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For years whenever I wanted to do some screencasts or record what’s on the screen, I have been using Techsmith’s great Camtasia software or Windows Media Encoder. Today from a FaceBook wall post I learnt that the free & open source video player – VLC Media Player has this feature in every copy.
The steps to follow are just four, first is to select Convert/Save option from the Media Menu, then in the dialog box that appears select “Capture Device” tab, then select "Desktop” in the Capture Mode option, increase the frame rate (for smoother animation provided you have powerful graphic card) and then press “Convert/Save” button. That’s all.
Compared to architecting & releasing web applications, Windows Apps (client apps in general) needs more care. The main reason being if you detect any bugs or want to do any enhancements you can’t simply do the changes in your server and be done with it. You need to get the new binary to each one of the client machines and overnight you can’t get everyone to the new version. Look at Microsoft – they are unable to get everyone rid of Windows XP or IE 6.0 & upgrade to new versions. It is tribal knowledge in the industry that users prefer to be notified and asked for consent before upgrading. So most of the apps for Windows ship with an thin installer executable that checks for new version of the app from their server and prompts to download and install the new bits – think of the frequently appearing and annoying Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Acrobat upgrade prompts.
In this background I considered Google Chrome process of silent auto-upgrade to be an interesting exception. It appears Google Chrome is not alone in this, FaceBook is doing the same. Today when I happened to launch Windows Task Scheduler applet I noticed two tasks which were set to execute FaceBookUpdate.Exe at a regular frequency. My first instance was “Oh my god” my PC has got malware and how is it possible?. After few minutes of research I figured it out to be the new Skype-FaceBook video chat client bits. What I found interesting here is the close similarity in the name of the app and parameters between the FaceBook & Google Chrome tasks. Look for yourself on the images below, you will see how both follow the same naming convention for the file name, parameters and folders exactly.
In my main PC at work where I store most of my documents and data, I have been using Hardware RAID for mirroring between two 500GB Seagate Hard drives for last 3 years. This provides me with automatic redundancy and minor performance benefit while reading large video files. All was well till last week, when on boot BIOS warned that the Mirror is broken. Having seen this happen few times before I quickly updated my backup to external drive and then rebuild the mirror. Yesterday I got into the same problem, I decided and moved to Windows (Software) mirroring. Today afternoon Windows 7 showed me the below dialog and warned me that S.M.A.R.T. data is indicating an impending failure/error in one of the drives. The warning was just about useless beyond that – no indication on which Physical drive is having the problem.
On searching for this issue in Bing!, I found this free utility called DiskCheckup which can read the S.M.A.R.T data and provide more information, which it did. I found one of the drives was having high “reallocated sector count” which was told me by few hardware blogs to be bad. But since both my physical drives were the same model their class names displayed were same, which didn’t help me in isolating the failed one. So I went to computer management and broke the mirror. Reran Diskcheckup few times (disabling one drive after another in Device Management) and identified the failed one. Since I didn’t have a spare 500GB to replace, I fixed a 1TB drive in place of the failed one. Fortunately Windows 7 didn’t mind setting up mirroring between two drives of unequal size. I managed to select the 500GB, Add Mirror to a portion (which Windows created automatically) of 1TB and setup everything, the balance space I could create another simple volume. Windows is currently Resyncing the mirror between the drives.
I am an ardent user of Microsoft’s free command line utility “Robocopy” for copying folders between drives or perform a manual backup of my documents to an external drive. I have been using this for more than a decade now. Over the years the folders that I want to be excluded while copying has increased and I have never bothered to check the parameters. Today I realized I have been inadvertently copying few system folders and a folder named “Microsoft” containing all Tech-Ed & Mix event videos, this happened due to wrong parameters. After few minutes of debugging with /L switch in Robocopy, I realized Robocopy doesn’t like the trailing slash (\) after each folder path that you want to be excluded, remove the trailing slash and everything works fine. I am giving the command that worked for me as an example, needless to say I have changed the drive names to protect my PC’s privacy.
ROBOCOPY X:\ Y:\DESKTOP /XD "X:\System Volume Information" "X:\WINDOWSIMAGEBACKUP" "X:\MICROSOFT" "X:\TEMP" "X:\$RECYCLE.bin" /MIR /R:2 /W:2
Having not seen any new successful product announcements from Google for last year or so I was feeling Google is losing its magic touch, it is getting bogged down by its own size and return of Larry Page is going to do little to change course. When I make the previous comment, I am not counting Android or Google Chrome announcements made me in recent Google I/O – those are enhancements, what I am talking is fundamental innovation. But today something happened that made pause this thought for a while and give credit to Google for its basic computer science research and its leadership position. It is the release of support in Google Translate for 5 Indic Languages including my mother tongue “Tamil”.
Though many research labs with their computer scientists & linguists both in India & outside are working on this for more than last 3 decades, having a publicly accessible Tamil translator has always remained a dream. I have personally met many of these great minds during the INFITT Tamil Internet conferences, but unfortunately they were all few critical steps away from completing their great work due to resource constraints. Many of these projects were also happening in silos – Private firms research arms, Government funded academic labs, Universities Linguistic departments and so on.
Though it is in Alpha stage and is far from perfect, it is a big day for all Tamilians. What Google has released today at Translate.Google.com is two-way translation (To Tamil & From Tamil) :
1. English (and other languages) to Tamil: The “Tamil” only speakers of Tamil Nadu & around the world can now access and enjoy the vast majority of World Wide Web without being hampered by not having English proficiency.
2. Tamil to English (and other languages): The entire world can now enjoy the timeless treasures in Tamil literature and written by Tamil poets.
As I have written earlier I love everything about my new iPad2, but I do look forward to a great Windows8 tablet sometime in future (?). Normally I connect my iPhone & iPad2 to my PC so that they can sync with iTunes for all latest Podcasts and Apps. After few days with my iPad2 I realized it is not charging while connected to my Desktop Workstation (of course I have upgraded a new PC few months back) due to lack of power wattage from PC’s standard USB Ports. Connecting to a powered external USB Hub from Belkin (FSU304) didn’t help either. It was inconvenient for me to connect the iPad everyday separately to a Power outlet for charging.
Doing some searching I found the solution in this Apple Support forum page. The answer is to download a free utility from Asus called AiCharger that works in Windows, this free app configures your Motherboard and USB Hubs to increase the power output that is required by iPad2 to charge. It works fine for me in an Intel Motherboard, but please check whether your PC has a big SMPS power supply to take the extra load.
What are the must have software in your PC for 2011, apart from the OS (Windows or Mac OS)?. Below are my favourites which are present in all the 3 PCs I use, most of them are available for Windows 7 & Mac OS 10.X.
Drivers & Antivirus
- After you install OS (Windows or Mac OS), connect all your peripherals like Printer, Scanner, Camera one after the other and ensure to install the necessary drivers. Most cases going with default Windows 7 (or Mac OS) driver might be the best, except for your Graphics Card & Printer for which the OEM given software offers more features & performance
- Microsoft Security Essentials: If you are not going to be buying any of the commercial Antivirus (which I highly recommend) like Norton 360 or K7 Total Security, then download & install the free Antivirus from Microsoft for Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7.
Free (as in free beer) Software:
- Firefox web browser (or Google Chrome, but I will go with Firefox due to the number of add-ons)
- Firefox add-ons: Delicious, ScreenGrab
- Adobe Flash Player
- Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Microsoft Silverlight: If you are visiting sites like NBC Olympics or sites owned by Microsoft like Bing! & MSN, this Flash like Plug-in from Microsoft is a must. And it runs on Windows & Mac OS.
- KeePass Password Safe: All of us deal with several tens of passwords, PINs and other secret information to remember. This free application is the best one out there and offers the best security. It stores all your private information in a local XML file, which is only accessible with your master password. Shows the stored information in a neat hierarchy (like folders) structure and you can also search by words stored. Apart from being available for Windows & Mac OS on your PC, there are KeePass compatible apps for your mobile (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, J2Me, PalmOS and Windows Phone)
- VLC Media Player: Whether you use Windows Media Player or iTunes, there are DVDs or Video files that you are not able to play due to Encoder and other confusing technical issues. Here is a free Media Player that plays almost all Video and Audio files out there from the most popular to the most obscure
- Paint.NET: The built-in MS Paint application in Windows is useless for anything beyond for kids to colour for fun. For any serious editing, cropping images, Paint.NET is the best. It offers some advanced features like Layers, Filters which are found only in Adobe Photoshop or GIMP but makes them available in easy to use fashion. Even though I have paid Adobe Photoshop Elements, most often I use Paint.NET as it is faster and gets simple jobs done easily
- Skype: Many of us have in far-away places our friends and family and Skype is the best free service to speak (or chat or see) to them
- PDF Creator (or PrimoPDF): Having a Print to PDF application installed can be a life-saver especially if you do online transactions or purchases. In events like after you have booked a ticket online, you want to save it as a file and email or printer is not available. Though in initial years I have used PDF Creator, nowadays I prefer PrimoPDF as it works flawlessly on Windows x64 as well
- 7-Zip: Most often you will use a Zip file for compressing and packaging files and Windows does Compressing/Extraction of Zip files automatically. But what if you get a file from a friend that’s in RAR, ISO or other formats. That’s where 7-Zip comes handy and it is much faster than the built-in Zip feature of Windows. If you can spare some money, I will recommend going and buying WinRAR, a commercial application that does the same even better
- OpenOffice: (Certainly Not needed if you have bought MS Office) The free equivalent of MS Office apps to create your documents, spread sheets and presentations. Though OpenOffice can open, edit & save MS Office files I will recommend you having the official free viewers from Microsoft installed; this ensures you can at least open Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Visio files.
Free – Useful for most users but must-have for Power-Users:
- Windows Live Essentials: This free suite from Microsoft is the best kept secret for Windows. In one single download you get quite a handful set of applications, but in opinion 4 of the included apps are the best in-class and you should definitely be selecting them while installing it. They are Windows Live Movie Maker (the easiest video-editing software), Windows Live Messenger (connects to MSN Messenger service, Yahoo! IM and Facebook chat all in one go), Windows Live Writer (the very application that I am using to compose and post this blog post) & Windows Live Mesh (that synchronizes files and folders between your PCs and an optional cloud storage)
- Free Download Manager: Almost all of us download large files especially music & videos. FDM is the fast and easy to use Download manager and integrates seamlessly with your web browser. It also supports downloading videos from YouTube, Torrents and more
- Apple iTunes: If you have any Apple device you can’t be without this software, especially iPhone or iPad. Also the best service to buy Music & Movies
- Handbrake: This is one of the best application for converting your movie DVDs into Digital files that you can copy to your iPhone/Zune/Smartphone/iPod. I have wasted numerous hours and few hundred dollars in trying out many of the Video Conversion software available in the market, but nothing beats HandBrake
- Java runtime: If you are doing online banking then many Bank still run Java Applets and you will need to have the latest Java runtime in your PC. If none of the sites you visit, prompts you for it, you don’t need to have this
- Adobe Shockwave Player: If you have kids who play online, then this becomes necessary
- Adobe AIR: If you have specific some apps like New York Times reader or TweetDeck)
- Picasa Photo Editing Software: This software from Google is the easiest Photo management & online sharing service I have see. I will rate it better than Yahoo! Flickr and FaceBook. In recent times, Google seems to be improving it less frequently, but still I find it adequate
- Sobees Desktop Application: Almost all of us are into Social like Twitter, FaceBook or Linked-In, this free Microsoft .NET WPF based app rocks when it comes to connecting to all popular social websites with a single application. Since the application is written using Microsoft .NET Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) it is I18N compatible including Indic Languages)
Paid (Commercial) Software
- Microsoft Office: No explanations needed. Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- Norton 360 Antivirus suite: Though there are many free and paid Antivirus out there, I will go with Norton 360 any day. The newer versions offer speed, take very little system resource and never slows down your PC. On top of a great product, their online support has been the best I have used. I have been a loyal subscriber of their service for last 6 years.
- Nero Multimedia Suite: If you want to do anything beyond just copying files to your CD or DVD including burning/copying discs, you will need Nero. I have been a paid users upgrading to each of their latest version for last several years
- Adobe Acrobat: If you scanning documents or creating PDF files and sharing them to your partners and outside world, buying the Adobe Acrobat Pro will pay for itself in few months. The reduced filesize and the clarity in the PDF files created by official Adobe Acrobat can never be matched by free software or the built-in software that came with your scanner. It also allows you to edit PDF files, annotate, fill forms and save them. Though it is very expensive compared to alternatives and I delayed buying it for years, I am experiencing it benefits
- Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements: They are the siblings of their best in-class bigger versions from Adobe. If you don’t want to keep experimenting with multiple software out there in the Internet and want to go with a safe and easy to use Photo-Editing and Video-Editing software you can’t go wrong with these two from Adobe. When you buy them together you get good discounts and rebate from Adobe.
Other Software I use regularly
- NHM Writer: I use this IME (Keyboard input) application to type in my mother tongue (Tamil). It supports many of Indian & Asian languages
- Windows Virtual PC (or Oracle Virtual Box): I use these to run old Operating systems like Windows 98 or Windows XP for some testing and a bit of nostalgia. Most often I use them to run say Windows XP when I have to browse sites like torrents which I am not sure on how safe they are. In those cases I enable the UNDO feature in Virtual PC do my browsing then shut-down the instance and throw away the changes. Running these unsafe browsing sessions inside a Virtual instance of an OS, helps me to protect the base OS
Background: Tomorrow marks the beginning of the World Classical Tamil Conference in Kovai and with it the Ninth “Tamil Internet Conference” (TI2010) organized by INFITT. I am honoured to be the Chair of INFITT for this term and to be part of the TI2010 organizing committee. Tonight we wanted to send emails to participants and speakers (who may not have got the information yet) of TI2010, informing them about the Hotel and the Room Number they are booked in Coimbatore. And this we had to do in next few hours (it was already 11.50PM when we started) and I am in my Hotel Room along with my good friend and INFITT Member Badri Seshadri who is being a great help in running TI2010 at the venue.
Problem: We had the entire data in a MS Excel spread sheet (as shown below). Each row had information unique to an individual along with their email ID. Initially we thought of sending the emails manually – open GMail, compose new message, cut and paste the information, repeat it 220 times. We quickly realized this is not tenable within the time we had, and if we have to catch some sleep, we have to automate this. After doing some Web searches, I remembered that MS Word Mail-Merge may be able to help us.
Solution: Turns out MS Word with Outlook has a feature to send customized email to multiple people with the data coming from Outlook contacts, Excel or any relational database that can be connected to. The feature is called “Mail Merge”, the same feature that many of us have used in MS Word to print customized letters or print labels. Badri had in his laptop MS Word 2002, but didn’t have Outlook configured, so the “Mail Merge” feature didn’t show up “Send by Email” option in his laptop. I had in my laptop MS Word & Outlook 2010, but I had my official email ID configured, and for obvious reasons I didn’t want 220 emails going from my official email. I removed my official email and instead configured my Hotmail.com email ID with MS Outlook 2010 (this required downloading and installing Outlook Hotmail Connect 32-bit). Then I used the “Step by Step” wizard for Mail Merge in MS Word 2010 – configured the data from MS Excel, selected the columns, created an email template and finally previewing the output. All this initial research and setting up took about 30-40 minutes.
After which we started sending out the emails in blocks of roughly 50 emails (I wanted to be nice with Hotmail SPAM filters). To our surprise we completed sending out 220 customized emails in the next 20-30 minutes. And all this was on a “Fair” Wi-Fi connection provided by the hotel where I was staying.
Conclusion: As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. Without the urgency we were in, I may not have explored or learned this nice feature of “Mail Merge” for emails in MS Word, instead would have used an online service for sending out bulk mails or worst-case written a small application in VB.NET!
References and step-by-step instructions:
- How to use mail merge to create e-mail messages in Word
- How to Create and Send a Word 2010 Mail Merge E-Mail
- Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once
Last year I had written about TuxPaint – a painting and colouring program for Kids used by son in his kinder garden days. In my son’s school (First Standard) last academic year they introduced him to a new program. And that program is “Drawing For Children” written by Mark Overmars and it is free. It seems to be very capable for growing kids to show their creativity.
Look in the below screenshot of what my son could do with this program in say 10-15 minutes!
There are lot of performance improving tips out there in the Internet on how to speed up web pages. Recently I came across these references and tools that will be useful.
- Steve Souders from Google presents "Even Faster Web sites"
- YSlow from Yahoo!. A firefox add-on that analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites
- More website optimization tips here
- Webpage performance analyzer here
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