The official music for this article is here, courtesy of The Rolling Stones. No, I am not really a big fan but strangely this great proggie by the name of Taskbar Shuffle reminds me of this long forgotten song. So turn up the volume and let Mick Jagger and gang take you back to a point in time when TVs rule and the internet was unheard of, while you read this short review.

Taskbar Shuffle v2.5
Type: Freeware
OS: Windows Vista/XP/2000/NT/9x
Note: Not for Windows 7, as taskbar shuffling is already a feature.
Homepage: http://nerdcave.webs.com/
Download: http://nerdcave.webs.com/
Size: 505KB (taskbar_shuffle_2.5.zip, portable version)

This program has 2 functions actually – shuffle the taskbar and rearrange the icons in the system tray.
The portable (non-installer) version’s  zipped file is just 505KB, so it gets extra points for being small.

Do The Taskbar Shuffle: “You move it to the right, yeah!”
If you’re on Windows XP or Vista (Why?), and you are jealous of Ubuntu users who can switch programs on the taskbar at will while yours are stuck into place like a nail in the wood, then you should really have a look at this nifty thingie.
I’d been using it for a while now and it does its job well, doesn’t crash, doesn’t use much resources and doesn’t need a system tray icon to announce itself. All the signs of a very well written program.

It’s especially useful after a Windows Explorer crash when you notice that programs aren’t in the sequence you opened them. Don’t you just hate that? At least, I do. Which is why I got hold of this thing – to have it enforce a pecking order in my taskbar and make Windows Explorer crashes tolerable.

And it also makes my Windows XP a bit like Windows 7.

How to use it? Easy!
You click and hold the mouse button on the program you want to move in the taskbar, and then you move it to the left or right as Mick Jagger sang in the song. That’s why we have his song playing in the background.

Pros:
-It has non-installer version, ie it’s portable! (One extra Kong for this!)
-It is tiny
-It can also rearrange icons in your system tray (which I’d just notice, while writing this!)

Cons:
-It does not auto play Harlem Shuffle in the background.

Final Score:

Rating: 4.5 Little Kongs

NetBalancer allows you to prioritize how bandwidth should be distributed among applications. You specify whether you want to give an application Low, Normal, or High priority and set a Limit for them, if necessary.

The Free version allows you to set rules for up to 5 different applications, which is usually more than enough. For my case, it’s managing my Browser, Bit Torrent speed and a few of my online games (which naturally gets High to ensure absolutely minimum lag when playing).

Although not very powerful compared to other solutions, its a very simple, and most importantly FREE, way to set up your computer so that downloading doesn’t choke other applications on your computer.

However the limitation is that this app only works on the computer it’s installed in. It does absolutely nothing for other computers on the network. For those facing problems with bandwidth hogging housemates, you will need to look into router-level QoS settings, which is a whole different beast alltogether.

If you have 5 minutes, download the app now, set up a few rules and you won’t have to bother about having to pause downloads if you want to stream video or music ever again.

Sometimes, you really need to keep things simple. You don’t really want the full power of a Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mail, Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird to handle the simple job of shooting an email as these programs tend to be overloaded.

This is when promoting Gmail to the lofty position of default email client seems to be an attractive alternative as it opens up pretty fast for a web application. Unless, you really have a slow connection, or heaven forbid, a dial up connection – which is a relic of the last millenium in this time and age.

How to make Gmail your default email client?

For Google Talk users:
Double click on the Google Talk icon in the system tray and click on the Settings link, then check the “Open Gmail when I click on email links” box in the Settings window. “OK” and done!

For Gmail Notifier users (Not compatible with Google Toolbar):
Right click on its system tray icon, select the Options menu and tick the box next to “Use Gmail for internet mailto: links”.
Select your favorite browser in the drop down menu. Done!

TIP: You may get an error stating “Cannot connect to your mailbox. Service temporarily unavailable.” which is caused by a bug in the Gmail Notifier for those of you who have “Browser connection: Always use https” selected under “Gmail > Settings > General (tab)”.

IF so,
1. Download this registry patch from Google support.
2. Unzip and double click on the file called notifier_https.reg to install it. Or, right click and select “Merge”.
4. Click ‘yes’ to confirm that you want to add the information to the registry.
5. Close and restart the Gmail Notifier.
The other file, notifier_https_undo.reg is to delete the registry key if you ever need to uninstall it.
Done!

For Mozilla Firefox users

If you don’t have the programs above, and for some reasons don’t want to install them either, you can still try the mod below, but only if you use Firefox.

1. Type ‘javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(“mailto”,”https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”Gmail”)‘ minus the outermost quotation marks into the address bar.
Take out the ‘s’ from ‘https’ if you don’t use https for Gmail.
Press Enter.

2. If you see “Add Gmail (mail.google.com) as an application for mailto links” at top of your browser below the address bar, click on the “Add Application” button.

If you don’t: From the top menu, go into “Tools” > “Options” (or “Firefox” > “Preferences” for Mac users), select the “Applications” tab. Find “mailto” and select “Use Gmail”.
Done!

A Final Word

Personally, I am a Google Talk user, so the choice was easy for me; but if I don’t have either Google proggies installed, I would go for the Firefox option. I would also choose Gmail Notifier last as it always have an unnecessary pop-up to prompt me for connection to Gmail during startup.

PDF is a great format for computers, but on the limited screen of a phone, they are hopeless and very hard to navigate, requiring lots of panning around and waiting for the phone to ‘redraw’ every time you pan the view. I started my quest to hunt for the best ebook readers for smartphones and this is the results.

If you are on the iPhone OS platform (ala iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone), things are extremely simple for you. Simply download the Stanza app, which includes a desktop client. From here on, everytime you turn on your iPhone and connect to your home network, launch Stanza on your phone and computer and they will connect to each other automagically. After that, just click and drop your favourite books from your desktop and it will automatically upload them to your iPhone. It’s  a really genius interface and makes transferring books a painless and near foolproof process.

Stanza is able to convert almost any text medium, including PDF, RTF, MS Office, ePub and a host of other formats.

If you are on Android, things are a bit tougher. Currently my favourite eBook reader app for Android is Aldiko, which performs pretty much the same functions as Stanza on the iPhone. However, Aldiko lacks a desktop client, so you can only get books either through the Aldiko store or by copying it into your phone memory. Aldiko only supports the ePub format, so if you have any other formats, you will need to find a converter for it.

For other smartphones such as Blackberry and Symbian, there are also plenty of ePub readers out there and it should be no problems getting one.

One reason why I prefer the ePub format is because this format will be the future de facto standard for electronic books. It is currently supported by most, if not all, major eBook readers such as the Amazon Kindle, Hanlin and its clones, the Barnes & Noble Nook and so on. Converting your collection over to ePub now ensures future compatibility and less hassle.

Which brings the topic to ePub converters. Stanza does a wonderful job converting all sorts of format into ePub for its iPhone software and the ease of use makes it the top choice converter if you are on the iPhone platform. For Android and other platforms, your best bet is Calibre, an open source Ebook Manager which comes with a powerful converter. Fans say the conversion from Calibre is of higher quality than Stanza, and supports graphics.

Using Calibre is pretty simple, you just install it and start adding books into its database. There is a Convert button which you can click to convert from almost any format to ePub. Once conversion is done, you can choose to transfer it to your phone’s memory. On the iPhone, unless you have jailbroken it, copying is not so easily done as the computer does not detect the iPhone as a Mass Storage device, so you are better off using Stanza’s automated functions.

Enjoy carrying your library in your pocket! And not just your music library, but books as well.

For those payware apologists who want to argue that paid ones work better, note that 2 of the biggest Antiviruses – N**ton and Syman*** are hated by lots of IT people, including yours truly, for hogging resources on our computers. They were good back in 1998 but a couple of years back, lots of IT people find that removing them from Vista machines helped make Vista usable.

Just recently, I’d discovered that AVG has been doing a lot of unnecessary read/write in my computer.

Avgchsvx.exe is AVG’s Cache Server Process and as far as I know (after checking online), it is not necessary at all to catch viruses. It is supposed to be used to help speed up the AVG virus scanning but since it is a new addition in AVG ver 9, you can think of it as a BETA addition being tested out on the unsuspecting masses.

Which is why I decided to remove AVG from my Windows partition for the time being. So for now, for my main OS, I’ll be using Avira.

Avira's highest read/write io

And this brings me to the reason why Avira was not in my main OS – I REALLY HATE that once-a-day ad! If that and its splash screen are the reasons why you don’t use it too, here’s how to get rid of them:

To disable the once-a-day pop-up surprise:

For Windows XP Pro, Vista Business/Ultimate/Enterprise and Windows 7:

-Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative tools > Local security policy.

-Right click “Software Restriction Policies”, choose “New Software Restriction Policies.”

(Skip if there are sub folders in “Software Restriction Policies” already).

-Right-click “Additional Rules” > “New Path Rule …”.

-Click “Browse” and find “C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic\” (or wherever you have it installed), and select avnotify.exe.

-Set the security level to “Disallowed” > “Apply” > “Ok”.

(I do not have space for other Windows versions, search Google for “disable Avira ad + [your Windows version]” if yours is not covered here, esp if you are using Home or Starter editions)

To disable the splash screen:

-Open Regedit* and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run].

-In the right pane double-click avgnt and add /ns at the end of the path (ex. /min /ns).

(This was /nosplash prior to version 9).

*Regedit is Microsoft’s Registry Editor and just running this thing means that your computer will not be supported by Microsoft in the event of booting problems or whatever. If you have not heard of it and have to ask how to run it , I suggest that you get someone more knowledgeable to help you – like your 13 year old – for example.

ClamWin (Windows version of ClamAV)

While we’re still on the subject of antiviruses, you may also want to try out:

-I liked it for its portability. I have it on USB and also synchronized across the internet (between work and home) as it does not need to be installed; the only antivirus I know which have this characteristic.

-I also use it (ClamAV) in Linux servers to prevent Windows clients computers from getting infected.

-It’s scanning is probably not as good as the rest but it is open source (FREE!); and though it used to lack (a usable) on-access scanner, it has one now, developed for it by a third party. Check it out here, it’s called Clam Sentinel.

After using the beta for a few months, I find that the stability is great, although the software sometimes lags for no apparent reason, possibly due to the unique Click-and-Run method it uses in order to deliver the beta experience. Anyway, the RTM, or release to manufacturing, version will be out in a few more weeks as Microsoft is targeting a May release date for their corporate customers, followed in June for the general availability to people like you and me.

The 2010 suite is also the first time Microsoft is updating their Visio and Project programs, which are often widely used in corporate environments for project management and other commercial applications. The new interface should make it easier and more user friendly for people to work with.

“Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, [will] announce the launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on May 12, 2010 at 11 a.m. EST. The live Microsoft keynote focuses on the next wave of productivity that delivers: end user productivity across the PC, phone and browser; IT choice and flexibility; [and] a platform for developers to build innovative solutions,” the details of the event read.

At this point in time, Office 2010 is yet to be released to manufacturing. A small group of testers worldwide is running the Release Candidate development milestone of Office 2010, which the company offered earlier this year. Office 2010 Build 4734.1000-110 is not available for the public, but users looking to get a feel of what the successor of Office 2007 brings to the table can still download Office 2010 Beta Build 14.0.4536.1000.

Fortunately the Malaysian build of the beta will still be able to run well into later this year, after which you will actually need to spend some money in order to get it.

Inking users (those who use a stylus with Office) might want to take a second look at Office 2010 as it has a much improved inking interface making writing a breeze on a touchscreen tablet. Integration with OneNote 2010 is also extensive and well well done, with some saying it’s better than Evernote, a popular free note aggregation program.

If you’re a Windows user who occasionally (pretends to) dabble in Linux, and has forgotten how to upgrade, here it is for you in a concise and easy-to-follow manner.

Firstly, this article is only about how to upgrade from within Ubuntu, and it’s only for the DESKTOP (NOT Server!) version. If you have a version prior to 9.10; you will need to progressively upgrade to the next higher version before upgrading to 10.04. You really can’t jump versions here.

Example: Upgrade 8.10 > 9.04 > 9.10 > 10.04 (No jumps allowed!)
*(Note that 10 [in 10.04] means 2010 and 04 means month 4. Ubuntu has always been designed to be released on a 6-month development cycle).

If you have slow internet connection OR cannot free at least 1488MB of hard disk space and need to do an offline upgrade, there is a good article here on this subject.

Also, you should realize that this is Beta software, so only upgrade now if you know how to save yourself in case something go wrong. Otherwise, wait for the stable release in 3 weeks time.

Pre-Upgrade:
-Ensure that you have at least 1488MB of free space in your “File System” folder.
Clean up your system to free up some space especially if you don’t have much space available.
To remove old installation setup packages and dependencies, in a Terminal window (From the top menu, Applications > Accessories > Terminal), type in:
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get autoremove
-Empty the trash.
(If you can’t find the space and especially if yours is a Windows (WUBI) installation of Ubuntu, consider doing the Offline Upgrade mentioned above which requires only about 800 MB of space as you will be saving a 650MB chunk of ISO file elsewhere on your hard drive).

Update Manager

-Update your 9.10 to the latest available updates.
-Run Update Manager (From the top menu, System > Administration > Update Manager) and press “Check” to check for Updates, followed by “Install Updates” to get your system up-to-date.

Next, take a deep breath, cross your fingers, touch wood and proceed to:

Upgrading to Stable version (after April 29, 2010):
(At the time of writing this article, the Stable version is not out yet; it will only be out on April 29, 2010; so skip this and go to the Beta version below).

"New distribution release '10.04' is available"

Stay on Update Manager, press “Check” again and you should see “New distribution release ’10.04′ is available”. Click “Upgrade” and proceed according to instructions on the screen.
OR
Upgrading to Beta version:

Run Application pop-up

1. Press Alt + F2 to open the Run Application pop-up window.
2. Type “update-manager -d” (without the quotes) to enable Beta version upgrade.

3. Update Manager will now run and do some checking and then display: “New distribution release ’10.04′ is available”. Click “Upgrade” and follow the on-screen instructions.

So far so good ...

Aaaaaaargh!!!!!

4. If you don’t hit upon any show stopper, you should be able to upgrade easily.

Finally, pat yourself on the back. You’d just upgraded to the latest and greatest version of a very good OS and did not even have to go out and buy the (pirated?) CD.
Among other improvements, you should expect faster boot-up times and more exciting colors than brown. And some bugs too! Enjoy!

New desktop but same old boring brown

PS: I was forced to abort this and do the Offline Upgrade as I can only free about 1200 MB of space after trying out all sorts of things including removing Open Office files, and deleting foreign language files and fonts. This is because I only have about 3.5 GB of space on my hard disk for Ubuntu.
PPS: Upon the first boot-up, the first color I see is still brown.

I changed this to a much nicer and lighter shade of brown, IMMHO

But in the process of ripping my music CD and converting stuff around, a lot of my music collection are recognizable only by their filenames. They are not properly tagged, meaning the file doesn’t have any artist or album information or any sort of identification whatsoever, other than the filename. This presents a problem to most modern music library management tools such as iTunes, which relies heavily on the tags for most of its features including Genius Playlist, album cover downloads, etc.

I have therefore searched almost in vain to find a software that would automatically tag my music collection without having me to interfere with it. There are lots of paid services out there which are no doubt useful for this kind of job, but I want something that is free, being the cheapskate I am, I found something called MetatOGGer. Not a really classy name, but for the price, it offers an unbeatable song ID service.

Acoustic fingerprinting identification

MetatOGGer starts up just like any other windows application. Its a little bit klunky to use, but the gist of the matter is that you simply drag and drop any sort of music into it (you can do this even directly from iTunes) and it will load up the music. After that, simply go to Tools, then Identify Song by Acoustic Fingerprint. Via the magic of the Internet (and some nifty programming no doubt), it will acoustically fingerprint your music (how, I don’t know. I guess it generates some sort of hash for the file) which it then uploads to MetatOGGer’s server. The server contains millions of these musical fingerprints, matched with the proper album and artist information. Once the server reports a match, the results are delivered back to your PC where it will automatically populate that song’s tags, all automatically!

Granted, some flaws remain. First, it relies on having a good database of fingerprints to compare to. I don’t know how MetatOGGer maintains its database, but from my fooling around, it seems pretty good, being able to pick up Japanese and Chinese songs with ease and also correctly identifying some of the more esoteric music that I have in my collection, including the tons of Cafe Del Mar stuff I have. It is a truly wonderful view to see this program churning in the background and turning your Unknown Album/Unknown Artist into a properly formatted song. With this information, iTunes can then be used to import in the correct album artwork and you are golden!

One flaw of the program is that it lags a bit, especially when processing large libraries. I have tried with 1000 songs and it’s pretty slow, although I left it on for the night to crunch through the data. I don’t recommend adding more than 500 songs at one go, especially if you have an older computer. The lag issue aside, it’s pretty solid and didn’t crash on me despite the amount of data I threw at it. I would recommend this app to anybody sick of seeing improper tag in their music collection. It also has some other miscellaneous tagging functions, but the star here is definitely the free acoustic fingerprinting identification.

Integrates with Google Docs

That’s exactly what Offisync offers you, along with other Google-friendly integrations that strive to make your Office experience that much more productive. The first big feature of Offisync is integration with Google Docs.

This allows you to save your work directly into Google’s servers and opens up the ability to have collaborative editing performed at the same time on one document. It also means that you can have access to any of your Office documents anywhere you go as long as you have an Internet connection: very handy if you are prone to be forced to work from areas that does not have Office installed, or in printing rooms.

Integrated Search

The integration means that all your documents will be instantly search-able via Google’s powerful search algorithms, useful if you have many documents saved.  The best feature is that you can directly search Google Image repositories from within Office itself through the Clipart interface, saving you the need to switch between applications. With a click of a button, the image is immediately downloaded and pasted into your document. It is truly a very convenient method to encourage you to add more pictures to your document to make it more lively.

The program is available here and is currently in Beta, although it is already pretty stable to be used in production environments.

Check out the following Offisync video demo.

At first glance, FBackup looks like a rudimentary piece of backup software. You tell it what to backup, where and how often to do so and it will chug along merrily on its way. The settings are pretty short and simple to understand and it does the job nicely.

What sets FBackup apart from the rest of the pack is the powerful plugin manager it has, allowing you to expand the capabilities beyond performing simple backups of directories.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to extend FBackup to easily back up specific applications to capture all the settings and personalizations that you may have performed during the course of using an application. For example, if you use Windows Live Messenger a lot, chances are you already have a lot of emoticons saved up but when you reformat, all those settings are typically lost, unless you are computer savvy enough to know where Messenger stores all the settings and other information, usually scattered all over your hard disk in various folders.

With FBackup, you simply load the plugin for Messenger and it will instruct FBackup on exactly where and what customization files to backup in addition to the application files. You end up with an exact copy of the app complete with all the settings ready to be restored.

Mind that if you are restoring into a recently reformatted computer, you may need to reinstall the application from an installer first AND THEN restore the settings from FBackup, as FBackup only backs up the files but not the registry settings.

We are still far away from a point where you can backup all your apps and restore them back to a fresh computer complete with all your customized settings. Nevertheless, this method ensures that you have all the files and data safely backed up.

There are a host of plugins available (for free) from the creators of FBackup and they range from email clients, internet applications, audio and multimedia and others. It maybe a chore hunting down all the plugins you need, so perhaps in the future FBackup can detect installed applications and automatically downloads the required plugins.

Even without the automated procedure, FBackup is no doubt a powerful backup solution that is unique in its class. In the age where hard disk size are growing exponentially, it makes little sense to make a 1 to 1 copy of your entire hard disk and FBackup ensures you have all your important and necessary files with you at all times, with none of the bloat. This lean way of making backups makes perfect sense for those with limited hard drive space while those who don’t practice regular backups should be ready for the possibility that there may be a chance for a catastrophic data disaster event. Are you sure you are ready if that happens?