Windows Alternate

Everyone knows about spam. We’ve all received spam. There are lots of ways to try to fight it. Many email servers have some built in spam filtering, ours included. This helps a lot. Sometimes not as much as we want. Many pros are recommending using several steps for filtering. Step one would be the server spam filtering.

Step two would be some form of filtering on your computer locally. This would hopefully catch anything that wasn’t caught on the server. If you use Outlook it has pretty good spam filtering built right in. If you’ve updated it you’ve probably noticed that it does a great job of catching unwanted items that have gotten through. And it’s easy to add items to your white and black list.

If you use Outlook Express it’s a different story. No built in spam filter. Time to look at spamfighter.

If you go to Spamfighter.com you can download a great and FREE spam filter that works with Outlook Express. When you get and install Spamfighter, it will ask you to sign up for an account. This is partly because it is continuously getting updates to help fight spam more effectively. The other reason is that when you receive an email that is a spam email, Spamfighter will update the shared universal database. This will stop anyone else from that email getting through. So if someone else marks something as spam and then you check your email, you won’t even see that email as it will go to your spam folder.

That’s another great thing about this, you have the option of reviewing the marked spam mails and taking them off of your blacklist. Then from now on they won’t get caught. If you look at Outlook you will see a new toolbar at the top. This allows you to mark email as spam or not for the filter. Over time this will get better at catching bad email or ignoring good email.

Basically, if you use Outlook Express, this may be a great piece of software for you to get.

If you’re a web designer or developer, you don’t need to be told how useful Firefox is for testing your creations. The best thing about Firefox is the number and variety of extensions third-parties have developed to make our lives easier - here are a few of my favorites.

Web Developer
The web developer toolbar provides dozens of ways to manipulate a web page you’re working on from clearing cookies and the cache to disabling, displaying, outlining, resizing, viewing and learning about any any aspect of a web page.

This toolbar is very useful for css-only layouts as it allows you to view exactly where your block-level elements extend and for Javascript development as it allows viewing the source of Javascript generated page content.

Firebug
Speaking of Javascript, Firebug is a great tool that lets you easily find and debug Javascript errors. It’s implemented as a toggled panel at the bottom of a web page that shows errors, HTTP requests, and a variety of other information that makes Javascript debugging a snap.

HTML Validator
HTML Validator provides an integrated TIDY validator that gives instant feedback about the well-formedness of your web pages. In addition to showing warnings about your html (missing closing tags, improperly formed tags, etc.) it also shows errors that could seriously affect the functionality of your site.

This extension is vital for those of you who care about writing web-standards compliant web pages but is also a valuable addition for the average web designer just looking to track down the occasional display bug caused by improperly formatted html.

Foxmarks Bookmark Sychronizer
Although not a web design extension, the Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer lets you keep bookmarks synchronized between multiple computers. I use one computer at work, one on the road at school, and one at home and this lets me keep important resources close no matter which computer I’m on.

Set-up is as simple as creating an account with Foxmarks and installing the extension on every Firefox installation you want to synchronize. Foxmarks then transparently updates your bookmarks as you browse to keep them current no matter which computer you’re using.

Filezilla is a great ftp program. Does everything you may want an ftp program to do. You can easily setup sites with the path and username/password stored. It allows you to see local and remote files and easily drag n drop to get files pushed up or downloaded. The layout also allows you to follow messages as they come up and see what files are in the queue to be pulled or pushed. You can also use it to setup secure file transfers.

There isn’t much to say about ftp programs. If you are a developer and need a good and reliable ftp program, this is a great choice. Most of the editors I use now have some built in ftp with it. If you need ftp though, this is a great choice. There is also a version that runs off of a u3 compatible usb drive.

I know that the focus of this blog is on Alternative applications for Windows users. I thought this might fit into that category though.

Since video is something that more and more people are starting to do on their computer it has become a much bigger industry. There are video cards and applications that allow you to set up your computer to record TV shows. They can be a little hard to use and tie up the computer a lot.

An alternative is a standalone Tivo. One of the interesting things about Tivo is that the box is essentially a Linux computer. Sure, it doesn’t look like a Linux OS, but underneath it is.

I wasn’t going to get a Tivo for the longest time. Like a lot of people I’m busy and don’t watch much TV. Once I thought about it though, that’s the perfect reason to get a Tivo. The Tivo is the perfect device for busy people without much TV viewing time. The logic behind that is that I can set it up to record the shows I like to watch and it will save them for when I do get time. There’s nothing worse than finally getting to watch some TV and not finding anything on that you want to watch. Or there is a movie you do want to watch but it’s half over with. I suddenly realized that a Tivo was almost essential to have for busy people with limited TV viewing time. Plus, with kids, we can record the shows they like that we approve and don’t have to worry about what they are watching or finding something when they get to watch.

So we got one. Fairly easy to setup and get working, that was great. Finding shows, setting to record, seeing what’s on there, etc, all good. We have everything we like to watch Tivo’d and can always find something to watch that we want to watch. For example - my son is in Kuk Sool Won martial arts. We go to a class on Saturday morning, right when a few favorite cartoons are on. So we Tivo it and watch them together while we eat lunch.

The other thing that convinced me was the ability to send it to a computer. We go to her mother’s at Thanksgiving. I can send a couple shows to my laptop and watch them over the break. You can also burn them to a DVD to watch later also. More on this is a minute.

The last great item for us is the ability to schedule a show online. I work, my wife is in school and the kids are in school. So we are busy and run around a lot. Sometimes you remember a show you wanted to record or you hear about a show that sounds interesting. All we have to do is logon and BOOM, we have it set to record and don’t have to worry about it. Again, when we go to Michigan at Thanksgiving, this is perfect to record Stargate or something we may have forgotten. Oh wait, we can’t miss Stargate as we have that on a season pass.

So all in all, I love the Tivo and would recommend it. That said, there are some things about it that I don’t like. The first is the responsiveness. When using the guid to scroll and look at shows, it moves dog slow sometimes. I really like the guide and how it is setup, but the speed kills me sometimes. We also have had issues with it rebooting. Randomly. Sometimes right in the middle of a show. Not good and very annoying since it takes about 5 minutes to come back up. The only other thing that really annoys me can be the quality. Essentially I record everything at the highest quality. Anything less than that, for me, is unacceptable quality for viewing. Too many pixelations. Even one of the kids cartoons at the second highest quality isn’t that good. I find anything other than the 2 best to be totally unusable. This means that the 80 hour Tivo is really only about a 20 hour Tivo. Luckily we can move things to the computer.

So, all in all I would recommend getting Tivo. If you are very busy and not a couch potato, it actually is more vital to have one as you can be very precise on what you watch and when.

We have all heard about needing to run virus scanner software. Most people have a virus scanner on their computer. This is good and the way it should be. What you don’t want is to have more than 1 computer virus scanner on your computer at 1 time. This can actually be worse and will seriously degrade your computer. The problem is, most scanners miss some. None are 100% perfect. What to do?

One thing you can do is use an online virus scanner to scan your system once in awhile. There are a couple online sites that allow you to do this. The one I’ve used the most is Housecall Antivirus from Trend Micro.

A nice thing about using the online virus scanners is that you might get more update virus definitions when you use it. It’s also nice in that a lot of the viruses and malware don’t look for these to block or corrupt. This can help you determine problems when your local virus scanner is no longer working.

A downside is that you don’t want to use this as your only virus scanner because it isn’t running on your system all the time. Therefore, this is only good to see if you have something but not to hopefully block from getting something in the first place.

Have you heard about or used writely yet? No, well let me tell you a bit about it.

Writely is an online word processor. Yup, you can create and edit documents just like you do in Word. The difference, besides Writely being an online, browser app, is that Writely is free. And it has a good feature set. Not only can you create your documents and store them online, but you can save them to your local computer. You can even enter emails of people who will have access to edit the document.

Lest you think all you get is a blank text box, let me tell you more. The interface uses a similar toolbar as we have been using. If you have looked at any of our latest projects and seen the toolbar we are putting in place for the admin to edit text, you’ll have a good idea of what you can do with Writely. You can change fonts, change color, bold, underline, italics, change font size, etc. Just like a Word doc. Just like you’ve had with the projects we do. The only thing Writely has done is take it to the next level to add some functionality and make Writely a complete stand alone word processor app.

One very nice feature is the ability to save to not only Word doc format, but html and PDF! Saving to html is nice but being able to save to PDF is great. If you don’t have a PDF writer on your computer, you can type it up in Writely and export to PDF or even type it up locally and save and load in Writely to save to PDF. Very nice and cool feature for an online app.

If you haven’t checked it out, please do. It is a neat little thing to see. If you have questions on the functionality and how to get similar functionality for one of your projects, give us a call and we can help explain what we do with apps like this.

www.writely.com

Found a file recovery program called Free Undelete. You can find it at www.officerecovery.com along with some other programs.

The idea is to allow you to recover files you have permanently deleted but now realize you shouldn’t have. It does this by looking at the hidden parts of your drive directory. There are many programs out there that do this sort of thing, but most aren’t free.

Does it work? Yes, to some degree. I had a hard drive with all my music on it die and I tried this program. Didn’t work. I had to take more drastic measures to get most of my songs back.

Like any software of this type it won’t help you if the physical location on the drive has been corrupted or overwritten. Many times though, you can get back some file you deleted. This is especially true if the file was deleted a short time ago.

Windows has a TON of settings in it. One issue some people have is how hard it can be to change some of those settings. Another issue is actually finding out how to change them. Some settings you can’t get to. That’s about to change (pun intended). A program called fresh ui from freshdevices will allow you access to most of these hidden settings. There are so many settings to adjust that I haven’t even had the time to look at and test them all. By the same token, you can really mess things up if you aren’t careful.

If you’ve ever wanted to change some things with the Windows interface, check out this program. It can get the interface working just the way you want it. Plus, it can help enhance your systems security. Check it out for free.

Warning though, you need to be careful with this as you can change things that can cause problems with your computer. Especially if you start messing around with the browser settings and security settings.

Even with email, needing to fax something seems very common today. I usually scan a document and fax it via my laptop (XP has a fax driver and the laptop has a modem). Receiving faxes is more difficult. I could set up the laptop to receive and tell the person to send it soon so I can disconnect my laptop. Not an ideal situation.

www.efax.com to the rescue. This site allows you to register and get your very own fax number for free! Of course there are some limitations like you can only receive so many faxes and the number you get will probably be in a completely different state. What happens is that someone faxes you at that number and it gets delivered to your email inbox. That is a perfect situation for me (and many others) as we like to have as little paper to get lost as possible.

If you want to use the service to send out emails and/or you want to get a local phone number for your fax, you can upgrade to the more deluxe model of efax. This isn’t what I need as I get maybe 3 faxes a year and send less. It seems I get more spam faxes than real faxes.

So, if you need limited faxing and can deal with a remote number, check out efax.

Since my last post on Firefox I started using it a little more. I discovered one of the great joys of Firefox - extensions. Imagine that browsers are today’s 50’s muscle cars. Every guy likes to tinker with them to make it his own. Beef it up, spec it out, make it cooler than before. That’s what you can do with Firefox extensions. Yeah, we’ve had plugins like Flash player, but these go even further.
In the tools menu, there is a menu item for extensions. Click this to get a link of your current extensions or to get more.

Extensions are easy to install. Browse the site and find one you want. When you find one you want, you click on it and there is an install now button. Works great.

To give you an idea of what some of these do, here are some that I currenlty have installed.
1 - Forecast Fox - since we are such hard working developers and can’t get out to see the sun, this will let us know the weather.
2 - Show ip - shows the ip of the current site.
3 - Colorzilla - has an eyedropper so that you can see the color of any spot on a page where the mouse is. How oftern have you wanted that?
4 - Image Zoom - Zooms in to look at an image.
5 - IE view - allows you to open up a tab that shows the current page in IE. So you don’t have to have multiple windows open.
6 - Google View - Shows a thumbnail of the site when doing a google search.
7 - Web toolbar - this one is the best:
disable javascript and java, and page colors
delete cookies, but also view cookie information and ADD cookies
view and disable css but also EDIT a css page
You can also override the sites css with your own - useful for testing a new style sheet before implementing
disable images but also replace with alt information and view image dimensions and file size
Get information on almost every element on the page
Show hidden form elements
Edit HTML on the fly! Great for quick testing.
Outline tables and frames
Resize to view page in various resolutions
Validate the CSS and HTML! See if you are following standards.

That’s just the beginning. I saw another that generates loads of that fake italian wording that you can use for testing. Another one changes all the text to Muppets Swedish chef talk!

So, if you haven’t gotten Firefox yet, do so. Then head over to the extensions list and enjoy. Warning, make sure you have the time to play with this as it can be addicting once you start.

:)