Found on Twitter

First up in my find isn’t so much an app as it is a browser bookmarklet called Readability. I didn’t find this one as an add, but from following a link in a tweet in someone I follow (apologies if this was you, it’s been a while so I do not remember). Readability is by far the handiest thing I’ve used in quite some time.

Imagine if you will, going to a website like, oh, I don’t know, this one.

That is the Droid review at PCWorld.com as viewed in Google Chrome on my Mac. What a mess, until you click on the Readability bookmarklet. Instead of that mess up there, you instead get this wonderful page to read.

Wonderful. No ads, no cruft, just the story I want to read in large type with wide margins. You can customize the experience in many ways and it only takes a few minutes to setup. Oh yea, and it’s free. You really need to try this out.

The app that I found via an advertisement in Tweetie is a brilliant interface to Gmail called MailPlane. Yes, it is a desktop app to access a web based app. But it makes using Gmail so much better! I’m not sure if any of you have tried Fluid with Gmail, but it is very similiar to that experience.

With MailPlane you get drag and drop support, multiple account support that makes switching between accounts a snap, Growl support for messages and the ability to easily make it your default mail client. I’ve been using this for almost a month on the free trial and can tell you that I will be handing over my $24.95 happily next week. I’ve been looking for something exactly like this for quite a while now and am very pleased with how it works, especially when comparing to only using Gmail in a browser.

Sadly, MailPlane is Mac only. If you are a Gmail user and a Mac user, you should take the time to download this and check it out. The first 30 days are free, so why not.

If I were to go back and modified my top 5 mac applications, these 2 would definitely make the cut. If you try them out, I’m sure the rest of the class would be interested in what you thought about them. Comment below with your thoughts or opinions.

That’s right, I said it. I hate Safari.

Gasp! Boo! Hiss! Go on, get it out of your system.

There are many things that this brilliant iMac sitting on my desk does that I absolutely adore. There are many apps that I run on a daily or almost daily basis that I also think are quite keen. Keen enough to remember their name so I can fire them up in QuickSilver or that they have earned a place in the all mighty dock.

Safari is not one of them.

It’s not the way Safari looks, because it is a good looking app. And, it’s not because of how it displays websites. It is the way Safari works with a few websites, sometimes, stability and how tabs work.

In Firefox (all versions, all operating systems) and Internet Explorer v7 & v8 and Google Chrome (and, quite possibly Opera, although I never use that) you can close a tab 2 different ways using the mouse. You can either click on the ‘X’ (which, on all of these browsers is on the right, Safari is on the left) or you can press the middle/scroll wheel of your mouse anywhere on the tab. That might sound niggling, but it really slows me down. Having the use the CMD key with a mouse click has never worked for me. I’m either using a keyboard shortcut or the mouse, not both.

Then there is stability. I have recently discovered that by not keeping my cache and history tidy and neat, Safari does nothing more than crash while trying to start. Not only does it crash repeatedly when trying to start, it will sometimes crash altogether with the only fix being a complete system restart. And, since there isn’t an internet options in System Preferences (like Windows), there is no way that I’m aware of to correct it. In all of the other browsers, having a messy cache or lots of history just slows things down a bit.

Another minor thing is the lack of a status bar by default. I always check where links go in the status bar, and not having it seriously annoys me. I shouldn’t have to do a google search to find how to turn this on. Sure, it’s a hold over from my Windows days, but better safe than sorry, right?

And, finally, there is Gmail. And also, there isn’t Gmail. But, it is. Gmail is my email application. While I don’t live in there all the time, it is what I use to send and receive email (since replaced by Mailplane, more on that later). And with Safari (or Webkit, but not Chrome oddly enough) it just acts weird. And, only sometimes.

For example, on occasion when replying to an email, I click reply and start typing. Normally, the text just shows up in the email box like it is supposed to. Sometimes, and again, only with Safari, the reply window fails to grab focus, so when I start typing, the Gmail keyboard shortcuts kick in and do everything from deleting the message entirely to opening my task window. The annoying part is that it is hit or miss. If it did this consistently, I could work around it. But that’s the problem. It only seems to happen when Safari is having a bad day.

For the record, I have been using Google Chrome since it was released for the Mac and, at least for me, it’s been fantastic. It’s been my default browser for more than a month and so far so good. On occasion I do have to duck into Firefox for something specific or to use an extension, but for daily browsing, Chrome is it for me. Bonus it’s fast. Fastest on my Mac by a long shot.

Comments are open. Go ahead, do your best!

You do not need any fancy, over priced software to ‘clean up’ your PC or ‘fix’ your Windows registry. Those programs do nothing but separate your from your hard earned cash and, sometimes, make your problems worse.

Instead, let us take a stab at doing a little bit of PC maintenance ourselves. You will be amazed at how a few minutes of work on your part will make things faster. This is easy stuff and there isn’t anything I’m about to explain that will cause your computer to stop working. Honest!

This is for those of you still running Windows XP. Many of these steps also apply to Vista and Windows 7, but the folders are in different locations.

First thing is go into the Control Panel and find the icon labeled Add/Remove Programs. Open that and get a beverage while you wait for it to load. Once it’s loaded, go through the list and start removing programs that you no longer need or use like Real Player or Music Match or any of the many games that might have been preinstalled by the computer maker. You can uninstall anything you want as long as it isn’t something by Microsoft (short of Works) or your Anti Virus software. If you don’t know what A/V you are running STOP! This tutorial is not for you. Please contact me for personal assistance.

Once you have cleaned up your programs, reboot your computer and be prepared to tackle the start menu. Right click on the Start button and choose Explore all users. Navigate to the folder called Startup and remove everything that might be listed there. You don’t need any of it. Trust me.

Reboot again.

You should notice some speed increases by now. And you are almost done. Go ahead and empty the Recycle Bin by right clicking on it and choose empty. Once that is done, go into your My Computer and right click on your C: drive. Choose Properties and click on the Tools tab. There, click on the button labeled Defragment and run that. It will take a bit of time, so go refill your beverage while it runs.

Once it’s done, reboot once more.

Voila!

Your computer should be running noticeably faster by now. Not bad for less than an hours work, right?

If yours is still creeping along, contact me and I will be able to further assist you.

I’ve not had the chance to work on many Windows Vista machines. Most of my customers are still way behind the technology curve with their Windows XP. But, on the rare occassion I have worked with Vista, it’s almost always for the same thing.

There is/was a problem with some of the Vista updates and how they interact with early OEM installation images. Particularly Dell, HP and Compaq. Turns out when you apply said updates, the computer get stuck in the following reboot loop.

Configuring updates 3 of 3. 0% complete

It does that, goes to a screen that says shutting down and reboots. Right back to this screen. Neat.

Before I go further, you can search google all you want, but the only way to reliably fix this is to reinstall Windows Vista. Try all the other stuff if you are getting paid by the hour, but if you have other things to do, back up the users data and reinstall Windows.

But how do you kill it? That’s the easy part. After watching this happen 3 times and thinking this is the time it’s going to work when it doesn’t, then it’s time to do a system restore. System restored to a point prior to the update installation, computer reboots.

Of course, upon reboot, the updates are still there, waiting to be applied. And, if the computer is set to apply updates automatically and you don’t pay attention, they do just that. Which then causes the reboot loops again.

Rinse. Repeat.

After a few of these, voila! One Blue Screen of Death. Of course, at that point, a reload is the only option since even a system restore only repeats the process. Not only that, but the computer still doesn’t update.

From what I understand, the real best fix for this is to install Windows 7. I’ve only seen it in passing, so I’m not yet very familiar with it but hope to be fixing that shortly after 2010 starts.

OpenDNS setup? Check. Scanned for the bad stuff? Check. Today, we are going to finish things off by putting on some antivirus protection that doesn’t suck. Bonus, it also doesn’t cost anything.

You might have Norton or McAffee or something other ’security software’ installed on your computer right now. Point at the icons near the clock, one of them probably says ’something something security’. Amirite? Here’s my problem with those applications.

They suck.

To start, you don’t need to pay someone for a firewall. You already have 2. Yes, you read that correctly, you have 2 firewalls on your system already. “But Don, how is that possible?” you ask? Windows, since Windows XP, has included a software firewall. It’s even turned on by default and for most users, it does a pretty good job. The other one is your internet modem. Most of you get your internet from the cable company or phone company, and your computer is plugged into a device into which you can plug multiple other devices. That, my friends, is a firewall (unless you are on Time Warner, but that’s for our next post).

So, you don’t need another firewall. That costs money. And slows down your computer.

All you really need is decent Anti-Virus and to keep it up-to-date. For those chores, I’m a huge fan of AVG Free. You read that correctly. Free. Free like beer. And, it works very very well. If you are one that just has to pay for something before you think it works, you can buy a copy of AVG as well for half the price of the other guys. It has all the same features they do (including the not needed firewall), is easier to configure and is less taxing on your system.

If it were me, I would uninstall any ’security’ software you have now, download and install AVG free, make sure it’s up-to-date and wait for the next post where we talk more about security and what you can do to help keep yourself safe.

Lesson 2 – Getting rid of the nasties

I would almost bet that right now, even if you have antivirus software on your computer, that it has something on it that’s not good. It might be something as simple as tracking cookies or as nasty as a trojan horse. Doesn’t matter, you have something.

Now is the time to take a few minutes to get rid of it. This one is super duper simple. My current tool of choice is called Malwarebytes (Malwarebytes.org) and find that for about 90% of anything (virus’ and spyware) it is 100% effective at getting rid of it.

Follow the link above, download and install the software. Once installed, make sure you update it. Once it’s updated, run the sucker, sit back and wait. The quick scan takes about 15 minutes. After the shock wears off, click the remove all button and restart your machine.

Easy right? I know. I’m getting paid good money to do this too.

Next up? Anti-Virus software and why you don’t need to pay for Norton or McAffee.

If you have been following along Twitter, you might have noticed that a good portion of my days have been filled with removing virus’ and spyware from nice folks computers. I said days, but should include nights.

I don’t mind. I really don’t. It’s easy work (unless the system is completely hosed, then it’s good money) and it gives me the chance to educate the user on better practices so it doesn’t happen again.

Number 1 on the list is keeping your antivirus software up-to-date! If you don’t have antivirus software, then now is the time! I can tell you, 100% for sure that anything that comes with Windows will do nothing more than keep low-level hackers out of your computer. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing installed by or from Microsoft will keep your computer safe from virus’, spyware or other potentially bad software that your click happy fingers will bring into your machine.

If you have anything resembling security software by any manufacturer and it has the numbers 07, 06, 05, 04 or lower in it, it’s no longer working. I know what it tells you, but it’s not. In fact, your computer is probably already infected with something and you don’t even know it.

I’m going to putting up a series of posts this week that you can use to help yourself be a better internet citizen and help to keep your Windows PC safe from internet meenies that are using your computer to send boner spam or collect credit card numbers from your neighbors.

Lesson 1

For a few years you have heard me praise the goodness that is OpenDNS. There has been a banner on the right side of this screen for as long as I can remember. Look at it right now. Does it say you are using OpenDNS? (sweet!). No? Then it’s time. And this is your first lesson.

Click the link to find out how to change this on your machine. Too lazy to click? Here is the short version.

• Right click the Network icon on your desktop. It’s the one that has the work Network in it. If you don’t have that icon (or can’t find it in the mess of icons littering your desktop currently), then go into the Control Panel and open Network Connections
• Right click your connection and choose properties. If you are using WiFi, use that one. If you are jacked in, use that one.
• Find the one that says TCP/IP. Click it and click the Properties button
• At the bottom, find where it says DNS and click where it says Use the following DNS servers. In the 2 boxes below that, enter the following.
• Preferred: 208.67.222.222
• Alternate: 208.67.220.220
• Click ok a bunch of times, close the Control Panel

You are done. Congratulations! Your computer is one step closer to be safer on the internet. Next up: getting the damned things from your computer. Stay Tuned!

Judging by this screenshot taken by an IE6 user who was watching some videos on YouTube, it appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly. I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 installed on my computer, so I can’t verify this first hand, but illogical it seems not and a simple Twitter search shows multiple people confirming the news. Heck, some are even downright ecstatic over the news.

Oh yea, there is a HUGE banner across the top for IE6 users telling them to upgrade soon. If you don’t, you won’t be able to see this.

I’m just sayin’.

Should Digg block IE6?

Currently, IE6 usage accounts for 10% of Digg visitors and 5% of page views on Digg. While this is down from 13% and 8% a year ago respectively, IE6 still accounts for a fairly large portion of Digg usage. That said, a lot of time is spent by Digg engineers supporting site activity like diggs, buries, and comments in IE6, and while it accounts for 5% of site traffic, IE6 accounts for only 1% of diggs, buries, and comments.

I haven’t supported IE6 for over a year, but then again, every site that I have ever worked on, combined, still doesn’t equal the amount of users that Digg has. And I honestly believe that it is going to take sites like Digg to start blocking certain features from IE6 users before system admins and users realize it’s time to upgrade.

I would be curious to hear from any sys admins that still have to keep IE6 around. What apps are you still running that break when you install IE7 or IE8? Why won’t you give your users Firefox or Chrome or Safari instead?

As I visit more home users, I am starting to notice less and less IE6 installed. If I do see it, I ask if there is a reason they are still using it and when they give me the confused deer-in-headlights look, I upgrade them to IE8.

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