FaKeeRa's World: 12/2/07

Saturday, December 8, 2007

BetaNews Picks

SourceForge launches commercial 'marketplace' for open source software

Upon posting a loss for its most recent financial quarter, open source foundry SourceForge has launched an auction-based service that charges commissions to developers. Coincidentally or not, SourceForge got hacked this week.

Dell throws an Armani bash for the XPS One

At a customer event at an Armani store in New York last night, the company officially launched the XPS One, a PC/high-def TV which is Dell's answer to the Gateway One and Apple's iMac.

EchoStar becomes DISH, spins off most non-sat TV holdings

The company, whose primary holding its the satellite television service, will change its name and spin-off non-core businesses, an SEC filing indicates.

Ohio politician proposes sex offender tracking device

An Ohio lawmaker is proposing his state help its citizens track the locations of registered sex offenders by using RFID technology.

Macrovision seeks to own digital TV gateway with Gemstar purchase

A company known more for its digital rights management technology, and which just last month purchased not only the BD+ DRM scheme outright but also a larger stake in set-top boxes, is about to become the publisher of TV Guide.

FiOS routers at center of latest GPL lawsuit

UPDATED The Software Freedom Law Center has sued Verizon on behalf of the developers of BusyBox, saying the routers for its high-speed service infringe on the General Public License.

CNBC: Apple preps sub-notebook for Macworld

With just a little over one month before the yearly meeting of the Mac faithful, the rumors of an Apple sub-notebook have started to appear.

Microsoft ties high-level code to Web development with Volta

The long effort to make it technically feasible for already skilled developers to produce Web applications using high-level languages like C++, may at last be paying off.

Three critical patches on tap from Microsoft

Next Tuesday's regular monthly distribution of security patches will include three for DirectX, Windows Media, and Internet Explorer.

Opera ships Mini for BREW-based phones

The company that boasts of having the first Web browser for mobile phones has finally ported its engine to Qualcomm's BREW mobile application platform.

Announcing Vista SP1 Release Candidate 1

Available for download via Microsoft Download next week.

Today we're making available the release candidate (RC) of Windows Vista SP1 via Microsoft Connect, and tomorrow subscribers to TechNet and MDSN will have access to those RC bits too. In addition, the RC will be available to the public next week via Microsoft's Download Center. The release candidate phase of beta software is typically the final phase before the RTM (release-to-manufacturing) of a product and indicates that the code has attained a significant level of performance and stability.

Let me call out several changes made since the Beta release of Service Pack 1 - many of which came about as a result of direct feedback from our Beta-testing community:

▪The size of the standalone installers have decreased significantly. For example, the standalone installer packages consisting of all 36 languages (x86 and x64 chip architectures) are smaller by over 50%. The standalone installer packages consisting of just the 5 languages (again, x86 and x64) slated for initial release are more than 30% smaller in size.

▪The required amount of disc space for SP1 installation has also decreased significantly. Furthermore, with the RC, if more space is required to install SP1, an error message will now display exactly how much space is needed to complete the installation.

▪Previous SP1 versions left behind a directory of files that wasn't needed after installation and occupied about 1GB of space; the RC includes automatic disk clean-up to remove this directory.

▪Installation reliability has been improved based on bug reports and error codes reported from Windows Update (thanks, Beta testers!). Testing shows that these improvements have significantly increased the proportion of successful installations of the RC.

▪We've improved the user experience of installing SP1 via Windows Update. During the Beta release, users installed without much guidance from Windows Update. The RC now contains a series of screens with detailed information on SP1.

View: SP1 RC Discussion
Original Article
News Source

Three critical patches on tap from Microsoft

Next Tuesday's regular monthly distribution of security patches will include three for DirectX, Windows Media, and Internet Explorer.

Of the seven patches in the next Patch Tuesday package from Microsoft, all three critical patches will be for remote code execution issues. The first two, for DirectX and DirectShow as well as the Windows Media Format Runtime, will not require a restart.

The final critical patch, intended for Internet Explorer, will require a restart. It is also somewhat likely that this patch may be a cumulative one: Often when Microsoft patches issues with its browsers, it fixes several problems at once.

Of the important updates, two are for remote code execution problems within Windows, and require a restart. The other two are for various elevation of privilege issues, and also are intended for Windows itself.

News Source

Windows Server 2008 RC1 Released to Public

The second release candidate (thus the number “1″) for Windows Server 2008 is slated for availability this afternoon, and this version will finally include a new tool that Microsoft took an interest in back in 2005.

The latest RC1 for Windows Server 2008 will finally incorporate a tool Microsoft has had in its stable by way of acquisition for well over a year: What was once sold separately as PolicyMaker Standard Edition — a tool for extending the range and function of group policy objects — will now be incorporated into Windows Server, as Group Policy Preferences.

(more…)

Friday, December 7, 2007

How to access uTorrent from a remote PC

This tutorial will guide you through setting up uTorrents Web UI (User Interface). The Web UI allows you to remotely connect to the computer running uTorrent, through a web browser, and control all of your torrents.

Before you even get started - it’s very important to note up front - Internet Explorer 6 is not supported by uTorrent Web UI. Firefox, Safari and IE 7 all appear to work just fine.

To enable the Web UI service, open up uTorrent, select Options and then Preferences…
Click the + (plus sign) next to Advanced to expand the list. Select Web UI from that list. In the main section of the Preferences window, place a check in the box labeled Enable Web Interface. Leave the user name as admin and then select a password by entering it in the Password: box. You may also want to enable access to the uTorrent Web UI on a different port. For me, the only way I could get it working was to use a different port. Remember - if you do use an alternative listening port you’ll want to make sure that port is being forwarded to the PC running uTorrent. Click OK when you’re done.

click to enlarge
Now download the Web UI file from the uTorrent forums. The Web UI addon is a .rar file - if you need help opening and accessing the contents of a rar file, see this tutorial.
You’re going to need to extract some of the contents of the Web UI rar file to a specific folder on your PC. To access that folder, click the Windows Start button, select Run and enter:

%AppData%\uTorrent
Now extract webui.zip and sortabletable from the rar file into the folder that you opened in the previous step. NOTE: - do not actually open webui.zip - it should remain a zip file.

click to enlarge
Here’s the moment of truth. On the PC that’s running uTorrent enter http://127.0.0.1:the port that utorrent runs on/gui/
If you used all of the default settings when you installed uTorrent, the port that utorrent runs on in the URL above will probably be 44940. In the screenshot below, I’m using port 8080 - because I opted to use an alternate listening port (back in step 2).
Enter your user name (which is admin, unless you changed it) and password. You should be presented with the uTorrent Web Interface. From here you can control many of the uTorrent settings - including adding new torrents, stopping existing ones etc.

click to enlarge
If you are not presented with the uTorrent Web User Interface, here are some troubleshooting tips and suggestions.
- Start again from the top. Make sure that port forwarding is properly enabled for whatever port you opted to use uTorrent with. Make sure you extracted webui.zip to the correct folder.
- Press CTRL+F5 in your browser. This will either revive the Web UI, or you will see a blank (white) screen. If you only see a blank white screen then close and reopen the browser then load Web UI again.
- If that doesn’t work then use the following URL http://YourIP:UTport/gui/?action=setsetting&s=webui.cookie&v={} and then reload the Web UI using the normal URL
- Try accessing http://127.0.0.1:the port that utorrent runs on/gui/?list=1
- Try a different browser - remember - it will not work in IE 6.
- Review the info here.
- If that doesn’t work, try asking in the uTorrent forums.
When accessing your uTorrent files remotely, you’ll need to connect to the computer running uTorrent through its public IP address. You can obtain your public IP address by visiting http://www.whatsmyip.net from the computer running uTorrent. Then when you want to access uTorrent from a remote computer, enter: http://your-public-ip-address:port:/gui/ into the browser address bar.

---
Related Articles at Simplehelp:

Source

How to access uTorrent from your iPhone or iPod Touch

This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to install and set up the iPhone (and iPod Touch) Web UI for uTorrent. This version of the uTorrent Web UI was created specifically for the iPhone/iPod Touch and allows you to access your uTorrent client remotely to pause or add new torrents.

First you’ll need to install the uTorrent Web UI
Next, download this zip file from http://www.davidraso.com/utorrent-iphone. Extract the contents of the zip file to the same folder that you installed uTorrents Web UI to (%AppData%\uTorrent).
Now you need to add the iphone folder (that’s what was in the zip file you just downloaded) to the webui.zip file itself. You should be able to do this by clicking the iphone folder, holding down the mouse button, dragging it to the webui.zip file and then letting go.
Open the webui.zip file to confirm that the iphone folder is now there.
On your iPhone or iPod Touch, enter the url: http://your-utorrent-ip-address:utorrent webui port/gui/iphone/i.html (eg. http://24.24.24.24:44940/gui/iphone/i.html) into Safari.
Enter your uTorrent Web UI user name and password when prompted, and you’ll be presented with the uTorrent iPhone Web UI. From here you can pause torrents (use the green/yellow play/pause button) or start new downloads by clicking the + (plus sign) in the uTorrent menu bar.

---
Related Articles at Simplehelp:

Source

How to stream audio and video from your Mac to your iPhone or iPod Touch

This tutorial could also be called “how to use your iPhone or iPod Touch to control your Mac” - because the featured (open source) software actually allows you to do both. Continue reading to be taken step by step through installing, setting up and accessing iPhone Remote on your Mac.

Download iPhone Remote - just unzip the file and drag it to your Applications folder to install it. Launch it from there.

click to enlarge
The first time you run iPhone Remote, it will prompt you to create a user name and password. As noted in the Choose your Login window, make sure to choose a password carefully, because the account you’re creating will have access to all of the files on your Mac that you do. Click Save to create the account.

click to enlarge
Safari will launch (if it isn’t open already) and load a secure web page. This page is actually on your Mac - Safari is connecting to the iPod Remote, which is accessed as a web server. Click Continue if a certificate window appears.

click to enlarge
Enter the user name and password you created in step 2. Place a check in the box labeled Remember this password in my keychain if you don’t want to enter the info each time you access iPhone Remote via your local computer (which probably won’t be that often).

click to enlarge
And Safari will display the iPhone Remote interface.
Now for the fun part. On your iPhone or iPod Touch open Safari. Enter the IP address of your Mac running iPhone Remote, followed by :5010 (because iPhone Remote runs on port 5010 by default). Enter your user name and password (again, the one created in step 2).

click to enlarge
And the iPhone Remote screen will be displayed. From here you can launch applications on your Mac, take and view snapshots with your Macs iSight, control iTunes, search using Spotlight etc.

click to enlarge
Below is a screenshot of the Documents folder on my Mac, accessed via my iPod Touch. Clicking the Open button will open the file on your Mac.

click to enlarge
Use the Screen section of iPhone Remote and you’ll be able to view whatever is on the screen on your Mac.

click to enlarge
Clicking (tapping?) a file itself (rather than the Open button) will display that file, when possible, on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

click to enlarge
If you want to be able to stream media - movies, songs/audio - select Preferences… from the iPhone Remote drop-down list on your Mac.
After you’ve read the caveats of media streaming and fully understand the important security implications - place a check in the box labeled Share media insecurely. Click the Restart Server button. Back on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you may need to reload Safari before streaming audio or video works.

click to enlarge
Once you’ve reconnected to the iPhone Remote server, when you click on a supported audio or video format, it will stream to your iPhone/iPod Touch.
And on top of all of that, there are more apps for telekinesis (iPhone Remote).

---
Related Articles at Simplehelp:

Source

OS X Download of the Day: TinyAlarm

From their product home page -

TinyAlarm is a tiny alarm clock for your menu bar. It will play your chosen sound at some time in the near future. All of the configuration is done using the status menu item. Clicking around should reveal just about everything there is to know about Tiny Alarm.

They also suggest that it’s good for when “you’re gaming or programming, but still have to get to class. It will also help you avoid missing your bus, or burning your pizza, or showing up late for meetings.” And therein lies the genius of TinyAlarm. Just two clicks and you’ve set a timed reminder. And by default, there are a series of time-frames to choose from. 5 min from now. 10 min from now. 15, 30, 60, 2 hrs. Just click click. Genius. Plus I don’t have to write a tutorial for this one, because their download page includes very clear instructions on using pretty much every aspect of TinyAlarm, which is perfect because I’m feeling lazy today.

---
Related Articles at Simplehelp:

Source

How to open Office 2007 files using Office 2000/XP/ or 2003

You can open, edit and save Office 2007 files using an older version of Office (2K/XP/2003) if you download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. So if you’ve been sent a file created with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint 2007 - and you don’t have MS Office 2007, you’ll still be able to view and edit it (though some of the features very specific to 2007 might not work, you’ll usually be notified if it happens).

via freeware genius.

---
Related Articles at Simplehelp:

Source

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Overview: CoolMon 2 - a Windows system monitoring utility

Windows

Using CoolMon 2 you can create a ‘window’ or series of windows on your desktop that will display system stats such as CPU, RAM and page file usage, hard drive usage, MotherBoard Monitor temperatures, fan speeds, various network stats and much, much more. This overview will introduce you to CoolMon 2 and get you started on creating your own custom system monitoring utility for your desktop. CoolMon 2 is a free application for Windows 2000 and XP.

To get started, download CoolMon 2. The installation is very straight forward - you’ll mostly just click ‘next’ a bunch of times. Once the installation has completed, launch CoolMon2. It will appear on your desktop in the upper-right corner by default.
You should also see a new icon for CoolMon 2 in your system tray. Right-click that icon and select Edit Config.
This will launch Outlaw Ed - the editor for CoolMon 2.

click to enlarge
Click and drag CoolMon 2 in the Outlaw Ed window to relocate it. The location you leave it in the editor window represents the location on your desktop that CoolMon 2 will appear.

click to enlarge
Right-click within the CoolMon 2 module and a whole slew of options will be presented. From here you can add new sensors, re-size and re-locate various modules etc.
There are literally dozens of plugins for CoolMon 2 that extend its functionality to include such things as controlling your media player, checking email, viewing RSS feeds etc. Don’t forget to check out the visual plugins too.
If you need help customizing CoolMon 2 the forums and OutlawEd tutorial are particularly helpful.

---
Related Articles at Simplehelp:

Screenshot Simulation: winipcfg utility for Windows 95/98/98SE/ME
How to monitor your Internet bandwidth usage in OS X
How to monitor your Internet bandwidth usage in OS X, redux
Screenshot Simulations Index
Windows Run Commands

Simplehelp

How to access uTorrent from your mobile device

Bittorrent

This brief tutorial will walk you through the steps required to access (and control) uTorrent from your mobile device (phone, PDA, wi-fi mp3 player etc).

Make sure that you’ve installed and set up uTorrent Web UI. Once it’s up and running, visit http://u-gbukoxhiz.smilinglinks.com in your mobile browser. Opera Mini works great, Internet Explorer Mobile, not as well. Enter all of your uTorrent Web UI info and select Login.
And you’ll be presented with a list of your current uTorrent torrents.
Selecting (clicking) one of the links to a torrent will display all the info (current download speed, upload speed, ETA etc).
If you select Settings from the main uTorrent mUI screen, you’ll be able to change some of the settings for each of your bittorrent files.

---
Related Articles at Simplehelp:

How to access uTorrent from your iPhone or iPod Touch
Overview: Microsoft releases Office Mobile 6.1
How to access uTorrent from a remote PC
How to install uTorrent in OS X
How to sync your Windows Mobile device to a Windows Vista PC

Simplehelp

How to remove red-eye from your digital photos using GIMP

Yesterday one of my roommates (Chris) finally got to meet one of his shero’s - Tori Amos. The pictures turned out great, but one of them came with the dreaded “red-eye”. This tutorial will walk you through the steps to remove red eye from your digital photos using the GIMP image editor.

Launch GIMP and then open your photo. Select the rectangle tool.
Draw a rectangle around the red eyes.
Now select Filters -> Enhance -> Red Eye Removal…

click to enlarge
The Red Eye Removal tool will pop up. Use the Threshold scroll bar to adjust the eye color as you see fit. Click OK when you’re done.
The changes will be applied to your photo.
Use the Zoom feature if you need to remove red eyes from someone who also has red hair (or a wig) that’s getting in the way. You can even select one eye at a time.
And the finished product -

finished product - click to enlarge