My musings about life, happiness, technology, and what ever else comes along.
After looking for quite some time for an add-on to Firefox or IE to ease blog posting, I finally found one — and I like it.
ScribeFire is an add-on for Firefox 2.0 newer. It provides a collapsed, hidden panel at the bottom of the browser. It has various options and allows you to post to more than one blog. Plus, it performs rich text editing i.e. HTML.
You can find it on https://addons.mozilla.org.
My Rating: [5 out of 5]
My PC is running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with NOD32 antivirus/anti-spyware and Windows Defender.
Windows Defender is not the best anti-spyware however it does have it’s place. NOD32 from ESET does a decent job on spyware and it is one of the best for antivirus so I was happy.
Part of my normal security procedures verifies everything is updating itself properly. Windows Defender had not updated in quite some time so I opened it and manually ran an update. I promptly got the following error:
Arrgh say I!
After a little googling, I found a procedure that fixes the problem. Apparently the definitions have something wrong with them (corruption maybe?) that causes the update to fail.
Here is the procedure that worked for me:
That is it. It worked for me. Here is a screen shot of an example run of those commands once you have a command window open:
So, here it is:
| Category | Part | Company Site |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel E6750 overclocked to 3.2 GHz | Intel |
| Main/Motherboard | Abit IP35 Pro | Abit |
| Video card | Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GTS TDH GeForce 8800GTS 640 MB | LeadTek |
| Memory | 2 sets of G.Skill 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR2-800 F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ (8 GB total) | G.Skill |
| Hard Drives | Several 750 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS | Western Digital |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit | Microsoft Windows |
| Keyboard and Mouse | Microsoft Wireless keyboard and mouse | Microsoft Hardware |
| CPU Cooler | Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro | Arctic Cooling |
| Case | Antec Nine Hundred | Antec |
Over the years, I have used many a program on Windows. NoteTab Light is one such beastie.
NoteTab Light is a free text editor with a tabbed interface. Each tab represents one open text file. It can also be configured to open all files opened at the time of applications closure. The application has a myriad of settings.
At work, I use it to keep various common pieces of text for email in a convenient location. It is configured to minimize and close to the notification area of the task bar so it is only a click away.
Over all, I give NoteTab Light 4 our of 5.
System Requirements (as taken from their web site):
Site: http://www.notetab.com
PC World - 20 Vista Downloads to Tweak & Improve Your System:
20 Vista Downloads to Tweak & Improve Your System
There still aren’t a lot of downloads out there that can really improve Vista, but we’ve found twenty real keepers that will allow you to tweak it and improve your experience with the OS.
Preston Gralla
Nice overview of various downloads that you can use to tweak and improve your Windows Vista PC.
Whip Vista into Shape - Review by PC Magazine:
Whip Vista into Shape
09.24.07 Microsoft Windows Vista is a pretty muscular operating system, but it still needs toning. These three utilities give your new OS more speed and endurance.
PC Magazine online has a good article on tweaking Windows Vista. Not as thorough as more technical sites, but good for what it covers.
Deepest Sender :: Firefox Add-ons:
Description from addons.mozilla.org:
Deepest Sender 0.8.0
by David MurrayDeepest Sender is a client that will allow you to post to blogs from directly within Firefox. It is primarily a LiveJournal client, although it supports Blogger (GData) and WordPress (metaWeblog) too, with support for more stuff to come.
Deepest Sender is a client that will allow you to post to blogs from directly within Firefox. It is primarily a LiveJournal client, although it supports Blogger (GData) and WordPress (metaWeblog) too, with support for more stuff to come. Note that the actual Deepest Sender website will always have the most up to date version.
Works with: Firefox Firefox: 1.5b1 – 2.0.0
I posted this from Deepest Sender. It is quite nice to be able to surf and then blog about something you find, directly from Firefox.
I ran into an interesting issue with the Adobe Flash player in both Internet Explorer 7 (IE) and FireFox 2.0.5.
When I would navigate to YouTube.com to look at videos, an error popped up saying I did not have the latest Flash player with a link to install in IE. If I clicked the link, the install failed and the example Flash jobject would display a red X. FireFox popped up the yellow attention bar at the top. Installing the plugin from there did not correct the problem.
Adobe’s web site worked flawlessly but other sites with Flash either complained about needing the latest Flash player or the Flash objects on the page failed.
After investigating through Google searches, I was not any closer to fixing the issue than when I started. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling the Flash player, the issue continued. Frustrating!
I noticed that in Internet Explorer, a particular path listed the files in some of the pop up errors:
C:\Windows\System32\Macomed\Flash
Navigating to this location, I found two Flash utilities — one for Internet Explorer and one for Mozilla/Netscape browsers like FireFox.
Screen Shot
NPSWF32_FlashUtil.exe is for FireFox and FlashUtil9d.exe is for Internet Explorer. I ran each and they indicated an update was available. I let them update and Flash player begain working in both browsers. The utilities indicated a reboot was necessary but it worked without the reboot for me.
I hope this helps others as it took me a couple of hours to figure this one out.
Does this type of issue happen to you?
Or does your Vista system suddenly freeze or reboot with no rhyme or reason?
If so, you need these two hotfixes:
They certainly did the trick for me! But, I know there are quite a few more fixes needed. At least these cleared up the weirdness with video and freezes/reboots that I was experiencing. And restart from hibernate is much, much faster.
Thanks Chris Pirillo for the fine technical videos on YouTube.com!
I have been using Cloudmark Desktop for several years and have been quite satisfied with it. Cloudmark Desktop is an anti-spam add-in for Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook. It adds a tool bar and automatic processing of incoming email messages.
Messages marked as spam are moved to a user configurable folder. Overall, its is fairly accurate in processing spam but you still need to look in that folder periodically, like any anti-spam software, to verify any false positives. The tool bar includes a block and an unblock button to mark or unmark messages as appropriate.
Unblocked messages are sent back to your default inbox. After you unblock a sender twice, it will ask if you want to always unblock that sender. This is called whitelisting and is quite nicely implemented. If you block a message, it remembers and sends information to their service to build the spam database.
By default, all new messages, even SPAM, are left in the unread state. You can change this through the options.
Installation is fairly easy. Be sure Outlook or Outlook Express is not running when you start the installation process. Once finished, you can start your email program. Cloudmark Desktop will ask you to login because this requires an internet connection to work. A failure dialog box will display if your internet connection is not working. You won’t be able to get your email, turn off the internet connection, and then have it filter spam due to the way it is designed.
The add-in works with what they call collaborative security. Each email message is compared to caught spam in the collaborative security network that Cloudmark Desktop forms. As new spam is caught, the database grows across all the users of the service and more spam is caught in an efficient manner. I do not know what pariticular information they collect and this might be a privacy concern for some people. This information is maintained on Cloudmark servers.
The service rates you based on the qualify of blocks you perform. The fewer non-spam messages you block, the better the rating. The rating is listed in the tool bar. The methods they use to determine if blocks are valid or not is not known nor listed (that I could find) on their web site.
The service is paid for annually and costs $39.95US a year with automatic renewal as an option.
After using it for such a long time, comparatively, I can say it is quite effective — more effective than anything else I have tried except SpamBayes.
Cloudmark also provides services for businesses and a number of ISPs use them.
Website: Cloudmark
Download: 15 day free trial
Screen shots:
Toolbar:
My Cloudmark:
Options:
