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Tag: Useful Software

  • Time for a new feed reader

    Ever since I started using an RSS aggregator, I’ve used Feedreader. It’s a simple, but functional RSS and ATOM feed reader and I like it a lot, but twice now it has lost my headlines. The first time was probably about a year ago, so I downloaded the latest version and installed it. Then, a couple of days back, my PC crashed and when I restarted, Feedreader couldn’t read the headlines file. There was no option to retry. It just recreated it, downloaded the most recent headlines again, and I didn’t have a clue what I’d read and what I hadn’t (and of course had lost most of the earliest posts that were cached). I was running version 2.7, build 646 (the latest version is 2.9) but instead of upgrading (that’s the mixed blessing of open source software – there’s always a later version), I think I’ll try something different…

    I thought about using Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, but they are just not quite what I’m after (and I couldn’t import my blogroll via OPML). Then I found Sage – a feed reader for Firefox.

    Sage: a feed reader for Firefox

    One of the things I love about Sage is the “newspaper style” rendering of feeds, as shown above. Another thing that I found out is that the line breaks do actually work in the RSS and ATOM versions of the feeds from this blog (sometimes there seems to be problem whereby the text appeared in Feedreader as one long block and I thought the problem was Blogger‘s ATOM generation).

    It’s early days yet, but Sage is looking good so far.

  • A couple of useful tools for AD administrators

    I just read in this week’s Windows IT Pro Windows Tips and Tricks Update about a couple of little-known tools from Microsoft which could potentially make life easier for many Active Directory (AD) administrators.

    The remote control add-on for Active Directory users and computers (rcontrolad.exe) is a small add-on that provides an administrator with the option to right-click a computer account in the AD Users and Computers console and opening a terminal services/remote desktop connection to that computer. Remote control relies on the remote desktop connection software within Windows. Further information can be found at Windows IT Pro.

    The limit logon tool (details at Windows IT Pro) can be used to limit the number of concurrent sessions which a user can maintain.

  • Go to… Citrix online

    Last week I had a product demonstrated to me from The Dot Net Factory (they have several products, all of which look interesting to me and I hope to blog some more about them soon) but as they are in Ohio (USA) and I am in the UK the demonstration was carried out across the Internet.

    Apart from the products that were being demonstrated, one of the things that impressed me was how easy it was to join their web meeting – hosted by the guys at GoToMeeting – part of Citrix online. Citrix also have GoToAssist and GoToMyPC products but from the point of view of an end-user with limited time to spare, I was amazed at how easy it was to click on a link and (after installing a small ActiveX component) view the meeting host’s PC. We didn’t use the voice facilities as The Dot Net Factory called me on my mobile phone but GoToMeeting was definitely good from the point of view of seeing the system that the guys were talking to me about and I’d certainly recommend it for hosting meetings across the Internet.

  • Viewer for Microsoft Project (.MPP) files

    Last week I needed to view a colleague’s project plan (in Microsoft Project) to make sure I hadn’t been stitched up ensure that all the activities had been captured in the correct sequence and within a realistic time frame. Because I didn’t have Microsoft Project installed on my PC, I had to go through the correct processes to get a licence allocated and the software installed.

    I could have just got the CD out of my drawer and installed an illegal copy, but I was “being good” and my honesty cost my Manager’s budget £223.35 – and that’s with a heavy volume licence discount.

    Literally two days after the software was installed, I attended an event where I was given a copy of Seavus Project Viewer. For anyone who’s not aware of this product’s existence (I wasn’t), it is an application which allows Microsoft Project (.MPP) files to be viewed by users who don’t have a copy of Microsoft Project installed. At only $39, this would have been substantially more cost-effective than licensing Microsoft Project so I thought I’d blog about it and save someone else from spending the money if they only need read-only access to project plans.

  • MSI package for Mozilla Firefox 1.0

    Back in February, I posted a blog entry about installing applications silently (or at least quietly), e.g. as part of an unattended build process. Thomas Lee added a comment about WIX (Windows Installer XML), which I had not mentioned because at the time I was hoping to find some time to review WIX myself; although Thomas’ blog probably has some more information on the subject.

    One of my “problem applications” when it come to automated builds is Mozilla Firefox, which for some reason doesn’t seem to support a silent installation (or didn’t last time I looked). Well, today I found the YVG Software Services Mozilla Firefox 1.0 installer – so now you can get a copy of Firefox packaged in Windows Installer (.MSI) format.

  • Making use of various iTunes for Windows plug-ins

    Since I became an iPod convert a few months back, I’ve ripped all of my CD albums to 192kbps MP3s using iTunes (over 5000 songs using 29Gb of disk space at the time of writing – still got about 500 CD singles, plus MiniDisc and vinyl to go…) but one of the features which really lets down iTunes is the lack of high quality visualizations (Windows Media Player has loads).

    To help me with my quest to find decent iTunes for Windows visualizations, one of my MacMates, Stuart, sent me a link to the iLounge directory of known iTunes plug-ins. I’m still underwhelmed with the available visualizations but I came across some other interesting plug-ins, like WMPtunelog, which writes out information of the currently playing track to the registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\CurrentMetaData\). I’d really like to access this from my homepage and include a real-time “what I’m listening to” panel, but I’m not sure how at the moment. The blogging plug-in within the Windows Media Player 9 Series creativity fun pack (which also works with Windows Media Player 10) was looking hopeful, until I found that the “code samples for adding support to my web, Visual Basic, or C/C++ application” link in the creativity_pack_readme.htm file was dead… If anybody has any hints, then please let me know!

    One alternative may be Brandon Fuller’s Now Playing, which monitors the currently playing song and writes the information out to an XML file (optionally FTPing this to a location of your choice). Brandon uses PHP to process this on his site, but I’m having problems using PHP on my ISP’s servers (my ISP only allows active content to run on a separate server and I can’t seem to call the PHP from within normal HTML pages on their Apache web server) so am hoping that I can use an XSL transformation to format the XML instead but still not sure how to include that in the HTML…

    All of this is a bit developery for an infrastructure bod like me but I’ll keep on plugging away with this and will post a comment to this post when (if) I get it all working. In the meantime, answers on a postcard please…

  • Direct access to ISO images

    A couple of months back, I blogged about a driver to provide direct access to virtual floppy disks. Today, I’ve come across a number of sources (most notably Thomas Lee and Steven Bink), that pointed me in the direction of a similar tool for directly mounting ISO CD images in Windows XP – the Microsoft Virtual CD Control Panel. Although unsupported, and not even searchable on the Microsoft download center, this tool is referenced in the MSDN Subscriptions FAQ. There are other tools for manipulating ISO images, but what I like about this is that it simply allows me to mount an ISO as another drive in my system, in the same way that Virtual PC can capture an ISO image and use it as the CD drive.

  • Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit v4.0 is finally released

    Over the last few months I’ve been critical of the time its taken for Microsoft to ship an SP2-aware update to their application compatibility toolkit. Last week, one of the consultants from Microsoft UK e-mailed me to let me know that the Microsoft application compatibility toolkit v4.0 is now available for Windows XP (including SP2) and Windows Server 2003.

    The application compatibility toolkit contains tools and documentation to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues including the latest versions of the Microsoft Application Analyzer that simplifies application inventory and compatibility reporting, the Internet Explorer Compatibility Evaluator that assists testers in locating compatibility issues with Internet Explorer on Windows XP SP2, and the Compatibility Administrator that provides access to the necessary compatibility fixes to support legacy applications in Windows.

  • Direct access to virtual floppy disk files

    I’m sure that, from time to time, many Virtual PC users would find the ability to mount a virtual floppy disk (.VFD) file and directly access its contents (create, view, edit, rename or delete files, format the disk, or launch a program) useful. Well you can – using Ken Kato’s virtual floppy driver. Ken also has a whole load of tools for VMware users on his website.

  • IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore

    One of the technologies that I’ve been working with recently is IBM’s Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore. Another of IBM’s ThinkVantage technologies, this is provided free of charge with an IBM PC (and can be licensed for other OEM’s PC models).

    In essence, Rescue and Recovery writes a backup of the entire PC hard disk to either a hidden partition on the local hard drive, a second hard disk, recordable media, network drive, or to a USB device. The first backup is a base image, then subsequent backups are differential. Backups can be scheduled and up to 31 backups can be stored before overwriting. In a recovery scenario, the process is simply booting from a rescue CD, which is easily generated and is not machine specific, or pressing the Access IBM button on selected IBM PCs, then selecting the backup to use and the file(s) to be recovered. Individual files, or the entire system, may be recovered, even preserving selected data and logon credentials written since the last backup.

    All configuration settings are stored in an easily edited text file with full product documentation including customisation available in PDF format.