Ugh!!'s Greymatter Honeypot » software

Does “the Ribbon” drive you nuts?

Owen — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:10:20 +0000

Don’t you just hate it when the software you know and love changes all of a sudden. One day you’re happy with the way it works, the next day BANG, it’s all changed. It’s bad enough when you visit a website and find it’s all changed, but when it’s the software you use every day it can be quite disconcerting.

You’ll get this, for example, if you upgrade from an older version of Office to a newer one. The newer versions (Office 2007 and Office 2010) change the whole toolbar paradigm to one called a “Ribbon”. Microsoft seems to be 100% behind this change, as they’re planning to use the same concept in the next version of Windows for the main User Interface.

Luckily, if you’re stuck with Office and just can’t handle the “Ribbon”, there is a way around it. You can download Office 2010 menus adjustment software that will replace the new interface with Toolbars that match older versions of Office. This means that you can upgrade to the new version without needing any training or without losing any time in the switch. It means you can adjust to the new system in your own time.

That’s the great thing about software, you can usually find ways around constraints and problems. Give this a try and see how you get on.

Taking a step back in time with Visio

Owen — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:35:53 +0000

It’s interesting how some people prefer the comfort of an environment or interface they’re comfortable with. It applies to your old slippers, your favourite spot, and yes, even the menus on that application you’ve been using for years. A lot has been said about the new ribbon interface on the newer version of Microsoft Office, and the truth is, well, not everyone likes it. Well, if this is the case and you’re using Visio 2010, there’s an option for you.

Classic Menu for Visio 2010 lets you retain your old menus in the new version of Microsoft Visio. Instead of having to learn where everything is, you can now install it on your computer, and voila you’re back to the interface you know and love. This might also be interesting to you if you’re a new user. You now can learn how to use visio 2010 the old way!

It’s a great testament to the Internet that a company can find enough used to justify creating a product like this. It feels like a shortcoming to let people operating in the old way, but if that’s what you’re used to, that’s really what works best for you. So go ahead, give it a real try!

The pain of 64-bit – Java SDK, Android SDK & Titanium Developer

Owen — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:49:41 +0000

It’s been a few years since 64-bit operating systems have been around and you’d expect that by now that would have been properly bedded in. I’ve moved onto 64-bit Windows with my new laptop and I’ve been pretty pleased to find that I’ve had no problems finding drivers for the platform and had no software issues so far.

However, this evening I was going to play with some Android development, so I started loading up bits I needed. First on was the Java JDK. I had a choice of 64-bit or 32-bit, so went for the 64-bit version. All was fine and dandy till I tried installing the Android SDK, at which point I was presented with an error telling me that the “Java SE Development Kit (JDK) not found”

Backtracking, I uninstalled the 64-bit JDK, installed the 32-bit version and lo and behind, the Android SDK is now on my machine.

However, when I proceeded to the actual tool I wanted to have a play with, called Appcelerator Titanium, I just hit a brick wall:

Try as I might, I just couldn’t get the darn thing running on my 64-bit platform. I guess I’ll just have to set up a 32-bit VM and get it running from there, but no more time for play today, so I’ll have to shelf it for another day

Amazing Books on the iPad

Owen — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 09:02:12 +0000

Here’s a great idea that shows the power of electronic devices over traditional books. They’re called Amazing Book and it’s children’s iPad app that is interactive, making sure that kids will remain engaged for the entire reading experience. Kids can read along, or the book can read itself to them, both a great way for kids to learn how the read; and it also works in other languages like French and Spanish, so can also serve as a tool to teach kids a different language. The technology seems amazing, and there’s even a facility to show the appropriate sequences in 3D too. And if you don’t have an iPad, it’s also available as a children’s iPhone app or a children’s iPod app and it’s available on iTunes.

Definitely a must if you’re going travelling and need something to keep the kids busy!

A new way to share

Owen — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:43:25 +0000

Mozilla have just released the F1 toolbar, a new way to share links with your contacts and friends:

Mozilla Labs F1 from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.

The aim of the toolbar is to try and standardise the way websites share their links. There are a host of these around, the Facebook Like button, Add to Any and a variety of others. Is this a game changer? Time will tell.

Yahoo and Android

Owen — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:13:54 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

If your phone runs Android and you use Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Messenger, you’ll be pleased to know that there are a brand new set of apps from Yahoo that will let you use these directly from your phone. Here’s a run down of the feature

With the new Yahoo! Mail App for Android, consumers can:

Receive push notification of new email messages

Send emails to contacts from the Yahoo! Address Book as well as to contacts in the native phone address book

Search email messages by sender, recipient, subject and keywords

Upload photos as attachments directly from the phone’s camera or the photo gallery

View and download attachments

Insert emoticons and rich text formatting into emails

Effectively manage and organize their Yahoo! Mail messages, folders, and spam

Easily toggle between the Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger apps

With the new Yahoo! Messenger App for Android, consumers can:

Easily message friends, check friends’ status updates and availability and update their personal status and availability

Send instant messages to friends via SMS text message¹

Multitask and stay connected with the app working in the background; with push notifications, consumers can easily catch new messages and friend requests

Get full use of emoticons and rich text formatting

Send photos to friends directly from the phone’s camera or the photo gallery

I don’t use Yahoo myself, but I know a number of people who will be over the moon with this announcement. Check out the apps!

Tabs for your Office

Owen — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:08:11 +0000

Did you know that you can get a Tab bar for Office, which lets you navigate through your open documents in the same way that you navigate through different web pages in Internet Explorer or Firefox? It’s a great way to be able to see what you have open at the same time. I think it’s pretty amazing that you can see what Office documents you have open regardless of which application they were optn in. I mean, you can be in a Word Document and see an Excel sheet in another Tab and a Powerpoint one in yet another Tab.

So, if you’re looking for a unique way to look at your documents, remember that Office Tab brings Tabbed user interface with Microsoft Office 2010

Playing with GFI Max Mail Protection

Owen — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:00:29 +0000

A couple of week ago, I signed up to give GFI Max Mail Protection a spin. It’s a hosted email security solution that sits between your mail server and the rest of the Internet, providing you with an extra layer of protection to stop spam, malware and other nasties you can find in your email.

So, you may ask, why did you actually try this out? Well, I have various products providing me with spam filtering and anti-virus and anti-spyware, but they’re always a pain to keep updated, especially the anti-spam which is hosted on my mail server. Here was an opportunity to let someone else take the pain away, to let a security vendor actually do that they do best, cleaning up my email stream from all the things I wasn’t interested in.

Setting up GFI Max Mail Protection was pretty easy though you do need a certain amount of tech-savvy to understand what you’re doing. The hosted solution actually sits in front of your mail server and you need to change your DNS record to direct your incoming mail to GFI’s servers. Your email stream is then cleaned and email then delivered to your normal mail servers for you to pick up. GFI Max Mail Protection has a whole range of different features that can accommodate infrastructures much more complex than mine, in fact, I only scratched the surface as far as features and functionality are concerned.

The spam handling functionality is pretty comprehensive, giving you the option, giving you options to drop, quarantine of deliver spam messages. White-list, black-list and even grey-listing functionality is fully supported and you even have full control of what happens to email to unknown email addresses. It even gives you the option to filter outgoing email in case your systems are compromised or your internal protection inadequate. That last one is a great option that can help mitigate against potentially embarrassing failures in your systems.

GFI Max Mail Protection is a great option for SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) who may not have the right level of staffing to manage dedicated solutions; but it also scales to accommodate larger organisations. If you’re looking for ways to protect your systems and users from threats that have the potential to damage your business, check out GFI Max Mail Protection.

Problems restoring a large MySQL database?

Owen — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:49:37 +0000

photo credit: onkel_wart

I had a bit of a problem today trying to get an 8Mb backup uploaded into MySQL. The problem was caused by the fact that phpMyAdmin was timing out when I tried to import the database. I tried breaking it down into smaller sections but a couple of the tables just had too many rows in them. Just as I was about to bang my head against the wall, I came across BigDump, a MySQL upload tool that staggers the uploads allowing you to upload dump files up to 50Mb in size.

One to add to the toolbox!

Do you have any MySQL tools you’d like to share?

Monitor your web connection

Owen — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:30:21 +0000

Ever wondered what your internet connection is being used for? You could be a parent with kids surfing the Net, or an employer who allows employees to use the web for personal use. How do you know that the connection isn’t being abused? How do you keep track of which websites have been visited and what services are being used? The answer is to deploy some sort of monitoring and access software. The reason I was thinking about this, is that I wanted to track what websites were being accessed by different family members and who was doing it. So I’m thinking of deploying the freeware version of GFI Web Monitor, an internet monitoring and access control package that can help me answer all those questions.

The package itself seems pretty comprehensive, with a huge database to help site categorisation, bandwidth reports and even includes the ability to monitor and block connections in real-time. It could serve as a good debug tool, even though I’m not doing that much .net development any more; it’s an idea way to proxy any web requests you may make to figure out if your application is in fact calling the right endpoint and forming its requests correctly.

The other use of GFI Web Monitor is to control access to particular sites. If you have an open Wifi connection, you could be held responsible for people using your connection to access illegal sites, whether these are download sites, pornographic or other dodgy websites. GFIMon allows you to restrict access to categories of websites and has an extensive database of over 200 million domains that helps it decide whether to allow access to a particular site or not.