Just today I was trying to get my grades from my college’s website but they didn’t make a PDF version available. By installing doPDF you get a very simple way to create PDF files, this application adds itself as a printer in your system. So when you try to print a page, instead of selecting your printer you can select doPDF, it will then ask you where to save the file. And voilà! You’ve got a nice PDF file that matches what the printed out version would of looked like. While you’re at it, ditch the bloated Adobe Reader for Foxit Reader (light weight alternative to view PDF files). With Vista and Office 2007, Microsoft attempts to push their own version of PDF called XPS… total waste of everyones time. They’re coming late to the game attempting to implement a new standard.

]]> http://www.me2bz4u.com/~jkenscoff/blog2/2008/10/save-paper-with-dopdf/feed/ 0 http://www.me2bz4u.com/~jkenscoff/blog2/2008/10/joost-reloaded/ http://www.me2bz4u.com/~jkenscoff/blog2/2008/10/joost-reloaded/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:39:54 +0000 PhoenixP3K http://me2bz4u.com/~jkenscoff/blog2/?p=612 So the word had been out that Joost wasn’t doing so well in it’s original form. Lets say the application did not catch fire and take the web by storm. So instead of having a desktop application that would use P2P to deliver streaming content, you now have a web based player. Similar to YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo and countless others all you’ll need to view the new Joost is your web browser and the Adobe Flash Player installed.

This new solution makes it more accessible then before, but also might drop one of Joost’s initial selling point. They had a secure platform (sort of DRM) that would ensure content holders that their shows would not get copied/pirated without having a way to monetize them.

Now I think this is the real problem Joost always had. The lack of content that would motivate me to go to their service. The image quality seems to be pretty good and on the same level as other services (except YouTube). But if you can get a video you want to see quickly else where nothing would motivate you to seek it elsewhere. Besides all the potential content was blocked to most regions (similar to Hulu) and those services are dead to me, because they defeat the purpose of the Internet by making their content local and limited to a geographical area. I do understand what license agreements are, but content creators who want to venture on the web should know that their audience is Global.

Back to Joost, you’re invited to create a free account (blazing fast) upon visiting www.joost.com.

Dear Opera Software, for years I’ve used your wonderful browser and you keep making it better all the time. I’ve grown dependant on your flag ship features and wonder why the rest of the world is still ignorant of your beauty.

I missed the window of opportunity to post about the new version of the Opera Web Browser. I waited so long they came out with an even better version with a few bug fixes. By now I hope you know that there are more ways to access the Internet than the little blue E on your desktop. People might of talked you in using Firefox, or even Google’s Chrome. As for myself I press you to try out Opera.

As far as features go they’ve kept improving on the existing ones. They added better IMAP and RSS support, extended features of their Opera Link service that synchronizes Bookmarks, Notes, Browsing history and Speed Dial across different Opera Browsers (laptop, office, mobile device). It might be considered a small incremental update from 9.5 but steadily improving a great product is a good thing in my book.

Work Isn’t Their Whole World: Sure, they’re going to go to work, but it had better be fun. For Gen Y, work isn’t their identity. It’s just a place. Gen Y sees no reason why a company can’t be more accommodating, offering benefits like the ability to work from anywhere, flex-time, a culture that supports team communication, and a “fun” work environment. They’re also not going to blindly follow orders just because you’re the boss. Sometimes dubbed “Generation Why?” they need to “buy in” as to why something is being done. [...]

I feel strongly about this argument. However I feel that there will be a lot more challenges coming our way as our generation is growing out to be very different. Are we the next wave of the 70s peace and love? The best way to sum up the article is that Gen Y grew up with the Internet and the rise of technology. This reminds me a text a quoted two months ago : I’m young, I grew up with Internet and I’m the center of the Universe. [Read Belly Button]

For this review I’ve installed Opera 9.5 Beta 2 and Firefox 3 Beta 5 and aimed at comparing them. Lets get whatever is common out of the way. Tabbed browsing, pop-up blocker, anti-phising, RSS feed, skins, integrated search, anti-phising. All this is well and pretty much all the browsers woke up and followed the trends that became quite successful.

To some respect Firefox has been getting an incredible growth since it’s release and it’s third version is a definite step up from previous versions. Opera on the other hand has been around for over a decade and has been fine tuning it’s browser and pushed innovative features. When it comes to a default install, Opera comes with an incredible amount of built-in features like mouse gesture, IRC, email, bittorrent, speed dial, widgets and Opera Link.

Opera Link is probably the most important feature that adds to functionality to the browser. With this service you can sync your bookmarks, notes, to different locations you are using Opera, whether it’s on your laptop or cellphone, Opera Link will sync your information so you always have access to it. They also have a web page accessible from any browser that can display the bookmarks and speed dial (like quick bookmarks).

Concerning Firefox, being open source and it’s ability to enable extensions enables it to mimic most the features Opera has by default. But having a large community pushing for new extensions allows it to be customizable to your heats content. Sky seems to be the limit.

In the end, if you start with a barebone installation Firefox will be very functional but will lack utilities I’ve grown accustom with Opera, however it only takes a few minutes to hunt down the proper extensions and have it come to the same level as Opera. For new users it’s very useful to have simple features and access to let you learn how the application works, and over time you can find out how to enable additional features.

As web designers continue to adopt web standards Opera and Firefox will rarely encounter a web site that they don’t display properly. The worse case is when a web designer purposefully blocks access to certain features to an Opera user. In such a case it’s possible to change the way Opera identifies itself and mask it as either Firefox or Internet Explorer.

So is there a winner out of this versus? Sorry to not fuel the might of any fanboy but both browsers have their own personality and they do feel a bit different. The best is to try them out in the links provided above and get a feel for them. The same way there is a million email applications or instant messaging software, browsers are not any different. As time goes on you will notice less differences between browsers. But it’s important to crush this idea that Internet Explorer = the Internet, people need to be aware they have the choice to drive something else.

I’ll leave you with a funny picture that found it’s way on Digg and many other websites. Feel free to leave comments below and point out any serious omissions on my part.

I’m young, I grew up with Internet and I’m the center of the Universe. In my computer, there’s my documents, my pictures, my music, my videos. Only my own stuff. And all around me, there are my relatives, some close. Further, there are my irregular contacts, my school, sports and vacation buddies, friends from my youth, my encounters on MSN, MySpace or Skype. And all these people have relatives, people I may wish to get to know.

- Tsss

- To get there, I invite them on my own private web page, a kind of blog real easy that I cooked up with iWeb, MySpace or Live Space. I told them: Here’s my pictures, my music, my info sources. Here is my dog, my cat and my little sister. And here are my buddies; it’s with them that I get to practice my guitar and take my pictures. In exchange, my new buddys invite me on their personal web page and we bond. Virtually of course.

- What ?

- I’m young, I grew up with Internet and I’m the center of the Universe. Whenever I’m in the train!

- And you don’t hold the door for the ladies, and don’t care to give them your seat!

- Driving or on foot between two stores, to buy a gum, my soft drink, a chocolate bar, I have my iPod, my GameBoy, and my cellphone. This way, I’m never bored. I listen to my music, play my games, and talk to my friends. Sometimes, my parents are shocked: they pretend having a hard time talking to me. They say I’m cut from reality. What reality, theirs? The one of politicians, their stars, their TV, their music, of their cheesy food, where they drink too much wine, their shopping at Wal-Mart and Home Depot? What can they tell me that I don’t already know? Their values were valid in the 80s or 90s. Gotta live with our times. With my time.

- Shut up, you dummy!

- I’m young, I grew up with the Internet and I’m the center of the Universe. The parents, these moralizers, these good-thinker, these teachers, I turn up the volume of my iPod and can’t hear them.

- I said shut up, you dummy! Can’t you realize that the Universe can’t have a center? You’re not young! You’re just a pitiful product. The one from a civilization hyper individualized, where people avoid each others, “cyber-flirt”, “cellularize” their pussies and “chat” their balls. You believe you came in this world all knowledgeable. You”ve got the arrogance of believing yourself the equal of those who took a life time to realize that they knew nothing. Of those who gave everything to the others, yesterday like today.

- I’m young, I’m…

- Shhh! In silence you might start listening to something else then your own heartbeat…

I wish I was the one who came up with this little dialog but I am not. I read it two years ago in a QuébecMicro article. I had started making a translation but never got around to finish it. I think now is a good time as any to bring it up and finally publish it. It’s incomplete but since I’ve misplaced the magazine and can’t really put the rest online. At least you might be able to bring up some reflexion from this read.

I’ve noticed the first effects around mid-December and it seemed to affect mostly BitTorrent traffic. Basicly, as soon as it turns 6PM, the upload and download speeds of BitTorrent is capped at 30kb/s up and 30kb/s down, making the downloading of large files unpractical. However, the purpose of such measure does not really prevent the bandwidth to being used, because it’s still available, at the same time as they apply bandwidth caps in their peak hours, I’m still able to download shows from revision3 at around 500+kb/s.

I could imagine that their network was not created with the intent of distributed information sharing, and it’s easier for them to have a big downstream then to have multiple connections sharing bandwidth. They claim they do this to make sure everyone has their equal share of the network, and I intend to have it. Overall the only issue I have with this practice is that it discriminates a specific type of traffic. Why should my use of BitTorrent be slowed down when my neighbor is using just as much bandwidth on YouTube?

One could say that if you’re not happy with your ISP you just have to pick an other one. That was a good option until it was recently revealed that Bell Canada applies it’s throttling to the third party ISP it provides bandwidth for. All those local DSL providers are brought in the fold against their will. Internet is all about access to information, and if you put a certain type of data ahead of an other the equal chances that were given by the Internet dissapear.

Lets say you make a short film and you want everyone to see it. You don’t have the money to pay for an expansive web hosting plan that would allow millions of people to see it. One solution would be to use BitTorrent to help distribute the content you have. I am sicken by the behavior Sympatico has taken in the matter and after a chat with a customer service representative I know that this decision has been made by higher management as a way to reduce their cost and build of their profits.

That turkey is you… that man is your ISP. It’s meat is your money!

• 802.11g
  This isn’t really much, but I had to go to my router settings to enable a mix broadcast mode so my PSP could connect to my wireless network. At the time the PSP was originally launched, 802.11b was pretty wide spread and the next version was being rolled out. I can’t believe it would of been too large of an extra cost to update that part of the hardware. And no, I’m not talking about the fancy 802.11n that is supposed to be super fast and reliable, I’m talking about plain old 802.11g that is already a few years old. I presume the cost benefit wasn’t there for that feature.
• Bluetooth
  Wireless headset anyone? With the news of the added Skype functionality to the PSP. It would allow to connect to many devices that do not make use of wireless Internet technology. You could beam pictures to many cellphones and exchange music on the fly. They would of even been able to use the PSP as a gamepad for the PlayStation 3.
• Internal memory
  Some packages of the new PSP came with a Memory Stick Duo, but with the falling price of flash memory they could of integrated something like a Gigabyte of memory inside the device, this way people who want to purchase additional memory can do so. I’ve always seen Memory Stick more like a CD, meaning the device has it’s own permanen memory.

Nevertheless, I was not ready to move back to Windows XP and decided to install the latest version of Ubuntu on my laptop. I have been testing the various versions of Ubuntu since version 4.10 and I thank the Lord that they have made so many progress in the past few years. Everything works smoothly, all my hardware was detected and even my on-board wireless card was flagged as using proprietary drivers (still worked fine). The Ubuntu install CD lets you run a live version of the OS directly from the CD and gives you the option to install the OS on the hard drive.

I love the nice graphical effects you can add using Compiz, by now you must of seen a video of this on YouTube, with a spinning cube, rain or windows spinning around. Most of these are distractors from the main purpose that is stability and ease of use.

None of this is new really, I know how OpenOffice works but in order to be productive I’ll have to forget about those nice improvements Microsoft Office 2007 provided. It will be a bumpy ride, but I am to think that for a laptop on which I will not do any serious gaming there is no reason why Linux cannot take it’s rightful place as an alternate OS.

The idea of have Microsoft withdraw an operating system that comes on a wide number of new PCs is utterly stupid! I’ve been using Vista for months now and I can’t complain about it, of course there are minor performance issue (that is if you’re running XP hardware). The price for upgrade is steep, especially for the Ultimate version. But that is no reason to stop innovation, the old formula of if it works why change it can’t always work. Do you really want XP to still be there in 2010? When you are pushing the technology forward you spur up innovation, programmers have to work with new structures and all. More then ever there are nice alternatives (Linux and Mac OS) and now is the perfect time for Windows to show they too can do something different and try to make the best of it.

Previous posts:

• Windows Vista RC2
• Windows Vista

Years have gone by and I still use this scanner and since it’s fully functional there is no need to purchase a new one, or those fancy printers that are multi-purpose. When I first started to test Windows Vista (before it’s release), the drivers worked with any trouble until a certain build and then my scanner became inoperable on Windows Vista because the drivers were not recognised. HP official word is that that equipment is too old anyway and they won’t bother to make new drivers for it. So for sometime I plugged my scanner into my Windows XP laptop instead but I know eventually all my systems will run Vista.

Today I found a post on an Dutch forum a way to trick Vista in accepting the old drivers. Don’t connect the scanner yet. First you need to find the HP PrecisionScan LTX software and drivers available via HP’s website. You need to extract the files out the executable and run the setup.exe as a Windows XP Service Pack 2 compatible program (right click the file, then proprieties, compatibility tab). Once you’re done installing the program you’ll need to browse to the folder were it was installed (inside the Program Files folder), there should be nine executables in there. Change all of their compatibility mode to Windows 2000. Once it’s done plug the scanner via USB and Windows Vista will recognise the hardware and use the drivers already installed.

On my first attempt the HP PrecisionScan LTX crashed and could not initiate a scan, it was partially expected from what I could decipher on the forum post.

[UPDATE]: It seems I was too quick to rule out HP’s software. I’ve tryed it again and it works like a charm. The following options are viable alternate scanning software but I’d better stick with the original now that it is working

The final step is to find a scanning software that is compatible with Windows Vista, like VueScan and use it. I can confirm I’ve been able to scan documents and images without trouble. However since VueScan is a paid software I’ll try and run XSane instead; it’s open source and worked wonders with my scanner when using Linux.

Now for all you people out there wondering if they should upgrade to Vista I will say: It’s a great operating system. I even believe it will be better than Windows XP ever was. However, considering the price to upgrade I would suggest waiting on the purchase of a new PC (or Mac). Rumor has that a service pack should be released by the end of the year and will most definitely improve the OS further.