Category: Software

Is Microsoft THAT afraid of Firefox?

by
Inf

EDIT: They changed it! Ahhh they finally found some reason! Note the different tone of language. Note the less number of points! Good good!

The New Version of the 10K lol-ad!

Hey readers, check out what I found in my feeds today! It’s a competition hosted by Microsoft! 10K prize money offered. The catch? You need to have Internet Explorer 8. The ad in itself is really funny, almost laughable. It seems Microsoft is really scared about losing market share to Firefox especially, and other browsers considering the tone of the ad. I’ve included a copy below, and for your viewing pleasure, here’s the original link.

A small comment: Since the page can only be opened in IE8 which got a lousy score in ACID3 test, it the page where the money is hidden must be so quirky that Firefox refuses to even find it! Also, note point #2! “Microsoft’s best ever browser” but not simply “best ever browser”. Does Microsoft itself know that its browser is not the best out there?

Enjoy your lulz, and comment! Seriously, I lol’d hard! Couldn’t resist blogging this as soon as I saw it! 😀

MS 10k competition

Click the image for the larger version

Original Source

Backup your hamachi profile

by
Guru

Hamachi icon

Many times you need to format your PC and start anew. What about your so loved Hamachi configs and your so long “had”, ip address? Backing it up need only a minor copy-and-paste. (In a safe location).

The easy way

  1. Launch Hamachi
  2. Click on the “pulley” looking icon on the bottom left corner of Hamachi – “Configure Hamachi”
  3. From the pop-up menu choose “Preferences“
  4. On the left pane of  the opened window entitled “Status and Configuration“, select “System”  (again presented with a pulley icon)
  5. Now, you would be presented with 3 buttons. Click on the one with caption, “Open Configuration folder”
  6. Hamachi configuration folder will be opened. Go up one level
  7. Finally you will see a folder named “Hamachi”.
  8. Copy it in a safe location and you would be safe.

The “not so lengthy” way

C:\Users\Guru\AppData\Roaming\

Replace “Guru” by your username, open location and finally copy and paste folder “Hamachi”

You can open the location by navigating one level at a time to the required directory or simply press Windows Button + R to open the “Run” dialog box, paste the location in the text box and hit Enter to go to the “Roaming” directory.

Easy?

In search of the ultimate desktop RSS reader

by
Inf

Yes, you read correctly. I said, desktop RSS reader. I’m old style. I’m classic. Whatever, I still want my feeds on my desktop. For one single reason: it’s so much simpler. Click the icon in the notification area, and voila! I got my news at a click. No need to load Firefox, point to some random URL to a web-based feed reader or whatever. There’s also another reason. I like my data on my computer, not on some server on the Internet. What if tomorrow, the company that manages the web-feed-reader goes out of scene? What happens to my feeds? And if ever they decide to keep usage info on my feeds so as to create spam “targetted advertising”? No thanks. I want full control over what I keep, what I share and what I want others to access. Ok, enough side-tracking. Back to the article, which by the way, is the 100th post on GeekScribes! Click below:

Continue Reading »

In-Game Voice Communication with TeamSpeak

by
Inf

If you have ever gamed online with some friends, you know that communication is a must, and this is specially valid if you are playing Left 4 Dead (HUNTER!!!) or other games like 배팅사이트!

Sometimes, there is really the need to shout at that camper and tell them to get their butt into fighting. Or to shout for help. But typing just doesn’t convey the message with enough vigor or urgency. What you need is voice communications. What you need is TeamSpeak.

(This tutorial is for Windows, but TS works on Linux too. I’ll try to cover that at some other time).

Teamspeak (TS) can also be used when not gaming. For example, if you want to hold a conference among friends, or some other people. But I guess that for these stuff, Skype works best. The problem with Skype is that it provides quality at the cost of bandwidth, and when you are gaming on the low upload speeds in Mauritius, every last bit of bandwidth is important. So if you want a bandwidth-efficient way of holding a conference of around 16 people at a time (there can be more), Teamspeak is the way to go, without killing your connection.

To facilitate the connection among your friends, for both gaming on a virtual network as well as TS connection, we would like to recommend Hamachi. You can check our Hamachi article if you wish.

How to use Teamspeak? Well it’s simple enough: Teamspeak consists of 2 parts: The Server and the client. One of you people will have to host the server, and the rest will connect to that person. The person hosting the server will have to connect to him/herself. Therefore, I will break this article in 2 parts, one for the host and one for the clients. Here goes:

Continue Reading »

Firefox Tip: Keep bookmarks menu open after click

by
Inf

If you have been using Firefox, and like me, make full use of your bookmarks and the Bookmarks Toolbar, then you must have noticed that as soon as you click a link, the menu closes, making multiple-selection of bookmarks to open impossible. That’s a huge annoyance for me.

Luckily, there is a solution that works for the Bookmarks menu, the Bookmarks Toolbar folders (if you have created folders in there. If not, create them! It maintains order) and the History Menu, in case you want to restore multiple closed sites.

The solution is really simple: Just get the Stay-Open Addon from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6459

Install it just as you would for any other addon and restart Firefox. No configurations are needed. It worked out-of-the-box for me. However, it works only for Firefox 3 and up I think.

Now, how to use it?

Simple. Open the Bookmarks menu, or other menus I mentioned above, and middle-click an item. You will notice that the menu remains open. You can now continue to middle-click other items if you want to open more.

There is not much to configure, except a single option available in “about:config”. I didn’t require it till now. It’s CTRL-Click functionality which I didn’t need.

Voila! This should help you keep those menus open while you open multiple sites without the menus closing after each click. Specially useful if you use Live Bookmarks from within Firefox to read RSS feeds. You can now open multiple feed items without that menu closing. This is so useful! Makes me wonder why this option is not already a default in Firefox…

China Channel Firefox Addon: Experience Internet Censorship

by
Inf

I’ve seen my fair share of Firefox addons. There are addons that can make your browser do virtually anything, including controlling your music player from your browser if you wish, or get live weather info, or draw diagrams, or… or anything else I can’t think of.

Today, however, I encountered an addon in my feeds that I found particularly interesting. It’s called the China Channel Addon.

What does it do? It gives you a taste of what it means to surf the Internet in China.

As you probably know, the Great Chinese Firewall (or Golden Firewall) is used to censor the Chinese Internet and prevent people from looking up subjects like “Free Tibet”. I guess they just get a “Page cannot be found” or “Error 404” or possibly very long wait times with no page displayed at the end.

Well, this addon recreates this effect. It places you behind the Great Firewall, and allows you to see what Internet Censorship means.

Personally, I don’t find any day-to-day use to this addon. It’s just a curiosity I wanted to share with you.

Now, if ever you are preparing a project or paper on Internet censorship or something like that, you may want to experience this effect first hand, and the China Channel Addon is what you will need.

Any other interesting Firefox Addons you would like to share?

Behold Chrome: New contender in Browser Wars Arena!

by
Inf

ChromeLogo

Google just released the Beta version of its browser, called Google Chrome (why chrome anyways?). Since a few days, I’ve been seeing that pokeball-like logo all over the Internets and I thought I must add my piece of text to the already long list of blog posts about the newest browser out there. Seriously, nearly 12 million results on Google when I search for “Google Chrome”.

What’s the hype about it? Everybody is “Chrome released”, “Chrome does that”, “Chrome does this”, “Chrome makes tea”, bla bla… Let’s see… Before I move on, I need to say that Chrome is released under BSD license, and it’s Open-Source!

Continue Reading »