New Gadgets for me!

I just got myself a new HTC Fuze from AT&T sans the data plan. Does everything I want on a smart phone. Got it mainly because of Windows Mobile, the 3.2 MP camera, the Mobile Office suite, and heck I got the phone because I love what it can do! I’ll go more indepth with it later on! And do a comparison between iPhone OS and Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5.

Make your own local ad-blocking thingy.

One factor of web browsing that enables companies to make money is to put web advertisments on their websites. This is beneficial to the webmaster perhaps, but for the user sometimes it can be overwhelming, and also annoying, perhaps even dangerous.

Modern browsing has thousands of advertisements in websites, its almost impossible to visit any website without encountering such things. What can the user do about this? They’re more annoying than comercials midway through movies being broadcasted on television! Sure users can pay for software that can remove these things. Other browsers also offer the ability for better ad management (they won’t remove it though as it causes companies to lose money, and they don’t want to deal with whining companies). So how do we accomplish this?

Most computers and computing devices have a file called a HOSTS file. I won’t explain it technically, but this is what it does. Think of it as the middle man. You type in a web address, and the computer checks the hosts file and sees where it goes to, if it ain’t listed it goes to the internet, and gets the page. Basically if you edit this file in some way, you can have the address you typed in tell the computer it doesn’t exist, a 404 server error. So how do we do it?

First enable Hidden Folders and Operating System Files to be visisble.
In Vista & 7, Start > Type: Folder Options > Enter > View tab > Check “Show Hidden Files and Folders” and uncheck “Hide System Operating Files and Folders”
In XP, Start > Computer > Click Tools from the menu > Folder options, and do the rest as in Vista.

In Vista, open an elevated Notepad (Start > Type: Notepad > Right click: Run as Administrator.

Now that you can see some hidden stuff on your computer, open “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts” You’ll need to set the file type to all files in the drop down list of the open file dialogue ( *.* extension).

Now that we’re there what do we do? Here we enter the web addresses we want to nullify, and direct the computer to the address 127.0.0.1. So add to the bottom of the list something like the following…

127.0.0.1  somewebaddress.org

Now everytime your computer tries to access this website it will show that it isn’t found. How is this relevant? In websites, advertisements come from other websites. You can go to a website and it will use advertisements from Google’s advertisment server, so you can enter that server name, and block advertisements from that server and yet still see the content you want. This seems mind boggling, and very tideuous to do yourself, so some people over at another site have had this worked out, and maintain a list of sites to add to your host file. There site is here mvps.org If you scroll through that and read it, it goes more indepth. I’ve just provided the basic steps, there’s more in there, like setting up a shortcut to edit the file much easier. They update every so often, almost monthly, but sometimes not.

Anyways, that’s how you can make your own ad-blocking… thingy……

Helpful IE8 Shortcuts

Web browing is what a majority of people use a computer for these days. However, UI has always been a slight obstacle for a more productive and efficient way of browsing. Generally, we use the mouse to click, click, click. It is rather cumbersome to go from keyboard to mouse just to click on a text box, or the address bar, or the back button, or the search bar. In Internet Explorer 8 (and other web browsers), there are keyboard shortcuts that make it so you don’t have to move your hand to the mouse then back to the keyboard to type. These shortcuts save time and make you lazier in a way, but increase your efficiency and productivity. This enables something called micromanagement, minimal movement to achieve the highest amount of efficiency.

Here are some for Ineternet Explorer 8, but other web browsers may have these, or similar combinations.

Alt  + D :: Move cursor to addressbar (the text field were you type in web addresses, such as http://techstuffs.wordpress.com)
Alt + Enter :: Opens a new tab with information entered. (If uses on the address bar after typing the address in, will open a new tab with that address instead of the current tab. If used in the search field, will open a new tab with that query.)
Alt + Click  :: Opens link in new tab.

Ctrl + E :: Moves cursor to search field (the text field next to the address bar you type in to search for something on Bing, Google, or Yahoo!)
Ctrl + T :: Opens a new tab
Ctrl + Tab :: Switches among the tabs that are currently open.
Ctrl + W :: Closes current tab.
Ctrl + D :: Add to favorite (Bookmark)
Ctrl + Click  :: Opens link in new tab
Ctrl + P  :: Opens Print dialogue
Ctrl + Home :: Scrolls to the beginning of the page
Ctrl + End  :: Scrolls to the end of page.
Ctrl + A  :: Selects all on a web page.

Shift + Click :: Opens link in new browser window.

Backspace :: Goes back one page (mimics clicking on the back navigation button)
Home :: Scrolls to the beginning of the page
End :: Scrolls to the end of page.

Some useful combinations of keyboard shortcuts are like:

Alt+D -> Type Address -> Alt+Enter :: Opens a new webpage with the address
Ctrl+E -> Type Query -> Alt+Enter :: Opens new page with query results

Add “InPrivate” to Internet Explorer 8 when default browser.

Caution: Messing with your registry could potentially mess up your Windows installation. You have been warned, I have tried this on my own computer, and it works for me. Milage may vary.

One problem I had with Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 8 is the InPrivate browsing, which lead to two things I didn’t like, the InPrivate mode and InPrivate Filter.

Problem I have with the InPrivate Filter is just stupidity. If you didn’t know, the InPrivate Filter is a used for filtering advertisments on webpages and preventing transmission of information to 3rd parties like advertising companies and such. Sounds great, but the fact you have to manually turn that on, is just redundant, and also it still has to learn what is what by leaving it off, so why bother even turning it on anymore. A quick solution is edit your local host file and update it with a “white list,” but I’ll save that for another day.

Back to the topic, is the InPrivate mode that Microsoft introduced in this new iteration of Internet Explorer 8. What it does in a jist is open a new window in that mode, which will not save any information. So any sites, forms, etc that you visit will not be saved in the history on that computer. This doesn’t mean no one can see what you’re downloading through the ISP, just on the local computer itself, it will not save any history of those events. But how many ways can we activate this really nice feature?

There are a couple ways to do this. By searching you can find that you can have a shortcut do it by adding the command line command “-private” to the end of the target field, or some tweaks that will add it to the context menu of Internet Explorer, or make a favorite I believe that starts up Internet Explorer 8 in that mode. Most of those require opening Internet Explorer 8 first then doing some action to iniate the action of InPrivate, thus opening another process, which I don’t really like doing. I used to open IE8, then hit the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+P to open it up, but I wanted something that would get me there right away.

So I searched high and low, and even asked on IE newsgroup, and didn’t really get anywhere. Last night I was just going to see what the registry had for me in regards to this situation. Low and behold, I found some interesting tidbits, a solution sort to say to my dilema. I found a registry key that would edit the default Internet Program in the start menu, the one that is pinned on the top of your start menu. Basically, now all I have to do is right click on it, and select the dialogue for Inprivate browsing, and there I have the browser in InPrivate mode in a few clicks, rather than even having to open anything up.

So how to do it? Here’s the manual way.

1. Open up Registry Editor (if you don’t know how to do this, probably shouldn’t be messing with the registry).
2. Navigate your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet\IEXPLORE.EXE\shell
3. Once there you’ll notice some corresponding keys to the default context menu, add a new key (right click the folder, and add a new key), call it “InPrivate” (you can call it anything I think.).
4. Add a new key to the key you just added and call this one “command”.
5. Change the value of command to (for amd64) “C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe\” -private” -or- (x86) “C:\\Program Files\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe\” -private”.
6. Optionally, change the default value of the InPrviate key to what you want it to say in the menu, eg “Browser InPrivate”

For a quicker way, just copy and paste the following keys in a text file, and make the extension “.reg” and just run it to add. (Edit as needed for your system).

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet\IEXPLORE.EXE\shell\InPrivate]
@=”Browse InPrivate”

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\StartMenuInternet\IEXPLORE.EXE\shell\InPrivate\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe\” -private”

One thing to note, is that I believe this only works when Internet Explorer 8 is the default Internet Program, as it is adding it to the default Internet program registry key, and not to Internet Explorer 8. You can see this when you right click on the default Internet shortcut, but when pinning IE8, you won’t see the command there.

iPhone OS 3.0

As many people already know, iPhone 3.0 dropped last Wednesday on June 17th. Browing various forums, and keeping up with many tech blogs, everyone was eagerly awaiting the drop from Apple, some stayed up till midnight foolishly believing Apple would release it right on the 17th. Anyways, it’s been released, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably should and probably have updated already. So how is it so far? I’ll be discussing my experience so far with it, and the state of Jailbreak.

As for the OS itself, it offers some very much needed updates, however not any new functionality. I, myself, have an iPod Touch 2G, and my father an iPhone 3G, so I have had experience with both.
First the process of updating. For those with iPod Touches, you are forced to pay a 10$ to obtain major updates, like from 1.x to 2.x, and 2.x to 3.x. That’s why is important to know if it has what you want, 10$ is still money, no one wants to throw money away. Once you plunk down the 10$, you are greeted to a 230MB download, of which takes quite a while for some users, such as myself with a 768 Kbps connection. Once downloaded, iTunes updates your device. the same is virtually the same for the iPhone2G and 3G. However, I did have trouble with the 3G, as it would not backup properly, and stalled on the backup, thus hindering the update process for myself. Just did a restore, and restored it from the partial backup that it did make thankfully (forgot to backup the pictures manually thats why). If you’re caught with this, just sync your device, but when its backing up, click on the “X” to cancel the backup so it just gets straight to syncing, so when you setup the new device, your first sync will sync everything back. Just don’t forget to backup pictures like what I forgot to do.
Once updated and synced, you’ll notice, it looks the same, sans for the new little magnifying glass icon. So what’s new in this update? In short, here are the major updates listed

• Spotlight
• Cut, Copy & Paste
• Voice memos
• Push Notifications
• APIs for developers
• minor enhancements

So why the huge fuss over this update?

For once, Cut, Copy & Paste are making it in, which has been in demand since the beginning. What’s annoying about is, are all the Apple fans clamoring to Apple and praising Apple for a job well done with providing this funtionality. Honestly, think about it, this shoudl have been there in the first version of iPhone OS, no if’s or but’s to explain this one. I’m not impressed by that, but I am impressed that this method does work.  The way it works is you double tap on the text, or tap and hold on the text (similar to click and hold on a desktop) and brakets will appear, which you place the start point and end point to copy the text. Also, if its a paragraph of text, a box, which resize handles on each side will appear and help you with that. For images, the same action for saving images, can be used for copying images as well. One added bonus with this is, the “Select all” which makes it easier to delete large amounts of text. Initialize the CCP command, and a Select All function will appear, which will select all the text, and present you with either, Cut, Copy, or Paste. Instead, just hit backspace, and there goes all your text, deleted within a second, instead of holding down backspace and watching it scroll through ever character and word. Here are some thumbnails to show you.

The next major feature, is a much needed universal search. Search has been integrated into almost any database type of application in the OS. This is known as Spotlight. It’s that magnifying glass icon you see next to the Page Dots. To activate, on the Home Screen, just page left, and you’re brought to it. Just type away, and it will search your contacts, music, applications (not within the applications), emails, videos, podcasts, etc. Does not search in settings though, so it doesn’t work as a shortcut to turn things on and off. Also, another downside is the fact that it is only local, and gives you no options to automatically search a search provider such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Because of its new integration, you can find it in those applications as well by scrolling to the top of the lists, where a search field will be available.

Voice Memos is Apple’s newest native app. It basically replaces all those quick voice recording apps on the appstore (sorry if you bought one, lol), and let’s you record quick voice memos. I haven’t tried this myself, lack of microphone for my iPod, but from what I’ve read you can send these in Text messages when your carrier has MMS support (in the states, this is coming later on to AT&T, unlockers, you’re on your own).

Push Notifications finally makes it. Was promised for the 2.x towards the end of last year, now iPod owners have to give 10$ for another feature that should have been their in the first place. This basically enables application develoeprs to deliver messages as notifications, and badges on their apps. Say for an IM application, you can see the IM and how many IMs you have through the notification and badge respectively. Currently, support for this is abyssmal because of Apple’s late inclusion of this. All the IM apps do not support this except for AIM right now, huge bummer to me.

Those are probably the four and only features that most consumers may interact with concerning the OS itself. Everything else is minor.

• Scrubbing (scrolling through the time of a song or video) has been revamped. It is not variable speed, controlled by the distance of your finger away from the scrubber. The further away, the slower it is. The scrubber is the time line of the media. Not you can scrub by the second.
• Shake to shuffle has been finally been granted to these devices. You can shake your playlists and music to shuffle it. This can be disabled in the Settings app for people who jog and such.
• Bluetooth support has finally come for A2DP stereo headsets.
• API for developers enables support for using the native Map app in their applications, as well as various accessory APIs for developers, such as wireless bluetooth connectivity, and other things. Look forward to new apps.
• Apple has let GPS developers finally develop stand alone GPS applications, such as TomTom and Navigon.
• Most of the other enhancements are under the hood, enhanced Safari to make it faster, system stability, and a handful (45) security patches for vulnerabilities in the OS.

Worth it? Probably. Impressed? Not really. Much needed? Definately.

As far as Jailbreaking goes, the Jailbreak has been available for the past two days or so, just Bing(Google) it to find out more about the process. Just a short note on it. Most Jailbroken apps don’t work, some of the nice ones such as WeatherIcons and Live Clock, don’t exactly work. Winterboard does work, as does MobileMediaPlayer Flip, but requires a fix to the N45AP.plist to enable search in Spotlight to work correctly, SBSettings works well so far (probably the biggest reason to Jailbreak to have quick access to Settings).

Am I enjoying 3.0? Yeah. Copy and Paste is so useful now that I have it. Still awaiting Push for my IM clients, then I’ll be set to almost replace my laptop. Almost, as the iPod can only do so much.