Tech Help Site

Please find some brief information on a few topics, most of which were discussed at the Mullies last week

How The Internet Works – I.P. Addresses

We discussed what an I.P or Internet Protocol address is and why some ISP (Internet Service Providers) might provide a static address for your connection.

I found the following article today which explains how the Internet works far better than I can/did.

Technology Explained: How The Internet Works – MakeUseOf.com

LiberKey Portable Apps

A portable application or program is one that can run without being ‘installed’ in the traditional manner on your computer. As the program runs without prior installation it can be carried on a portable storage device like a USB stick or portable hard drive and run on any computer. This makes the program portable and useable anywhere and also easy to back up and share. There are a good number of portable applications available as well as a number of suites and packages which gather together a number of apps.

I have been trialling the LiberKey portable apps suite and demonstrated it the other day. I quite like it as a front end to a number of small applications. The Liberkey software itself provides a sort of start menu along with an update function and the ability to switch your PC’s file associations over ( and later back) to the portable applications.

You can download any of the 3 suites but I suggest you start with the smallest ‘Basic’ suite. You can then visit their ‘All Softwares’ page to automatically add additional programs to your suite with just a click. For example portable Open Office is not included in any suite but is well worth a try and you can automatically add it to your LiberKey Suite here.

Check out the list of available programs – it is huge!

Of course all programs are free and many are in fact open source. Apart from a good Antivirus Program (see below) any Windows PC probably only needs this suite of applications provided with it to make a very useful and productive machine. Note to use the update functions you need to register at the website first – I did and have not received any spam or so on.

Antivirus – Eset Nod32

Since I have been using Windows 7 lately (the beta and now the release candidate) I have been trialling a few different Antivirus programs. Our old favourite at Mullies – AVG Free – does work with Win7 and is as good as usual – but how good is that.

Well I also tried Avira free and really liked it too. In fact I think it was better than AVG whilst being equally as low on the resource usage. If you are looking for a free Antivirus program then I think Avira is good.

However I have since trialled a paid program in Eset NOD32 Antivirus and have found it to be the best Antivirus and Antispyware program I have used. Again it is very light on system resources and does an excellent job. If you are prepared to spend just a few dollars then please don’t buy the bloated Norton or McAfee offerings – you will be happy with NOD32

Search For The Manual You Need With Manuals Online: “

I used to keep all my owner manuals for everything. Starting with my original Nintendo Entertainment System way back when. Now I just mail in my warranty card and chuck the manual.

No I am not a mad man or a lunatic – it is simply a different time we live in than back then. Now almost anything can be found on the internet – and Manuals Online has you covered when it comes to owner manuals and user guides.

When you arrive at the site you will see something that looks like this:

To search for a product enter its name or model number into the search field. A generic search will give you LOTS of results and a model number will usually result in one or two items. I decided to search for a DustBuster. I typed in Dustbuster and hit Search.

I got back 4 items for four different models. You can download the manual as a PDF, save it to your folder on their website (requires registration), you can also view forum discussions about your item as well.

I got a little more specific and typed in Sony Play Station 2. I got a few results and chose the model I was looking for. I was then able to preview the owner manual and eventually downloaded it. I could also ask members for help or share information about the product.

You can see below the item’s additional product literature. In this case it looks like the quick start guide but it can vary from product to product.

Upon opening the document it will display the PDF in your browser. You can also save the file by right clicking on the link and choosing “save target as”.

Alright so who’s ready to go clean out their attic/filing cabinet? Do you have another slick trick when it comes to dealing with owners manuals? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments! Now I have to get back to some old school gaming

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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“

You may recall I have touched on Twitter here on Mullies once already – see:
So what is this Twitter thing? YouTube knows.

As I described Twitter then:

It is a quick message writing service where you can publish notes that anyone can view. Kind of like a blog page but more like a ’status update’. Those who have used Facebook status updates will know what I mean.

Since that entry I have shown some of you Twitter and we discussed how many prominent people such as celebrities and sports stars are revealing information via Twitter – sometimes when they shouldn’t. As Stan said – it can be a bit like a celebrity gossip channel at times too! After all Oprah did a show about Twitter as well

Since the last post I have found an excellent source of information on Twitter for beginners. It is called the 12 days of Twitter and was write by a well respected online journo called Cali Lewis. Click on the link below to learn more about Twitter and how to use it:

12 Days of Twitter 

Oh and here is a link to Cali’s other work  – a video podcast reviewing gadgets and technology called GeekBrief.tv

You can use Twitter straight from the web at www.Twitter.com but there are lots of free programs you can use on your desktop instead.

My personal recommendation for the best way to use Twitter is Tweetdeck.
Tweetdeck can include Facebook status updates too so you can get more information in one place if you use both Twitter and Facebook like I do.Of course part of the popularity of Twitter stems from the fact you can ‘Tweet” (which means write an update to your Twitter page) from your internet enabled mobile phone. That is what makes it popular with the celebrities and the ‘cool kids’. So one of the reasons I like Tweetdeck is that they have an application I can load on my iPhone as well. If you have a capable phone there will be a program for you too – or you can just pull up the Twitter page on your internet browser.

If you do sign up to Twitter make sure to follow me  – which is like ‘add me as a friend’. My user name is Noblejoker – find me here www.Twitter.com/Noblejoker And send me a message so I can follow you in return

I stumbled across the following website which is offering 1,000 songs free to download and play on your computer, MP3 player (iPod), or even burn to a cd.

http://www.reverbnation.com/windows

The free downloads are supported by Microsoft Windows of all people. I guess the way to beat piracy is to give things away. I doubt they will adopt this attitude with their Operating System or Office software anytime soon.

The songs are in genres including Alternative, Electronica/Dance, Hip Hop, Jazz, Latin, Pop and Rock. Strangely there is no Classical category but there are a number of instrumentals among the Jazz and Latin categories.

Most of the artists you will have never heard of but there are a couple of Australian bands in there like The Church and a cool Jazz/Fusion band from Sydney call Urban Gypsies. You can play the songs on the website by just clicking the Play button next to the song. If you hear something you like you can download in either M4A or MP3 format. If you don’t know which format to choose go with MP3.

So have an explore and listen to something new today

Today I have got a link to download Corel Paint Shop Pro version X (10) for free. This is commercial photo editing software that rivals Adobe Photoshop for functions and usefulness. Recent changes have made it easier to use for beginners whilst retaining the full power of the software if you want to get down to very fine details and editing. If all you want is to remove red-eye, crop and touch up photos then this is too much for you – try Google’s Picasa which is free. But if you want a really powerful program then this is a good one. And hey – this version is totally free so give it a go. It is a large download though (about 100mb) so dial-up users beware.

Some more details on Paint Shop Pro from this sites:

So before I spill the beans on from where to get this software, let me highlight a few features of Corel Paint Shop Pro X:

• One-Step Photo Fix. With just one click, the One-Step Photo Fix command automatically adjusts the color balance, contrast, clarity, and saturation of an image. It also sharpens the image.
• Background Eraser. The Background Eraser tool lets you easily erase unwanted backgrounds while retaining the fine detail in your photos. It’s a perfect first step before copying and pasting elements from one photo into another.
• Raw file format support. Paint Shop Pro X continues to support the Camera Raw file format. You can open, enhance, process, and convert images that were saved on your digital camera in the Raw file format.
• Picture Tubes™. A longtime favorite, the Picture Tube tool lets you paint on your photo with a collection of professionally-designed artistic elements. For example, you can add butterflies and beetles to a picnic setting, fill an aquarium with fish, or frame a picture with holly. Picture Tubes are available in a variety of themes, including Animals, Artistic, Embellishments, Nature, Photo Objects, and Plants and Leaves. You can also create your own picture tubes.
• Scripting. A Paint Shop Pro powerhouse, scripting can save you tremendous amounts of time, especially when you are working with batches of images. You simply record a series of commands and then play them back to process an image or batch of images.
• Batch Processing. You can easily process batches of images with Paint Shop Pro. The Batch Process command lets you use scripts to apply fixes to batches of images, and you can also convert batches of images to a different file format.
• Lens Correction filters. Paint Shop Pro continues to provide excellent Lens Correction filters that help you correct common photo distortions, such as fish-eye, barrel, and pincushion.
• Perspective Correction tool. With this tool, you can easily fix buildings, landmarks, or other objects that appear to be leaning away from you in photos taken at an upward angle.
• Straighten tool. This tool lets you quickly align crooked photos by just pointing out a line that should be horizontal or vertical but isn’t.
• Scratch Remover. The Scratch Remover tool instantly removes scratches, wires, and other linear flaws from photos. This tool is particularly useful for removing scratches or cracks when restoring old photos, and is also an incredible tool for reducing face wrinkles in photos.
• Clone tool. The Clone tool lets you cover flaws in your photos by copying detail from a neighbouring area. You simply choose a source location and then draw over the flawed area of the image. This replaces the flaw with detail from the source location.
• Motion Blur. You can add Motion Blur to a photo to create the illusion that the photo was taken while the subject was in motion.
• Distort photos. The Warp Brush lets you create caricatures of your subjects by distorting pixels in a particular area of the photo.

As I said, that is just a few features of Corel Paint Shop Pro X – it really doesn’t do justice to the program. If you would like to learn more, you are welcome to read the excellent review on it written by Photo-i.

Now this definitely isn’t the latest Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate edition (that one will cost you around AU$100 – click here to read about the differences in features between all the editions) – but this is still an excellent program worth having if you need this sort of thing.

 

***Corel Paint Shop Pro X System Requirements:

• 500-MHz processor
• Windows® 2000 (SP4) or Windows XP (it works fine on Windows Vista)
• 256 MB of RAM
• 500 MB of free hard-drive space
• 1024 x 768 resolution display, 16-bit color
• Macromedia Flash™ Player 7 (included)

Here are a couple of links to download from (just in case 1 stops working)

Download Link 1

Download Link 2

Found this today and thought I would share with you. Coldplay are one of the most successful bands in the world. Check out their Wikipedia entry for more information if you aren’t familiar with them Wikipedia: Coldplay.

I was very impressed with their support of the Sound Relief fundraising concerts for the Victorian bushfire victims. They do a lot of charity stuff apparently. And their music is not bad either!

As a thank you to their fans (and also a pretty good PR move) they have made an album of live songs available for free download on their website.

To Download the album go to their website Coldplay.com and click the link on the right (or just click the butterfly image). They ask for your email address and country but they do offer an opt-out if you don’t want emails from them in future. The album comes in a Zip file and is about 55mb. Of course like any mp3 songs it’s fairly simple to burn them to a CD for use in the car or your home stereo too

Give it a try – you can’t go wrong at this price

Updates have been a little quiet for a while but I promise I do have a few things in the pipeline. Ross has asked a question about Virtual PC I intend to answer plus I want to write a recommendation of what software I use as people often ask me.

But today I wanted to offer you some free books – well eBooks actually. They are full novels and are being offered free to download in PDF format which means you don’t need any special software to read them on your PC (Just free Adobe or Foxit Reader). You could print them out if you really wanted to I guess. It would be cheaper than buying the print version but I wouldn’t bother killing the trees myself.

The offer is brought to you by The Book Depository in the UK. I signed up to their newsletter when I bought a book on the site. They offer free shipping worldwide and the delivery on my order took less than a week. Amazing.

We are giving away not one but two new free eBooks!

The titles are quite different from one another; I know some of you will like both, but I’m sure most of you will enjoy one or the the other!

The Two Mrs Grenvilles is Dominick Dunne’s stunning novel about Ann Woodward, the shooting of her husband, and her relationship with a writer who can only be Truman Capote:

His mother was blueblood Society. His father was a bank president and a friend of the King of England. But privilege spoils. Their son was tall and handsome. He was also weak and shallow. Billy Woodward had a thing for showgirls. He married one of them — and, in 1955, after dinner with the Duchess of Windsor, she shot and killed him. Murder? Of course not; Ann Woodward had children, and her mother-in-law didn’t want them traumatised by scandal. Better to say that Ann mistook Bill for a prowler. Better that Ann never stand trial for murder. But there are other ways to convict a killer. Rumour is one. In 1975, Truman Capote lightly fictionalised the story and sold it to Esquire magazine. Ann Woodward, ultimately shamed, overdosed on sleeping pills. "Well, that’s that," her mother-in-law said.

Download The Two Mrs Grenvilles here (PDF; no special software/hardware needed) or buy the book.

Dan Hind’s The Threat to Reason is a powerful and eminently readable reclamation of Enlightenment values:

"In exploring how the Enlightenment continues to operate as a powerful guiding principle in Western politics, The Threat to Reason reveals how the truly pressing threats to free inquiry reside within the allegedly enlightened institutions of state and corporation. In recovering the concept of Enlightenment from its self-appointed defenders, The Threat to Reason demonstrates its crucial importance to a truly democratic politics, rather than a political performance in which we remain merely spectators.

Download The Threat to Reason here (PDF; no special software/hardware needed) or buy the book.

Link to the webpage summarised above Book Depository UK 2 Free eBooks

Most of us use Microsoft Office on our PC’s especially if you have a work/corporate computer. The menu system and toolbars has been basically similar through all the evolutions of office up to and including Office 2003. However with Office 2007 Microsoft introduced the new ‘Ribbon’ interface which is a sort of context aware tabbed toolbar and options. ‘Context aware’ means it changes depending on what you are doing at the time. The Ribbon is available in most Office programs including Word & Excel but only in  a limited fashion in Publisher and Outlook.

I actually like the new ribbon menu and once you get used to it, it is very useable. Plus we need to get used to the Ribbon-type system as Microsoft is bringing it to all of their programs over time.

Now of course when you make a change to a program as common as Office you alienate a number of users. So I wasn’t surprised when I ran across an item on Lifehacker the other day referring to a way to customise the menu system in Office 2007 to include the old 2003 menus in one of the Ribbon Tabs.

The article referred me to the Ribbon Customizer website. I downloaded the free Starter Edition and I found it quite useful. However a bit more searching led me to a similar program called UBitMenu and I like the way this one achieves the same outcome.

Office 2007’s Ribbon interface remains a love-it-or-hate-it affair for money, and for those of you who miss the Microsoft Office 2003 menu that’s entrenched in your muscle memory, UBitMenu can help. This plug-in adds a new Menu entry to the Office 2007 ribbon (specifically in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). When clicked, your ribbon displays the classic Office 2003 menu, complete with the buttons and file menus you’re used to from your old Office 2003 install. Not every single bit of functionality remains in the UBitMenu toolbar as is available in Office 2003—due mostly to changes in Office—but most of the features you’re used to remain in all their glory. Even if you’re keen on the Office 2007 ribbon, UBitMenu is a nice tool to ease the transition from 2003 to 2007.

We have also discussed Search Commands in the past. This add-on from the Office Labs provides a way to search through the Office menu options if you don’t know where a certain function is hiding. It also offers Guided Help which is like a mini-tutorial on how to use some functions. You can add this function as well as one of the ‘old’ menus above

You know there’s a button for it, but you don’t know or remember where it is. If this ever happens to you, check out Search Commands. You can use this concept test today to quickly find the commands you need in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just search with your own words and click on the command you need. It also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for the specific tasks you’re looking for.

For those who are totally frustrated with Office I have another alternative – Open Office. OO is a totally different program but has a menu structure that is similar to that used in MS Office of recent years. It is a very powerful program and is fully compatible in most cases with Office document formats. Oh yeah, and it totally FREE!

If you are setting up a new computer for Home use there is no reason to pay $150 or more to have MS Office

So there you go – a number of ways to make using Microsoft Office 2007 easier to use or indeed replace it all together

References
LifeHacker – UBitMenu

Romey has a question for us:

Hi Matt. I have some teaching CDs I want to make a copy of. When I copy them my computer won’t play them as it asks for the original disc. Is there a program that will override this problem? Thanks if you can help.

Copying game or program CDs and DVDs is more complicated than copying music CDs as you need an exact copy not just a rewrite of the data
Some commercial discs have copy protection built in so if the burned copy isn’t an exact replica the burned disc might not work correctly – I suspect this is what is happening to you.

Obviously there are copyright issues to consider here
Some people make back-up copies of discs they own to protect the originals from scratches and damage and that seems fair to me

Do you have access to the originals discs?
So to copy them successfully you need to do so in a particular way that makes a bit by bit copy of the disc
Usually the easy way is to make an exact ‘image’ of the disc and then burn that image to another disc. This is similar to the discussion we have had about using Acronis True Image and other ways to Back-up your system

There are specialised programs for making images. I Like ImgBurn and Daemon Tools

According to their website:

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit!

 

It has several ‘Modes’, each one for performing a different task:

• Read – Read a disc to an image file
• Build – Create an image file from files on your computer or network – or you can write the files directly to a disc
• Write – Write an image file to a disc

So you can use this free program to copy a disc to your computer as an image file and then write the image to another disc as a backup. It is a very powerful program and the ‘deep geeks’ swear by it. But is is easy enough to use for beginners and the help and user forums are available too. Did I mention ImgBurn is small to download an free!

Here is tutorial on how to make an image using ImgBurn copied from www.ehow.com 
How to Build an Image File With ImgBurn

Step1 – Download and install ImgBurn from its official website. You can choose from a variety of download sites, and the installation file’s relatively small, so it shouldn’t take long to save.

Step2 – Launch ImgBurn. Unless you changed its installation settings, you can find ImgBurn shortcuts on your desktop, in its Start Menu "Programs" folder or in the Quick Launch menu.

Step3 – Choose either "Create Image File from Disc" or "Create Image File from Files and Folders" from the opening screen of options. Pick the first if you’re building an image from a DVD and the second if you’re building one from video files on your hard drive.

Step4 – Pick the drive holding your DVD from the "Source" drop-down menu. ImgBurn automatically chooses what it thinks is the right one, but if you’ve got more than one, you may need to manually pick the drive.

Step5 – Click the folder icon next to the "Destination" field and choose where ImgBurn will save the finished image file.

Step6 – Press the big button showing two DVD discs to read the DVD and begin building the image file.

Burning an image file to disc is just as easy. For more tutorials & guides refer to the  ImgBurn Forum

The only thing that ImgBurn doesn’t do is ‘mount’ an image to your PC. Mounting an image is basically a way to ‘trick’ your PC with software into thinking that the image file is actually a physical Disc in an extra CD/DVD drive. The extra drive with a new drive letter will pop up and interact with Windows in the same way your physical CD/DVD drive does. Using images and mounting them is actually a good way to store Discs you access regularly as it is much faster than waiting for the CD to spin in your physical drive.

I have recently started using Daemon Tools lite which is very good and free
http://www.daemon-tools.cc
Download
http://www.daemon-tools.cc/downloads

You can use Daemon Tools to make an image file, or you can stick with ImgBurn for creation. Once you have an image file use Daemon Tools to mount the image. Basically just run the program and click File-Open and select your image file. If you open My Computer you will find your ‘new’ drive ready to go.

So hopefully that answers Romey’s question. Does anyone use the programs above or some alternatives. Have you had any success making image files in the past? Would you like to know more? Then leave us a comment on the site using our brand new comment section. Thanks

I found a site offering free Training Manuals and Reference guides for Microsoft Office.

MS Office Training at MouseTraining.co.uk

Just click the link to go to their site. You can download training manuals for all the programs in Office including Word and Excel for all versions from Office 2000, XP, 2003. For the most current Office 2007 there are manuals for Excel and PowerPoint and Reference Guides for the other programs – I guess they had to hold something back to make money out of!

I haven’t examined them closely but they seem to be ok and you can’t argue with Free!

In case they ever remove them I have archived a copy of the 2003 & 2007 files. They are stored at Box.net – see below: