google is your best friend in some ways but also your worst in some.
• Write your thoughts on paper before you actually start developing - I don't think people even do this any more. Don't just jump into programming once you have an idea, actually put it on paper first. Draw some diagrams, think it over, debate your decision and most importantly convince yourself that you are doing the best.
• Take regular breaks - Eat, drink or take a short walk and do not just sit in your cubicle for 8 straight hours. This will help your body and also your mind. Check out some guys/gals, have tea or just watch the birds, just do anything other than using your brain. Your body will thank you.
• Do not have your lunch on your desk - Get away from your PC. Unplug yourself. Get out and take in the sights. Have some sushi or eat something which you have never tried before. I once tried Thai food and loved it. Try some Indian sweets. Explore and you shall find.

I followed these techniques for a week and believe me I am feeling relaxed already. I don't go home stressed and best of all don't dread Mondays any more. Read more

Chrome 3 comes to life

Google has released a newer stable update to Chrome christened Chrome 3. This new revision boasts quite a lot of improvements both under and above the hood. But on the same token, if you have already being playing with Chrome 4 in the dev channel then this update might be worth ignoring.

Chrome 3 has the following updates/fixes,

• HTML 5 - This is the only reason I am updating. Chrome 3 has full support for HTML 5 including audio, video and canvas tags
• Speed - It is 'much' faster than any previous Chrome release (aka Chrome 1 or 2) on both the V8 and SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks. Just use the browser and you will notice the speed jump for yourself
• New tab page - The new tab page is more customizable, basically you can move around items.
• Better search box - Chrome 3 has some visual improvements to its search box
• Themes - This is following in the footsteps of Firefox. Chrome has its own customizable look and feel option now. The list of available themes is also growing steadily

Check it out yourself. You can download Chrome 3 here. Read more

Complete list of VLC 1.0.1 shortcuts

VLC Media Player 1.0.1 is definitely the best, open source, cross platform, free media player, framework and server available at the moment. It supports virtually every available audio/video codec and makes playing media files so much simpler and hassle free. But I think its User Interface (UI) could be better and it has a lot of functions which are sort of complicated to access. So here I present the complete list of keyboard shortcuts which allow you to access a lot of its hidden gems.

Here is the complete list of keyboard shortcuts (in the best possible order),

• a – Cycle source aspect ratio
• b - Cycle audio track
• c – Cycle video crop
• d - Cycle de-interlace modes
• e - Next frame
• f – Switch to full screen
• g – Subtitle delay down of -50ms
• h – Subtitle delay up of +50ms
• i - Show interface
• j - Audio delay down of -50ms
• k – Audio delay up of +50ms
• l - Normal/repeat/loop
• m – Mute/un-mute
• n – Play next media from the playlist
• o - Toggle auto scaling
• p – Play the Previous media in the playlist
• r - Random
• s – Stop playback
• t – Position
• V – Enable subtitles (if available)
• w - Toggle wallpaper mode in video output
• z – Zoom

• + – Play faster
• - – Play slower
• = - Normal rate
• ] - Play faster (fine)
• [ - Play slower (fine)

• Ctrl + g – Extend GUI
• Ctrl + m – Go to DVD Menu
• Ctrl + p – Playlist
• Ctrl + q - Quit
• Ctrl + r – Record
• Ctrl + Arrow Up - Increase volume
• Ctrl + Arrow Down – Decrease the volume
• Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow – Forward or Rewind the video
• Ctrl + Left - Medium backwards jump
• Ctrl + Right - Medium forward jump
• Ctrl + Alt + Left - Long backwards jump
• Ctrl + Alt + Right - Long forward jump
• Ctrl + Alt + m - Do not display OSD menu on video output
• Ctrl + 1 - 1:4 Quarter screen size
• Ctrl + 2 - 1:2 Half screen size
• Ctrl + 3 - 1:1 Original screen size
• Ctrl + 4 - 2:1 Double screen size
• Ctrl + F1 - Set playlist bookmark 1
• Ctrl + F2 - Set playlist bookmark 2
• Ctrl + F3 - Set playlist bookmark 3
• Ctrl + F4 - Set playlist bookmark 4
• Ctrl + F5 - Set playlist bookmark 5
• Ctrl + F6 - Set playlist bookmark 6
• Ctrl + F7 - Set playlist bookmark 7
• Ctrl + F8 - Set playlist bookmark 8
• Ctrl + F9 - Set playlist bookmark 9
• Ctrl + F10 - Set playlist bookmark 10

• Shift + Left - Very short backwards jump
• Shift + Right - Very short forward jump
• Shift + b - Select next DVD title
• Shift + d - Dump
• Shift + g - Go back in browsing history
• Shift + h - Go forward in browsing history
• Shift + i - Show interface
• Shift + m - Go to DVD menu
• Shift + n - Select next DVD chapter
• Shift + o - Select previous DVD title
• Shift + p - Select previous DVD chapter
• Shift + r - Record
• Shift + s - Take video snapshot

• Alt + o - Increase scale factor
• Alt + Shift + o - Decrease scale factor
• Alt + Left - Short backwards jump
• Alt + Right - Short forward jump

• Enter - Activate
• Esc - Leave fullscreen
• Shift + z - Un-zoom
• Space - Play/Pause
• Arrow Up - Navigate up
• Arrow Down - Navigate down
• Arrow Left - Navigate left
• Arrow Right - Navigate right

• Alt + c - Crop one pixel from bottom of video
• Alt + d - Crop one pixel from left of video
• Alt + f - Crop one pixel from right of video
• Alt + r - Crop one pixel from top of video
• Alt + Shift + c - Uncrop one pixel from bottom of video
• Alt + Shift + d - Uncrop one pixel from left of video
• Alt + Shift + f - Uncrop one pixel from right of video
• Alt + Shift + r - Uncrop one pixel from top of video
• Alt + Shift + Arrow Right - Highlight widget on the right
• Alt + Shift + Arrow Left - Highlight widget on the left
• Alt + Shift + Arrow Up - Highlight widget on top
• Alt + Shift + Arrow Down - Highlight widget below
• Alt + Shift + Enter - Select current widget

• F1 - Play plalist bookmark 1
• F2 - Play plalist bookmark 2
• F3 - Play plalist bookmark 3
• F4 - Play plalist bookmark 4
• F5 - Play plalist bookmark 5
• F6 - Play plalist bookmark 6
• F7 - Play plalist bookmark 7
• F8 - Play plalist bookmark 8
• F9 - Play plalist bookmark 9
• F10 - Play plalist bookmark 10

Phew. I would suggest you printout this list for future reference :-). Read more

Google launches online news reader called FastFlip

Google has unveiled an online news reader called 'Fast Flip' (similar to a picture slideshow) featuring content from the New York Times, Slate, Esquire, Newseek and BBC amongst others. Fast flip presents users thumbnails of various news stories, further allowing them to look at content from a particular news source.

Fast Flip allows readers to browse news stories by topic, publication or by what is most viewed or most popular. It shows only the first page of a story and users who want to read more have to click through to the source website. It also allows users to share content with friends or members of a social network and is also offering a mobile version of the product (great for the business travelers). Like all new Google products, it is still an experimental Google Labs product for now.

Fast Flip displays Adsense ads, hence allowing it to share revenue with its media partners. In this day and age of declining media revenue, perhaps this is another resource stream for companies.

I personally prefer RSS as its light and presents information from various sources in a condensed format. But Fast Flip is nevertheless a good start from Google. Check it out here. Read more