A post on Download Squad, shared by Vlad (an old Jaiku contact), reminded me that I’ve been meaning to sort out a new alternative to the stupidly bloated Adobe Reader.

I’ve been a long time user of Foxit Reader, but over the last while this piece of software has increased in size, gotten much slower on load time, and worst of all, started to use dubious practices in tricking you to install crapware – the worst of all being as displayed in the screenshot below.

Foxit Crapware Trick (courtesy of Download Squad)

This nasty tactic makes you think you’re deselecting items you don’t want and then, if you aren’t paying attention, your default reaction is to click “I accept” assuming that you’re accepting the installation of Foxit Reader without the unwanted crapware. No no. This means you’re accepting the install of yet-another-useless-browser-toolbar but not using Ask as your homepage/default search.

This nearly caught me out, and I’m a seasoned computer user wary of such things.

As a result I will no longer be suggesting Foxit software as an alternative to Adobe.

Now I need recommendations on new alternatives. I’ve tried Sumatra, but it’s missing out on text selection. In fact, pretty much the only feature I need in a PDF reader is being able to read the document and text selection – I need no other features.

Anyone got a recommendation? If so I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Date Added: June 30th, 2010 | 3 Comments

I’m not usually one to chastise an open source product compared to a proprietary one, but it’s hard not to notice the aesthetic differences when looking at Open Office beside Microsoft Office (2007 version).

Side by side: Open Office / Microsoft Office

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Absolutely, it’s more important to consider the functionality, compatibility, and ease of use of any piece of software; but at the same time if you’re spending long amounts of time using something, it can help if it looks nice at the same time.

OpenOffice definitely loses in the looks department at the moment. Whilst there is some functionality for changing colour schemes through Tools > Options >Appearance, trying to find pre-made colour schemes on the net proved futile after ten minutes searching, and these colour scheme won’t address some more fundamental aspects of the look of the software.

If you think it’s broken, you can contribute!

Yes I know, but I just don’t have the time – I’m sure that’s the most common defence used by people making excuses about not contributing, but well it’s just the case. If I’m not going to contribute then maybe I shouldn’t be complaining.

However when you see open-source projects like Ubuntu massively increasing their GUI and UX with dedicated people working on improving overall aesthetics, you realise that it’s actually a very important factor in driving increased adoption of open-source systems by a wider audience.

More details on Ubuntu’s Ayatana Project can be found here.

Perhaps OpenOffice has a similar project of which I’m not aware, but if they don’t I think they should consider starting one.

Date Added: June 17th, 2010 | Leave a comment!

This morning I woke up and had a notification on my Motorola Milestone stating that there was an update package ready for download. Could this be a quiet rollout of Android 2.2 (Froyo)?

Pre-Update

• Firmware Version: 2.1-update1
• Baseband version: 3GSMEPU91A_U91.07.4EI
• Kernel version: 2.6.29-ompa1 a21146@ca25rhe74 #1
• Build number: SHOLS_U2_02.31.0

The update package it’s currently downloading is 28Mb. Which makes me think it’s unlikely to be 2.2 as I think the 2.1 update came in at 80Mb or something, but can’t remember for sure.

Post-Update

• Firmware Version: 2.1-update1
• Baseband version: 3gsmepu91a_u91.07.55i
• Kernel version: 2.6.29-ompa1 wxnk36@ca25rhe53 #1
• Build number: SHOLS_U2_02.34.3

So looks like it wasn’t Froyo, but an internal Motorola update. I’ve no idea what the update has done, but assume it’s a bug fix of some sort. Can’t find any in-depth information about it.

Date Added: June 15th, 2010 | Leave a comment!

Firefox Logo

This is just going to be a super quick post as I’m busy with a bunch of things at the moment (although I got the film completed on which I was working overtime the last while).

If you’re a power user, you may be the type of person that ends up with 70 tabs open in your browser(s). Right now between Firefox, Chrome, and IE8, I have 41 tabs going, with 35 in Firefox. More tabs open results in higher memory usage. I used to think that Firefox was a terrible memory hog, but it’s actually just my usage of Firefox that makes it a terrible memory hog. I’ve done basic comparison tests, opening the same tabs in different browsers and they all come out around the same (very unscientific so don’t harangue me on that point).

Thanks to the TabMix Plus firefox extension I have multiple rows of tabs and I tend to jump around them a lot, especially when developing.

This can result in Firefox jumping up to 600+ Mb RAM usage (I’ve actually seen it hit 1.3Gb RAM on my old desktop). I’m currently on a borrowed laptop which only has 2Gb available so in order to reduce memory usage I’ve started using BarTab.

It rocks. It unloads tabs from memory after a specified duration which means the tab is still there if you need it, but when you switch to that unloaded tab, the page will load. The time lost in waiting for a page to load is definitely worth the benefit in memory savings, and you can also set a whitelist of domains that should never be unloaded.

Perfect.

Hat tip to The How-To Geek for putting me onto this one.

Date Added: June 10th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Fresh from subscribing to a few WordPress related blogs by some of the people I met at WordCamp Malaysia, I decided I wanted to change the folder name into which I had added these feeds, a small change from “word-press-related” to a more straight-forward “WordPress”.

After a few minutes of looking at the options in the folder settings dropdown, “Settings > Folders and Tags”, and “Settings > Subscriptions”, I realised that there didn’t appear to be any way to actually rename a folder in Google Reader. Something which is a little odd, especially seeing as it’s a piece of cake to rename a subscription. You would think this functionality would be a simple thing to implement.

Anyway, after giving up on being able to rename the folder, I worked out what is probably the fastest way to reach the same result.

1. Pick one of your subscriptions in the folder which you wish to rename, and add it to a ‘new folder’. Give the new folder the name you desire.
2. Go to Settings > Subscriptions, and in the “Filter by name, folder, or URL” box type the name of the old folder. This will filter your results to show only subscriptions from the old folder.
3. Click the “Select all X subscriptions” link in the top left and the in the “More actions” drop down, select the new folder you just created.
4. Finally, head over to “Settings >Folders and Tags”, select the old folder and click “Delete selected”.

It’s a quite a few steps for such a simple task, and it’s made even more roundabout by being unable to create a new folder from the “more actions” dropdown in “Settings > Subscriptions”, but still, now I have a folder displaying the WordPress name with its proper capitalisation, along with a whole set of new feeds for my viewing pleasure.

Those feeds, in case you’re interested:

• Blog Junkie (David Wang)http://blogjunkie.net/feed
• Naoko McCracken – http://blog.detlog.org/feed/
• Terminal Junkie (Thomas Chai) – http://www.terminaljunkie.com/wp/feed/
• Aizatto – http://feeds.feedburner.com/StrangeSymphonies

Google Reader Icon created by jvstin on DeviantArt

Update

It looks like this post is now redundant! The Google Reader team just announced that you can now rename subscriptions.

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/06/folder-and-tag-renaming.html

Date Added: May 25th, 2010 | 2 Comments

I’m looking for potential alternatives to Evernote, my current choice for taking notes.

The note-taking application needs the following:

• Desktop application (Windows7) with local storage of notes
• Cloud sync (can be self-hosted if needs be)
• Browser accessible notes
• Android App

Why am I investigating alternatives? I’ve been finding myself less satisfied with Evernote’s performance over the last while: I frequently find Evernote is maxing out one of my CPU cores; the changes from 3.0x to 3.5x were poor in a lot of ways and introduced the need for extra actions to achieve the same tasks; the destruction of most usefulness of the screen capture tool; and the android app is extremely dissatisfying (for example I often find that searches yield no results unless I’m searching for a specific tag, and that Android app taken notes either don’t sync or take an incredibly long time to do so).

Also, to be honest Evernote has a host of functions that I just don’t need. My note taking tends to be plain text, with very very occasional embedding of images. I don’t need handwriting recognition, I don’t really need full web page embeds, I just need a fast, eminently searchable set of text notes.

In addition, whilst I’m  all for a decent rate of application updates, Evernote 3.5 has them with such a frequency that I often find when I need to make a note I’ve got Evernote bugging me to update. Not only this but I just noticed that Evernote was using up 471.8Mb by storing every single update.exe, as demonstrated by the image below.

Evernote storing all app updates

As you can see each update necessitates a complete application download (would they not save a fortune on bandwidth by implementing a patch system rather than a complete application download?), and these application updates have slowly increased from 35Mb to 40Mb.

So if you’re an Evernote user and you’re wondering why your main drive is running short on space, just navigate to (on Windows 7 at least) C:\Users\~username\AppData\Local\Evernote\Evernote\Updates and empty it out.

If you’d like to do some more investigation into disk usage check out this handy application, Foldersize, which visualises disk usage for you.

Date Added: May 12th, 2010 | 12 Comments

Today I bought a new Cisco Linksys WRT120N WiFi router to go along with the new WiMax connection that was setup for me last week by Ezecom here in Phnom Penh.

I won’t bore you with the exact details of my fun evening fighting with technology, but will abbreviate it into a series of points.

My evening went like this:

1. Set everything up (ignoring wireless routers instructions to install their quick-setup wizard software).
2. Do the thing that I know is the correct procedure (enter PPPoE details, click connect).
3. Feel confused when nothing happens.
4. Re-enter settings, re-plug cables, re-set router, power off/on WAN box, re-enter settings, and restart computer in various orders.
5. Return to point 2 (but skip point 5 next time around).
6. Reset everything and try the wireless router wizard I explicitly avoided at the start.
7. Get annoyed with wireless router wizard’s inexplicably convoluted practice.
8. Feel somewhat unsurprised when the router wizard fails to help, offers useless error messages, and has a troubleshooter that completely fails to do anything useful other than crash itself.
9. Get annoyed to find out the wireless router wizard has silently installed a 730mb ‘magic network’ program that I neither need nor want.
10. Uninstall all the wizard crap, reset router, try the basic steps again.
11. Feel disheartened when nothing happens.
12. Spend a while searching stuff on the net.
13. Try some more random things, unplug and reset the router multiple times, power on and off the WAN connection, and restart computer.
14. Feel quite pissed off that there’s still nothing going on in internet land.
15. Do a load of research looking up IP addresses and trying to fathom Ezecom’s network setup and possible hostnames for the PPPoE connection.
16. Admit defeat and accept that I’ll have to call Ezecom support tomorrow.
17. Decide randomly to try once more (having changed absolutely no settings whatsoever, just using the bog standard ‘this should work’ setup).
18. It works.

I should be delighted that I triumphed over technology, but I didn’t really. It just mysteriously didn’t work for 2.5 hours, and then did.

This waste of time battle with technology, and blog post, was fuelled by foolishly having a coffee after dinner.

Date Added: May 12th, 2010 | Leave a comment!

Another death-knoll for IE6. Hopefully the lingering user base will continue to rapidly decrease for this ancient browser. The more high-profile sites that continue to drop support for this browser the better.

I will feel more and more confident in placing a warning at the top of sites that is shown to IE6 users only which recommends that they upgrade their browser (there really is no excuse for using IE6 anymore).

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.

via Official Google Enterprise Blog: ​Modern browsers for modern applications.

Date Added: January 31st, 2010 | Leave a comment!

Thanks to Bernie Goldbach for reporting this. Obviously we don’t need the CEO of Google to point such things out, but it’s nice to see an important figure from the web lend his weight to the argument for a better broadband infrastructure. Living in Longford and Leitrim over the past four years I am all too painfully aware of the extremely poor communications infrastructure in Ireland.

ERIC SCHMIDT, CEO OF GOOGLE, visited Killarney last week, and suggested Ireland invest more in communications infrastructure. Schmidt believes broadband capability is a precondition for economic growth in the next 10 years. But not the kind of over-the-air sprinkling that the Irish government currently endorses.

“The right thing to do is to light up Ireland with fibre, and to do that systematically over a 10-year period.”

via Inside View: What Eric Schmidt Thinks Ireland Needs.

The government talks about decentralising but if it really wants to do that it needs to sort out a proper broadband infrastructure. Of course it goes beyond decentralisation – it’s a pure economic fact now – Ireland needs hyper-connectivity at hyper-speed to stay competitive, attractive to investors and businesses considering locating here, and, well, so many things.

The National Broadband Scheme is a complete joke. I’m personally in a situation where I am strongly considering taking my ass out of the back of beyond and to somewhere where I might get reasonable and reliable connectivity. It’s a horrible thought that it might come to that, and doesn’t exactly help small rural communities develop at all.

I’ve fought with shit internet connections ever since I moved out of Dublin, going from dial-up, to capped broadband, to unbelievably shit wireless, to semi-decent wireless which turned shit (they assure us it will get better next week). All of this time I’ve struggled to beat my 1mbps connection which I first experienced in Toronto in 2001. That’s 8 years ago. What’s the story?!

The below image shows ping times on our connection – the slower the ping, the slower the connection. How shit is that.

Smoke Ping results - Last 10 days

The next image shows our inexorable decline in decent connection since May of this year. Nice to have paid €90 per month for such a wonderful service – oh and don’t even say 3G to me, I wouldn’t go near that if you paid me.

Smoke Ping results - Past 12 months

I’m just getting annoyed now. I’m going to stop thinking about this and get back to work. Just needed a little rant. Sure, soon I’ll be in India and Cambodia. Maybe they’ll have the infrastructure sorted out when I get back (I doubt it).

Date Added: October 30th, 2009 | 6 Comments

I’m really happy to hear this news. Whilst the body is saying that it’s not compulsory for manufacturers to sign up to this system, I really hope that all mobile phone manufacturers will. Sony Ericsson have announced they’ll launch the universal charger in the first half of 2010.

I remember when Nokia launched their new phone charger – suddenly I had a phone for which the countless old chargers I had were redundant. It really seems incredibly pointless. In fact, I think I ended up buying a new charger for the first time just because I had left my only charger at home.

With the new universal charger there is a situation where, if widely adopted, you won’t have to worry about visiting a friend and not being able to charge your phone, buying a new phone won’t write off your old chargers, and in theory we’ll see a lot less electronic waste.

Industry body the GSMA says that 51,000 tonnes of redundant chargers are generated each year.

Currently most chargers are product or brand specific, so people tend to change them when they upgrade to a new phone.

However, the new energy-efficient chargers can be kept for much longer.

The GSMA also estimates that they will reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 13.6m tonnes.

via BBC NEWS – Universal phone charger approved.

I just hope that the new charger, with its energy efficiency, will not actually draw power when it’s plugged in with no phone attached – something that irks me about current chargers.

ITU Press Release

Date Added: October 25th, 2009 | Leave a comment!