http://skit.id.au

Free Antivirus – Avast! 5

For quite some time I have been recommending avast! Antivirus to Friends, Family and Colleagues to protect their personal computers. It’s simple, covers all bases and easy to maintain but most of all it’s free!

I was glad to find out recently that they’ve just released their latest major version of their free Antivirus product version 5. They’ve made it easier to use and it looks so much better.

Changes I’m glad to see:

• Simplfied layout in program window
  The previous layout was far to confusing, I had trouble every time I launched it…
• Easy access to Boot-time Scan under ‘Scan Computer’
  My must suggested fix for viruses on a computer, as it scans your disk for viruses before Windows starts making it possible to delete them.
• Gaming mode
  Supresses notifications when a full screen application is launched
• Easy to see protection status
  Nice big letters and colour right up the top so you know everything is running and up to date

If you’re not running antivirus or your currently paying for virus protection I’d strongly recommend avast! 5. Download it here: http://www.avast.com

Vodafone and 3/Hutchison Merger Followup

It was announced back in February of this year that Vodafone and 3 were to merge, in a hope to be more competitive in these troubled financial times. My comments on the proposal was initially bleak, but in light of some more recent news my thoughts on the proposal are coming around. The news in question is the article on Whirlpool “3 set to utilise Vodafone network”

The access to Vodafone’s 2G network is in addition to the announcement back in April that 3 will roam onto Telstra’s NextG network. ie. When your out of the 3’s CBD coverage, you’ll get the advantage of using Telstra’s wide country coverage. However should you use any data on Telstra’s network it will not be included in any caps. At present the additional usage charge is $1.60/mb, under the new Telstra NextG agreement the roaming data charge will be 50c/mb. This is still quite high, but I do like the fact that I can still get coverage in the country areas of Western Australia for Voice and SMS.

So where is the advantage of gaining access to Vodafone’s 2G (or Voice/SMS/Slow Data) network? The original Whirlpool article suggests that data usage on the Vodafone 2G network will be included in 3’s cap. However what will my phone do when it can’t find 3’s 3G network? Will it drop back to Vodafone 2G or Telstra NextG? Whirlpool Forum members are seeing the Vodafone network appear as “3″ in addition to “3 (3G)”. Perhaps the SIM will instruct the phone to choose anything with “3″ in the network name. This also bring’s 3’s coverage to a mix of their own 3G (Voice/SMS/Fast Data) in the CBDs, Telstra’s 2G/NextG and Vodafone’s 2G in the CBD / Country. I also wonder if this will have any affect on the Telstra NextG whilst roaming agreement ?

Enough of me brain dumping for the morning, time to get back to my email and coffee.

RB

Cleanup Windows WA Daylight Savings Mess

For those of you in the East Australian states, you’ve already switched to Daylight Savings for the 08-09 Summer. We over here in the West were due to switch to Daylight Savings on the 25th of October, but as we’re all pertrified of change it was rejected in a referendum in May earlier this year.

One small problem, your Windows based computer is still set to go forward an hour on the 25th. Microsoft were so confident that WA would vote DST in they configured Windows to switch not just for the 3 year trial but for every year.

Not to worry, Microsoft have kindly put together a website to help you undo Daylight Savings for your version of Windows. Head over to the Microsoft Daylight Savings page and follow the instructions. It’s also a good idea to print out your calendars for Home or Work before the 25th, just in case they get screwed up with preprogrammed Daylight Savings changes.

It’s a Left 4 Dead Weekend on Steam

Lots of news this morning relating to one of my most recent favourite games:

First up if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing Left 4 Dead (L4D) yet, today is your lucky day! Today is “Freaky Free Friday” and for the next 24hours you can download and play L4D via Steam. I highly recommend it, lots of fun! My Steam ID is skitau, feel free add me to your Friends list so we can join up for some Zombie killing action!

Secondly if you do decide to purchase L4D or have been waiting for a sale on L4D to snap it up, your in luck! This weekend L4D is on sale at 40% the normaly price bringing it down to US$23.99, awesome!

Last but not least, once you’ve dedicated your entire weekend to zombie smashing you’ll no doubt have high numbers of kills/pounces/snags/booms against your name. Valve have also released an extended stats page for L4D so you can see the numbers in all their glory! Check out my stats page here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/skitau/stats/L4D

“Stole the set of Steak Knifes” Skit

Making a USB Key Bootable

Spent a while today working out the best procedure to create a USB Key boot DOS, without a Floppy Drive. Below are the instructions and files that worked for me, haven’t gone into to much detail, but feel free to ask any questions in the comments section below.

!!Warning!! This procedure will delete all files from the USB key, make sure you backup all data!

1. 1. Download MSDOS Boot Files and the HP Flash Tool, Extract both to your computer
2. 2. Install the HP Flash tool using defaults, then run C:\DriveKey\HPUSBFW.EXE
3. 3. Ensure you have the right USB device selected, and check ‘Create a DOS startup disk’ also putting the location of the contents of msdos.zip in the field below.
4. 4. Click Start and then your done!
   

To test, make sure your Computer supports USB booting, plug in the USB key and reboot. You should end up with a DOS prompt. Enjoy!

My Essential Firefox Extensions Revisit

Back in 2007 I posted My Essential Firefox Extentions, I thought it was about time I revisted this essential list to see what’s changed in two years.

• Better Gmail 2 – Still using it 2 years on. A great collection of userscript modifications to Gmail.  Mainly used for attachment icons and making the labels collaspable like folders.
• Delicious Bookmarks – A new addition to the list, as I’ve started to use delicious a whole lot more . Have been collecting a whole lot of useful tech reference articles, basically a nice clean library of quick fixes.
• Australian English Dictionary – I didn’t have this extension installed until writing this post, how could I have forgotten! Stupid US English…
• Firebug – A great tool for the web developer, great for debugging. Admittedly I don’t do a great deal of web dev and usually have this extension disabled.
• DownThemAll! – Can’t be without this extension, found it back in 2007 and just can’t let go of it. Multi threaded downloads ftw!
• FireGestures – Replaced the extension MouseGestures from 2007. Adds Mouse Gestures to Firefox, allowing speedier control of the browser.
• Greasemonkey – The monkey is still sitting in my status bar. Not often I have a userscript loaded (thanks to extensions like Better Gmail above). Only recently installed the Twitter Fantastico user script and it remains my only one, for now.
• IE Tab – The last keeper from 2007. Basically allows quick launching of sites in IE, keeping it in Firefox as a new tab. Also keeps a list of sites to always display in an IE tab.
• Lazarus: Form Recovery – This extension is a god send. Keeps a backup copy of any form you fill in, allowing you easy right click recovery in case FF crashes or you close a tab by accident. A must have!
• Remember The Milk for Gmail - Started using RTM this year to keep track of personal projects having migrated from Outlook to Google Apps. This extension adds RTM as a sidebar to Gmail, very handy.
• UrlbarExt – Adds shortcuts in the address bar with functions like ‘Make TinyURL’, ‘Search Site’, ‘Go up one folder’, ‘Sequential Navigation’, ‘Surf Annoymously’. Rather handy

Which extensions didn’t make the cut from 2007?

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Perth Game Industry Survey

Nick Lowe, VP of Interzone Australia, has published a Perth Games Industry survey. The aim is to collect information from those in the Perth Industry or those people interested into getting into the industry.

Survey can be found here: http://survey.letsmakegames.org/

The information gathered by this survey will be used to produce a Perth games industry profile document, which will summarise general characteristics and capabilities of the local industry. We want to facilitate organic and sustainable growth to help ensure a long-term future for game developers in Perth, and a clear objective assessment of the local industry is an important part of making this happen.

We want to hear from you if: you are in the industry, want to get into the industry, or even if you have left the industry. We will greatly appreciate if you could take the time to complete this survey.

Initial results will be presented at the IGDA Perth meeting tonight(!) and put a more detailed report available in a few weeks.

Australian Broadband Survey 2008 Results

The results of the Australian Broadband Survey are in!

From Whirlpool.net.au: “The survey was conducted over a four week period — from 31 December 2008 to 1 February 2009, during which the survey was successfully completed and verified a total of 19,763 times.The results should be a wakeup call to the federal government and its plan for mandatory internet filtering. According to the survey, only 2% of Labor voters supported the filtering at the time of voting, with the majority not even realising it was an election policy. Almost 90% of respondents also said they would opt-out of any optional filter component, bringing into question the demand for such a system.”

The complete report of the results can be found here.

Palm Pre

I didn’t really belive it, but Palm have risen from the clutches of death to release a new Phone but more importantly a new Phone Operating System. I used to be a bit of a Palm fan some years ago, but recently they’ve just been making hardware and installing Windows Mobile on the devices, ugh.

Take a look at the Demo from this year’s CES on YouTube. Full Length coverage broken down into 7 parts.

Features I like:

• Calendar intergration – Displays events from your Google calendar, not sync’d.
• Contacts – Intergrates information from other chat protocols and Facebook. Allows quick switching from SMS to Google Chat for messaging and shows online status.
• Notifications – They nudge, they don’t take focus. Thank gawd for that!
• Cards – All applications are now cards, this allows smooth switching and logical gestures when dealing with each ‘Card’.

Links:

• http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/
• http://precommunity.com
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre

Edit: Looks like Sprint was rather generous to the Stars at the Oscars. Eliza Dushku (amoung others) now has a Palm Pre.

Love the design and intergration. I could go on about it, but here’s some screenshots below instead. :)

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Vodafone and 3/Hutchison Announce Merger

I’ve been a 3 Customer for a number of years now and been very happy. Dark news this morning for the 3 brand and possibly their value for money service. Vodafone and 3 are set to merge this year, which would see the 3 brand dropped and the Vodafone brand take it’s place in the new VHA company.

Time will tell what this means for 3 customers and the value for money. Hopefully it will prove to be a stronger company to continue to compete with the top two mobile providers, Telstra and Optus. On a plus, it now means ‘3′ will have the iPhone. :D

Links:

• Vodafone and 3/Hutchison Annouce Merger – whirlpool.net.au
• Merger Document – vodafone.com.au
• Vodafone, Hutchison to merge to rival majors – perthnow.com.au
• Vodafone merger to result in job losses – news.com.au