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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

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

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:

Here is a follow up to a few things discussed at the January Mullies meeting

Broadband Pricing and Plans available in Ulladulla area

As always the Whirlpool Broadband Choice site is the place to compare your options. As discussed ADSL 2 plans are available now from Telstra and companies reselling Telstra services. The really competitive prices available in Metro areas aren’t here yet though.

Blu-Ray Disc Players/Burners

Someone asked about Blu-Ray discs. Blu-Ray discs (BD) are the new format of discs that can hold a lot more data than DVDs. Here’s the comparison:

	Single Layer	Dual Layer
CD	700mb	n/a
DVD	4.7gb	8.5gb
Blu-Ray	25gb	50gb

More details at Wikipedia 

So as you can see the capacity of Blu-Ray discs is 10 times that of DVD. The extra capacity is needed for true High Definition pictures and sound on your home theatre and is also useful for backing up a computer where the extra storage means more per disc.

Just like when DVD tech first came out the prices of the machines and media (discs) started out ridiculously high. Burners were over $1,000. Last night I suggested they were still $300 plus but got an ad email today offering BD/DVD burners (for desktop not laptop PC) for about $220 delivered. Laptop burners would be much more expensive. And note the actual discs are pretty dear too – Individual 25gb discs are over $10 each. 5 DVD discs are similar capacity for less than half this price but not as handy as having all in one. Like everything else in tech BD will rapidly become cheaper and more common, or is that more common and therefore cheaper

Downloading YouTube videos & Saving the Audio

Stan asked how to save the audio from YouTube videos. A quick search took me to the Digital Inspiration website – a great blog written by Amit. I am subscribed to his RSS feed and you might like to check it out. His post on how to accomplish Stan’s task is here: How To Rip Audio from YouTube Videos

He suggests using the Vixy.net website to save the audio directly from YouTube. You simply input the URL, wait for conversion (it takes a while), then click to download. just like the site we found the other night ListenToYouTube I found this a process a bit flaky.

Much easier to just download the video (as a FLV) and convert it to MP3. To download I use a FireFox extension called Video DownloadHelper. But there are any number of free download programs and extensions available.

As mentioned at Mullies over a year ago you can use KissYoutube to download right in your browser – basically you just type KISS into the YouTube Address url and it takes you to their site to download the video.

 

Once you have the video on your PC I recommend Format Factory to convert it. You can convert the FLV (Flash Video) file to another video format or to MP3 to capture the audio only. The Format Factory is free and is great for ripping DVD’s to video files, converting pictures to other formats, or converting videos for use on portable players, ipods or phones.

 

Portable Music/Video players

As discussed with Romey it can be very frustrating with dealing with portable devices. Some manufacturers insist on making you use their software to load songs/videos onto a device. Then the software they give you wants to take over, duplicates your whole song library and clogs up your PC. Some players of course do not do this which makes life much easier. You can just drag and drop files like it was a USB flash drive.

Apple and Samsung (Romey had a Samsung T9 player) are difficult culprits but with iPods being so common a number of programs can interact with them. The choices for Romey’s Samsung are a bit more limited. But I believe that MediaMonkey should do the trick. It is a far more user friendly and very powerful music player and manager. If you don’t need to deal with video (it doesn’t do video very well) then I highly recommend it over Windows Media Player or other proprietary players. It handles Podcasts and Internet radio too. Because of the extra functions like syncing contacts etc on my Apple iPhone I still use iTunes and am quite happy with it but that won’t help Romey. I recommend downloading MediaMonkey and giving it a try. it shouldn’t duplicate your song library and hopefully will make creating playlists and syncing them with the player much simpler.

As always if anyone needs a bit more help with anything we discussed on the night or mentioned here then fire back a question and we will do our best to sort you out.

Adobe’s PDF document format is pretty popular. I am willing to bet most people have Adobe PDF Reader software installed on their PC.

The trouble with software is the more popular it is the more attractive it is to hackers etc to try and exploit it for malicious gain – can you say Windows! So with Adobe Reader being so common whenever a security flaw is found it is highly likely that there are some internet baddies out there trying to take advantage of it.

Adobe are pretty vigilant about upgrading the product regularly to address any flaws and this is the case now. The only downside is that the program is a pretty big download each time.

To keep yourself safe make sure you upgrade to Version 9 (or at least 8.1.3 or higher)

Alternatively I quite like Foxit PDF Reader. It performs the same functions for most users, includes some unique features that the free Adobe program doesn’t like adding bookmarks. Best of all it is free and a much smaller download. Check out the features in the review linked below. If you do install be sure to say ‘No’ to installing the Yahoo toolbar and eBay icon (unless you really want them)

Links

Adobe Reader 9 download

Foxit PDF Reader download

Foxit PDF Reader review

Fishing the net is some articles of interest I have found whilst trawling newsletters and internet sites. Here you go:

Tips for Better Portraits

5 tips for taking better portrait photos with your digital camera

A brief history of Computers as told via TV ads

If you have used computers for a while you will recognize some of these ads and the machines in them. Just goes to show how good Apple usually is at it’s marketing.

Bit of trivia – as a teenager I owned both a Tandy TRS80 and a Commodore 64. The C64 was an excellent machine for playing games – I still remember some

Backup Your Mozilla Profiles

For users of Firefox, Thunderbird, Flock and even (god forbid) SeaMonkey.

Did you know that all the customizations, cookies, bookmarks, and plug-ins you add to your programs can be backed up? You can save them in case of a problem, copy them to another PC and so on. This link gives you a howto tutorial using MozBackup

Ultimate Windows Tweaker – Tweak UI For Windows Vista

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a Tweak UI Utility for tweaking and optimising Windows Vista. It is modelled after the TweakUI program that was an ‘unofficial’ Microsoft product available for Win XP but never released for Vista. The Win XP version is available here.

Details of Tweaks :

The tweaks are classified under seven categories and can be accessed through a common interface, just like your Windows Vista Control Panel.
1) Personalization,
2) User Accounts & UAC,
3) System & Performance,
4) Security,
5) Internet Explorer (IE7 / IE8)
6) Network Optimization
7) Additional Options

 

 

The Complete Guide To Speeding Up Your PC’s Startup

A good summary of tips from Lifehacker on how to make your PC start faster. Follow the tips to speed things up. You can also investigate switching off some of the services on your  PC, although this is probably for more advanced users. I have personally tried the startup Delayer program they recommend and pretty quickly stopped using it – your mileage may vary

28 Powerful Photoshop Lighting Effects

Some tricks and tips for adding fancy effects to your pics using Photoshop or similar editing programs

Learn Photoshop in One Week

Interested in all this digital photography editing and manipulation but have never used Photoshop? Well here is a beginners tutorial that may suit you

 

There you go – that’s a few tidbits to keep you reading over the weekend

Following from a recent post about Gourmet Recipe Manager I received a question from Dawn:

Hi Matt,

This looks interesting.  I went to download it and notice a second one that has the word "unstable’ in the title and am feeling nervous. 

What does that mean?   Regards Dawn.

Good question Dawn. We all hear about Beta software on the internet but what is it and when should you use it?

When writing programs from scratch the authors usually go through a development cycle as depicted in this graphic from Wikipedia (click the pic for more detail)

However once a program has reached Gold or general release it can still be under development and further Beta builds testing out new features or changes may be available.

As a typical or average user it is best to avoid beta releases of programs for which you have a full working version. The old adage ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ applies here. However if the beta program solves a problem you are having or includes a feature that you need then that may motivate you to try out the new Beta version.

Of course all software can have bugs and by running Beta software and reporting the bugs back to the authors you can help to have some input and improve the programs you are using. Most of the software in the Linux world and increasingly in the Windows sphere works this way too

In this case Dawn is downloading the program for the first time and she has a choice between the known Stable full release version and the Beta or unstable ‘experimental’ versions. So Dawn should download the Stable version the first time. Later on you can try out the cutting edge releases if you want to.

The link I gave you for download – this one – is linked to the most current Stable release (for Windows). Or go to the program’s website for Beta and Linux releases