But I’ve decided to cancel it and give Skype a try instead, mainly because of VoipStunt’s relatively average voice quality and the time it takes to make the conversation smooth (sometimes it took a 30-second lag before being able to get a decent conversation if the line was bad).

Like any other VoIP clients, Skype is free for PC-to-PC calls, and calling to Mobile/Landlines would require you to pay for a fee (a.k.a. Skypeout credit). The main difference is, however, Skype is utilizing P2P technology rather than the traditional client/server architecture.

Without wasting time, I purchased EUR10 SkypeOut credit, the payment process was done via Paypal and it was straightforward (although it mentioned there it might take 30 minutes to process the payment, my SkypeOut credit got updated in no time).

I’ve then made my first ever SkypeOut call in my life (to Malaysia landlines @ EUR 0.02/min). It took around 10-15 seconds for the call to be established, and once connected, the conversation was very smooth, its crystal clear voice quality was definitely better than VoipStunt’s one.

However, one thing that I’m still puzzled is that the SkypeOut credit seems to be getting deducted quite slow (it probably takes around 5 minutes). I’d definitely expect it to be real time instead.

Overall, SkypeOut is a very good service provided by Skype. Despite being more expensive than other alternatives, I think it’s definitely worth is since Skype’s voice quality is undeniably perfect.

Therefore, I’m here to write some common security tips to increase the safety of your online transactions and reduce the risk of your online account being hacked:

• Avoid phishing - Always trust only yourself. It’s not too hard to type the address of online banking site on the address bar. Please DO NOT access online banking site via the link in your email or some untrusted sources. Phishing is meant to be avoided at all cost.
• Equipt with security tools – Install at least an Antivirus, Anti-spyware and Firewall into your machine to protect your PC from the invasion of malware/virus/attack.
• Update regularly - Keep your antivirus and anti-spyware updated with the latest definitions, and do not ignore Windows Security update. You would think you’re probably not affected by the update, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
• Password tips - While it’s OKAY to use your birthdate or your favourite artist name as your password in some discussion forums, a strong password is definitely needed if the site/application is critical:
• DO NOT use the same password in ALL your online accounts. If you do and one of your accounts got hacked, hacker will be able to access all your other accounts.
• Try to avoid using dictionary words like “prettygirl”, “imagination” etc or any other stuff that’s easy to guess (like your birth date, your car plate number)
• Password is case sensitive, choosing passwords that are composed by different case will add more strength to the security (for example, LeEtLe_KiD).
• DO NOT disclose your password to anyone, even if the person claimed he/she is working for the bank or is the site admin.
• If you’ve too many passwords to remember, use a reliable password safe like KeePass.
• Common Sense - practice your common sense. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what goes wrong with the site, but once you think something is wrong, quit it and seek for experts consultation. Other than that, please do often read some online articles concerning electronic security to improve your awareness regarding this matter.

Feel free to comment on my list (constructive criticisms are welcome) or add in something here as I’ve missed some important stuff. Thanks for reading!

Original article here.

IMO, Firefox is on the right track. I’d anytime prefer a web browser that is originally simple but can be shaped/tweaked/configured to the way I like. In contrast, I don’t need a bloated browser that has tons of functions but end up utilizing maybe only 30% of them.

However, not all extensions are perfectly developed. Some of them come with spyware/malware, some of them aren’t actually practical to use, while some of them are just too bloated for minimalists. Thus, I’m here to share all my favorite extensions that are proven to be trustworthy and I personally find them useful:

• Adblock Plus
• Are you one of the web surfers who’s annoyed with web banners and irritating flash animation? Adblock Plus is very efficient extension that allows you to block unwanted content to make your web surfing experience better. Comes with Filterset.G, it has actually blocked 95% of the ads without having you to do anything. For the rest of the 5%, just block it manually! (for example, Right Click and click “Adblock Image” in the menu)
• All-in-one gestures
• It allows you to send specific commands to the browser by combining mouse movements (for example, holding the right mouse button, pushing it up, and release the button will open a new tab for you). It’s one of my favorite extension in Firefox, and its convenience cannot be just described in words! I can even add new gesture whenever it’s needed!
• BBCodeXtra
• As a LYN regular, I use BBCode very often to add formatting to my posts. With this extension, it can be done easily without having to type all the tedious [b][/b], [img=XXX][/img] or [url=xxx][/url] tags.
• DownloadThemAll
• You can call it an extension, but I’d call it a fully functional download manager that’s integrated into my Firefox. With DownloadThemAll, I don’t have to install external download manager and install Flashgot to get them integrated together. Other than that, I’m also very impressed with its download speed.
• Fasterfox
• A zero-configuration extension that significantly increases the speed of your net surfing, also comes with a pop-up blocker. However, choosing “Turbo Charged” preset is not recommended as it exceeds the RFC spec and increases the server load.
  
• ImageShack Toolbar
• Imageshack is one of the most popular yet reliable free image hosting sites. If you upload images to the web frequently, this is a useful extension as you can just do it with two clicks instead of going to the homepage. However, because it’s a toolbar by itself – it does actually occupy some space of the browser.
• Tab Mix Plus
• An excellent extension that greatly enhances Firefox Tab-browsing capabilities. For example, you can force all the links to be opened in existing tab instead of a new tab, you can choose whether or not to have ‘X’ button in every tab, just to name a few. On top of that, it also comes with a built-in session manager.
• Video Downloader
• I’m a frequent visitor of YouTube and Google Video. With the pathetic speed of my “broadband”, it’s almost impossible to view the videos smoothly, moreover, some of the good videos are meant to be collected :) Video Downloader is a simple add-on that adds a small icon on the status bar, allowing you to click on it and get the direct download link of the video.

Of course, the above are just the extensions I’m using. I’m sure they are more FF extensions that you might like. Just visit the add-on homepage to discover it by yourself!

[ Original thread in LYN ]

Prerequisites:

• You need to enable hidden files/folders viewing and disable hidden extensions for known file type.
• If you haven’t done so, simply go to My Computer->Tools->Folder Options
• Enable the Show hidden files and folders option and uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types option.
• Screenshot of the above:
  

Steps:

1. Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\[your-username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger\[your-msn-email-add]\ObjectStore for Windows XP or C:\Users\[your-username]\App Data\Local\Microsoft\Messenger\[your-msn-email-add]\ObjectStore for Windows Vista.
2. Copy the CustomEmoticons folder and paste it in C:\. Screenshot:
   
3. Click on Start->Run, and type “cmd”. Screenshot:
   
4. Type cd c:\customEmoticons. Rename all the *.dt2 file to *.gif using the ren command as the screenshot below:
   
   
5. Now go to c:\CustomEmoticons folder in My Computer/Windows Explorer, use View->Thumbnails mode, and you’re done!
   

Do note that you can repeat those steps for custom backgrounds you have (located under Backgrounds folder instead of CustomEmoticons).

Since it has been a long time since I last used it, I exported my feeds from Bloglines to OPML format and subsequently imported it into Google Reader. No drama here as this process was flawless. There was a delay of a few minutes before all the imported feeds showed up with the recent items in the subscriptions list on the left.

Once everything was in place, the updated Google Reader proved to be pretty impressive. Compared to its predecessor, the interface is now a lot more usable (finally has a decent scrollbar and tree view) and in short, seemed like a AJAX-ified Bloglines. The ’scroll tracking’ feature is rather intuitive as it would mark items as read when you scroll past them which is rather handy if you want to switch to other subscriptions (feeds) or tags (folders) and get back to it later (most other RSS readers would mark all items in a subscription as read the moment you open it). However, this feature doesn’t seem to work properly with subscriptions which only have 1 item which didn’t require any scrolling to read it (manually marking the item as read was required instead).

Besides that minor issue, I don’t have any other negatives to bring up. I would definitely take back the negative comments I made about it. ;) The latest update makes it very compelling to switch and its similarity to Gmail would make it a perfect candidate for those who already use Gmail and want to get started with using an RSS reader.

So while I was getting awed by the updated Google Reader, I noticed subtle user interface changes to the left pane of Bloglines. It was announced by the Bloglines team soon after I noticed it, and in my opinion, were excellent minor tweaks.

AJAX is now used in the left pane which makes it a lot snappier as the whole frame is longer refreshed. Very impressive for such a minor change as it definitely delivers a huge difference in responsiveness. Besides that, they have also reduced the time it automatically refreshes the feeds.

Since my last post on Bloglines, I’m happy to report it has not gone down at all and has been reliably delivering all the updates of my feeds. Kudos to the Bloglines team for the great work they’ve done!

Notable updates include the integration of functionality similar to the SessionSaver extension into Firefox’s history function, close buttons being added to each tab, anti-phishing filter, a redesign of the preferences dialog and minor user interface tweaks.

At time of writing, Firefox 2.0 is currently at RC1 (Release Candidate 1) which denotes a final product which is ready for release unless some serious bugs surface. Do note that installing Firefox 2.0 RC1 will overwrite your current Firefox installation and may disable some of your extensions which are incompatible (I’m using Nightly Tester Tools extension to get around this). However, if you would just like to try 2.0 out without having it replace your current Firefox installation, you can get Firefox Portable 2.0 RC1 which will run in standalone mode.

Firefox 2.0 is scheduled to be released some time in October, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long before your Firefox browser gets upgraded!

Screenshot:

Figure 1: Connecting to Tor Networks

Well then you if you fall into the aforementioned category then Torpark is the browser for you. Based on a mod version of Firefox, Torpark was created by a Group calling itself Hacktivismo (the reincarnation of the renowned Texas-ased hacker organization called Cult Of the Dead Cow)and is touted to protect your privacy from governments intelligence service and data theives. Torpark uses its own network (Tor network) of net routers and encryption to anonymise the traffic and also regularly changes the net address that someone appears to be browsing from. It’s also stand alone installess but weighs in at 9.3Mb.

Figure 2: Security menu from the right click mouse button.

Figure 3: Torpark in action

download from here.

Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.

Live Writer is built on the .net platform and while geared for their Web2.0 Live hype and targeting users of MySpaces (now Live Spaces), Live Writer surprisingly supports blog CMSs like WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, etc. In fact, the WordPress admin panel’s ability to save drafts online and preview how it looks on your blog’s visual theme style is mimic perfectly in the MS Word-like environment of Live Writer.

The download (the file weights a mere 4.8mb) and installation was a breeze. Initial setup was done via a wizard upon first launch. You get a LiveSpace or Others option – give it your site URL, username & password and Live Writer contacts the site and performs all the necessary authentication and sync. It then presents you with a MS Words 2003-type blank page and lets you type away. Anyone who has ever worked on a text editor will immediately have an intuitive feel of where to look for the various controls. Great start!

Features

Figure: New Post

As to it’s WYSIWYG (we all know how notorious WYSIWY[normally don't]G editors are like) capabilities, it’s surprisingly accurate, as Live Writer seems to knows the styles of my blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background, spacing, margins and block quotes is as true to life as editing in the Wordpress admin panel. It seems that Live Writer downloads your blog’s CSS and recreated a virtual version of your site so you can blog within it. It read the customized styles of my Wordpress blog right and with the option of Web Layout  (shows you how your post will look like within the borders of the blog sidebars) and Web Preview (shows you how your post will look in relation to your blog theme, headers and even other previous posts). You can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it. It also has a Normal and HTML Code view.

Figure: Web layout view.

Figure: Web preview view

Live Writer handles photo’s fairly well and sends local images you paste into your post to the server to be published at the same time you hit that button. It also lets you do some simple image editing and effects. such as adding watermarks, drop shadow, adjusting contrast and brightness, sharpening & blurring, emboss and resizing. 

Figure:Image manipulation

The Properties and Trackbacks bar at the bottom lets you adjust the time stamp and comments, URL links, trackbacks and add keywords to the post. I could also select which categories to organize the post according to which categories my blog had. A unique features of Live Writer is it allows you to inserting maps from Windows Live Local. 

Naturally as an offline blog editor, your post are saved on the local machine, but you can click the drop-down for Publish and there’s an option to send  the draft to your blog in case you’d want to continue blogging from another computer. Checking the Tools | Preferences, I found more features like automatically save drafts at interval of choice, automatically check spelling before publishing, etc. A curiosity though, is the Plugins options, which empty and hints of more functionality via plugins in the works.

Fast Blog Switching

Another good thing i’d like to highlight is the ability to seamlessly switch between blogs. This are for those bloggers who maintain more than one blog or who are affiliate co-authors at another blog. The top right hand corner where your blog’s name is displayed is actually a drop down box and enables you to quickly switch between blogs without loss of features. (It’ll even setup the virtual version of your 2nd blog).

Beta Bugs

Before anyone accuses me of being a MS fanboy due to all the praise I’ve been singing of Live Writer, it’s time to examine it’s bugs and quirks. Yes, it’s still in beta so these are expected. It’s crashed on me once before complaining about illegal operation and termination means lost posts (up till point of save that is) and wanting to send an error report to MS. There minor error nag screen when handling images (the error screen is dismissible with a Continue option though and it doesn’t seem to affect anything). There’s no way to delete published posts. The <!- -more- -> tag doesn’t work as anything after it can’t be displayed. The interface is not tabbed (expected, as MS isn’t big on tabbed apps) so if you hit a New Post another instance of Live Writer will be launched. Good as the built-in image manipulation is, the images sometimes come up blurry.

Direction & Conclusion

This is one of those rare moments where MS might have actually got things right. Windows Live Writer is a small program with big features and capabilities that one would expect to be bundled with Windows Vista as one of it’s accessories on the Live get connected theme or MS Office 2007.  Right now, while it’s free, I’ll definitely continue to use and enjoy it.

Download here.

Ghostzilla also ‘cloaks’ anytime you move your cursor outside its browsing window and won’t reappear till you move your mouse from the far left of your screen to the far right and then back again in a zig zag motion.

Ethically speaking, it ain’t right to be web surfing during work and we at spherebox don’t condone it. If you however, like me, you have a job where you’re only assigned 3-4 hours of work a day (at best), I do highly recommend it rather than stare hopelessly at your cubicle PostIt as you’re too nervous that someone might catch a glimpse of you looking up what’s hot on spherebox :P.

Screenshot (click to enlarge image) of how it looks like embedded in my MS Outlook. Here the page looks like the content one would expect in an email making me look like I’m actually working (Replying/Reading e-mail).

Interested? Download here.

By checking out the features as well as screenshots from the respective RSS readers’ websites, I filtered down the readers (aggregators) which I would be testing more thoroughly to:

• Feedreader (desktop)
• Greatnews (desktop)
• Newsgator (web)
• Pluck (desktop + web)
• SharpReader (desktop)

Email applications which have RSS feed management:

• Mozilla Thunderbird (desktop)
• Outlook 2007 Beta 2 (desktop)

Notable absentees from that list would be Google Reader, Firefox’s live bookmarks. As stated in my previous post, I have tried Google Reader and I loath the AJAX interface for it as it just doesn’t work as efficiently as Bloglines’s two pane interface. Neither do I like Firefox’s current live bookmarks setup.

To ensure all the RSS readers are tested in the same manner I would usually use Bloglines, I exported the whole list of feeds from it (which came up to about 93..). You can do this by clicking on the ‘Edit’ link just under the ‘My Blog’ tab when you’re viewing the ‘My Feeds’ tab on the left pane, and then click ‘Export Subscriptions’ link which is right at the bottom of that pane (under the header ‘Extras’).

Outlook 2007 Beta 2

My software engineering project teammate was sort of raving about it and I was playing around with its calendars and reminders which lead to it being the first to be tested. Importing the exported feeds from Bloglines was relatively straightforward. But the moment that was done, the quirks begun to surface. Firstly, I didn’t quite like how the feeds were treated as separate email messages. It probably might be possible to get around this, but this leads to my third point which is there are way too many options which one has to go through just to get things to display accordingly. Secondly, it was awfully slow in synchronising with all the feeds after the initial run.

No doubt Outlook is an excellent email application as I’ve used it before during my internship but I don’t think it’s suited for those looking for an easy to use and configure RSS reader. It might appeal to those who already use Outlook for email/calendaring heavily, but not for the masses who rely on web based email.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird does the same thing as Outlook with message viewing but is a bit faster in synchronising with all the feeds. Another odd thing Outlook and Thunderbird show during the import is the loss of categories which I had in Bloglines.

.

Feedreader

Next is probably the most short lived test, which was Feedreader. After installation, it had 3 folders with 4-6 feeds in each. I couldn’t remove the folders straightaway as it pops up an error message saying that there are feeds in it. I eventually managed to remove all the default subscriptions by deleting off subscriptions.xml and headlines.xml from its application data directory, but the folders still required manually deleting. This default behaviour was deemed impractical to me, so I just moved on. :D

SharpReader

SharpReader synchronises with all the feeds pretty quickly. However, it uses the same interface like the others of separating each feed’s entries into separate messages.

.

Pluck

Pluck Firefox edition was tested next. It basically is a Firefox extension which uses a sidebar and also the status bar to notify of new updates. So it’s sort of a hybrid RSS reader being half desktop and web based. Overall, it seems pretty decent, displays feed entries sequentially without having to click through one by one. Unfortunately during testing, there were noticeable slowdowns at times when loading certain feeds, and certain feeds had entries which overflowed and overlapped the next one (might not be Pluck’s fault). Besides that, being a Firefox extension, this probably increases the memory usage of Firefox even further, which probably is something I would want to avoid.

I tried out the web edition of Pluck as well which is supposed to work like Bloglines. It is very very slow and had very bad usability which might explain why this edition is so well hidden on Pluck’s website (I had to use Google to search for it XD).

Best Two RSS readers

Now for the last two RSS readers which I believe are the closest in being able to replace Bloglines: Greatnews and Newsgator.

Greatnews

Greatnews was recommended to me by Khim Hoe as he uses it on a daily basis. First thing that surprised me was the blistering speed it had when doing an update on all the feeds especially when compared to the other desktop based RSS readers. Next plus about it was it did not render the feeds as separated email messages by default. And lastly, it uses CSS to determine how your feeds are displayed which can be tweaked to your hearts content. It even has a function to synchronize and retrieve feeds from Bloglines, but this would be pointless if Bloglines were to go down.

The only issue I had with it was the integration with IE as the rendering engine as I’m not able to use the extensions I have in Firefox which I am accustomed to as clicking on the feed titles or external links would open up as a separate tab in Greatnews itself. I tried changing the setting to open up links in Firefox instead, but having to go back and forth between the 2 applications got quite annoying over time (as opposed to Bloglines which would be just a switch between tabs). Its greatness was somewhat marred as I discovered a bug with feeds which use FeedBurner within an hour of using it (which is fixed in the latest nightly build).

Newsgator

Newsgator on the other hand is very similar to Bloglines as it is a web based RSS reader as well. Basic functionality was at par with Bloglines, but I yet again I found some weaknesses. As opposed to Bloglines which have a two pane setup using frames, Newsgator has both the feeds and content on the same page, so every click on another feed would require the whole page to reload again which makes it sluggish. It didn’t help either that the page loading times were a little slow as well.

Summary & Conclusion

After going through all the alternative RSS readers I have tested, I have a few points to make. Desktop based RSS readers seem to be lagging behind web based ones in terms of the features as well as usability. Next, it needs to synchronise with each and every feed’s server which you subscribe to on an interval which you set which may take a while and use up bandwidth that could’ve been saved by using a web based service. Lastly, a web based service allows you to access all your feeds anywhere which I have pointed out in my previous post.

Now to conclude on the reader which I would readily switch to. My answer is, none of those tested. XD In my opinion, Bloglines has the best interface, featureset, speed and the ability to handle a lot of feeds. Newsgator comes close, but unfortunately not close enough to compel a switch. Greatnews is probably the most promising desktop based RSS reader I’ve tried, although there still might be bugs in it which need to be ironed out.

To create some form of redundancy in case Bloglines goes down, you could create a Newsgator account and import all your feeds from Bloglines which I have resolved to doing (they’ve posted an entry here with regards to the last interruption). :D Maybe things would’ve been better if it was Google who acquired Bloglines instead of Ask Jeeves? :P