Archive for the 'Software Tips' Category

Fedora is a linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat and supported volunteers. The latest release is Fedora 9 (code named Sulphur) and was released on 13 May 2008. Fedora 9 contains a lot of feature improvements and is now more user friendly than ever!  Fedora features the latest Linux kernel (2.6.25) and hence can run on latest hardware.

So what is new in Fedora 9 (Sulphur) ?

1. GNOME 2.22 - New version of GNOME brings a number of features which includes performance improvements. UI improvements include an enhanced world clock with multiple time zone displays. This version also includes an updated display manager with features such as power management on login screen.

2. Linux Kernel 2.6.25 - Latest Kernel support means a number of core enhancements such as improved virtualization support, CPU "group scheduling", USB authorization and new wireless configuration interface.

3. Persistent Live USB Support - Live USB support is not something new. Knoppix was one of the early distributions which could run from a Live CD. As USB capacity increased, live distributions started appearing on it. But what makes Fedora 9 unique is that now Live USB can store user preferences! This means that Live USB can be used a sort of portable Fedora 9 machine! Wherever you go, you can plugin in the USB, work on the Fedora 9 and then save data on it!

4. Seamless Upgrade - Fedora 9 features automated and seamless upgrade similar to Windows update. The latest preupgrade software can even be used to upgrade from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8!

5. Latest Software (Firefox 3 beta 5, Pidgin, Gimp etc.) - Fedora 9 Sulphur features all the latest software including Firefox 3. It also includes Pidgin, gEDIT, GIMP, Perl 5.10.0 etc.

Other new stuff in Fedora 9 include ext4 support, improved virtual machine support, bluetooth enhancements, PackageIt front-end to yum, Font improvements and built in support for encrypted file system.

Fedora  9 screenshot,

Further Resources

• Download Fedora 9 Sulphur
• Summary of Fedora 9 features

I had recently installed Windows Live Messenger on my pc at work. Along with it came a pesky toolbar addon called Windows Live Search. This gets attached after the URL box and is irritating to say the least. I prefer to use Google and I don’t need a toolbar!

I thought it should be pretty easy to remove Windows Live Search. It turned out that there is no direct option to remove Live Search! What you can do is to change the search provider. But hey! I don’t want a freaking toolbar!

After a bit of google research, I came to know that there is a registry hack to prevent the Windows live search textbar. Open up the regedit and look for the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\InfoDelivery\Restrictions. Sometimes you may see path only up to Microsoft. In that case add the path Internet Explorer\InfoDelivery\Restrictions. Then add a DWORD under Restrictions named NoSearchBox and set its value to 1.

Want to host your own Instant Messenger? Then you should try out Ajax im. This is very compact custom instant messenger which is based on PHP and AJAX. The complete download is less than 300kb! In order to host this on your server, you need a MySQL database and PHP support.

Since this is AJAX based, you can integrate this within your existing site. You can also host this as part of your intranet. It is not as sophisticated as any of the commercial ones, but still is good enough as supporting tool to your site.  You can try out a sample implementation here.

Last week I wrote a post on how disabling search indexing can boost Windows vista performance. In this I will look at various methods which you can use to drastically Windows Vista performance.

Ok. You just bought your brand new laptop which comes pre-installed with Windows Vista. But unfortunately your new laptop performance looks worse than your pretty old laptop! Is there any way to improve it?

Well, as an operating system, Windows Vista is stable and I think it is just a matter of tuning to get it performing. Before I go into the methods, here is a word of advise. Get your machine atleast 1GB of RAM since Vista is really memory hungry!

1. Remove all junk software from your PC - Most of the online stores (Dell for example) bundle a lot of software when they sell a Windows Vista installed laptop/pc. You don’t need many of these software and hence removing them can substantially boost Windows Vista performance. First thing to do when you get your PC/Laptop is to remove everything except the bare minimum you need!

2. Disable Windows Defender - One of the biggest complaints about Windows operating systems was its vulnerability to viruses. To address this issue, microsoft added a lot of stuff into Vista, essentially making it bloated and cumbersome. Windows Defender is one such feature. If you are a power user who knows what can cause virus infection or security problems you don’t need Windows Defender.
To disable windows defender, go to control panel->administrative tools -> services -> windows defender and stop it. Also change the startup type to manual.

3. Disable UAC (User Access Control) - This is one of the most annoying features. Whenever you click on anything which affects system configuration, a popup comes up asking whether you want the operation to be executed! Of course, I want that, that is why I clicked on it! For a power user this is the first thing to disable.
To disable user access control, go to control panel->user account->turn user account control off.

4. Use ReadyBoost to extend RAM - If you have below 2GB or below, you can use readyboost feature of Vista to improve performance. For this, you will need a high speed USB 2.0 memory stick (flash drive). Vista will use this as an extension to RAM. This improves system performance and also reduces load on harddisk there by extending its lifespan.

5. Reduce graphics and other UI features - Windows Vista by default has a pretty jazzy user interface. If you are a power user, you rarely bother about these UI features. Disabling these features will dramatically reduce load on your processor and memory. This is one method sure to speed up your experience on Windows Vista.
To optimize system configuration for maximum performance, go to control panel->performance information and tools->advanced tools (on the left menu)->adjust the appearance and performance of windows->Select Adjust for best performance radio button and press Apply.

6. Remove unnecessary startup programs - You might have couple of startup programs configured. Remove all the unnecessary programs to reduce startup time and to improve overall system performance. Anti-virus programs are notorious for reducing system performance and increasing harddisk load.
You can check out startup programs using regedit command (use with caution!). Find all the startup programs under computer->HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Microsoft->Windows->CurrentVersion->Run. (User can also use Windows Defender for this)

7. Disable unncessary services - Your system might have a lot of services which you may not need. But identifying them may not be very easy. Open up control panel->administrative tools->services and stop/disable services. Some of the services I disabled are Windows Search, Windows Defender, Windows Cardspace etc.

8. Disable Windows Search Indexing - As i have written earlier, disabling Windows Search indexing may improve performance substantially, especially when you have a new system.

9. Monitor tasks running - Monitor your task manager regularly. Look for any processes which hogs memory/processor resource. Also monitor for programs which may be accessing harddisk frequently. Find out the real use of resource intensive processes and if not required, remove them.

10. Buy a new PC/ upgrade RAM - If your system performance is still low, you probably need to buy a new PC to run Windows Vista. Also remember to have atleast 2GB RAM for optimal performance!

I recently bought a new laptop with Windows Vista pre-installed. It is a dell machine and I had to spend around one hour to remove all the junk. This machine has 2GB RAM and surprisingly I saw that the harddisk light is lit almost continuously. My earlier old laptop with Windows XP had much better performance even though it had only 1GB RAM. Also the internet access (using a USB mobile network - Reliance NetConnect) was also much slower in Windows Vista.

I was wondering what the heck is going on! You buy the latest stuff and it appears everything goes back in time. Then I decided to find the real problems behind this performance issue in Windows Vista.

Here is the first important tip. Disable File Search Indexing (which includes processes - SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost and SearchIndexer) in Windows Vista to substantially boost performance. This is a windows service which runs in background always accessing harddisk and network resources. If you disable this, windows search may not be accurate, but that is something I don’t care.

Disbling Windows Search Service is simple. Open up Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Service. Find a service named Windows Search. Stop this service and change its startup type to manual. If you want, you can manually run the service when you are not using your system.

Once I disabled this, I found that harddisk access reduced substantially and also my internet connection was running in top speed.

You can also explore Google Desktop Search which seems to be gentle when it comes to system performance.

Gmail is one of the most popular email services out there. In a short time it has overthrown hotmail, yahoo etc. Why did this happen? Simple - Gmail is very user friendly and offers unmatched feature set.

Organizing mails with Gmail is easy. Google provides a couple of features for this.

1. Use filters/labels - I use filtering and labels to organize mails in virtual folders. This way I ensure that only critical mails end up in my inbox.

2. Use POP3 access - You can configure Outlook or other email clients by enabling POP3 access. This is useful when you need offline access to your mails.

3. Use Gmail Mail Fetcher - This is the most useful feature I found. Using this, you can aggregate mails from other sources such as your official mail. For this to work, your mail provider also must support POP3 access.

Gmail mail fetcher can be configured from Settings->Accounts->Get mail from other accounts. Following is a sample screenshot. You need to know the username, password and POP3 server address to configure your external account.

Please note that this is of no use with accounts such as Yahoo mail which doesn’t support POP3 access.

It is possible to change the “registered to” information in Windows XP/Vista. This may be required if you typed in something nasty in these fields and then want to change it later. On my machine, registration information looks like the following. You can see this information by pressing Windows key along with break key (Win+break).

To change these values, you need to modify entries in Windows registry. Please be careful while making these changes as any mistake could render your machine unusable!

1. Open registry by typing “regedit” on command prompt.

2. Open folder “My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version”. You will see the following entries on the right side.

3. Double click on the entry to change and type in new values.

4. Close “regedit”. You should see the new values when you take the system properties again (Win+break).

Dreamhost is a good hosting service and I have been using it for a while (not this site). One of the cool features of dreamhost account is the ability to create scheduled cron jobs using a shell account. This required a bit of “linux” knowledge like using the command “crontab -e”.

Not anymore! Dreamhost panel now contains an option to setup cron jobs directly. Check out the following screenshot from the Web panel,

But it is not perfect yet. One problem I came across is that the jobs setup using “crontab -e” doesn’t appear on the Web panel.

If you are using Pligg to run your own Digg like site, you would have already noticed that it is painfully slow. I have been running Pligg on a shared hosting and it was killing everything else even with a small user base! It seems that Pligg team is beginning to address the performance issues in the latest beta version released yesterday.

Here are some of the key new features in Pligg 9.5,

1. Un-vote - Now users can un-vote stories they have voted for

2. Fixes for IIS - Fixes for the IIS cookie redirect bug.

3. Image upload module - Upload images and use the thickbox javascript library to view them.

4. Reporting/Burying Stories - Users can bury stories that are spam, inaccurate etc etc. Burying a story grays it out to signify you have buried it.

5. Major database query enhancements - A quick estimation shows that the database calls in version 9.1 was 170+ and now it’s 50-60. This should substantially increase the speed of your Pligg site.

6. Story page tabs - Each story page now uses tabs. There are 3 tabs, comments, who voted, and a new feature, related stories.

7. Upgrade to Template Lite 2.1 - Upgraded Pligg to the current version of Template Lite.

8. Upgrade to ezSQL 2.03 - upgraded to the latest version of ezSQL for better mysql query handling.

I have a blog which is hosted on dreamhost and I recently upgraded it to version 2.1. The dreamhost advantage is that you can upgrade Wordpress with a single click (ok, two clicks if you consider database upgrade click also).

Everything went smooth. But when I looked at the blog I saw some database errors on the archives section! Surprisingly everything else on the blog was working. So I thought this must be a problem with the theme I was using. So I changed the theme to one of the defaults and voila! there was no error.

So the moral of the story - Check the codex Wordpress 2.1 theme compatibility list before you upgrade your blog!

Still with all the following cool features, Wordpress 2.1 upgrade is worth the hassle.

• The essential spell checker. This basically means that built in editor is better than using w.bloggar!
• The draft status for pages. This should have been there much earlier!
• Content Management Tool? - Pages can be the front page!
• Switch between plain editing and rich text editing. A must have!
• Auto saving. This is a life saver when you are writing long posts!

So what are you waiting for? Go and download Wordpress 2.1

If you want to try out Wordpress or any other blogging software locally, the first thing you should have is the Apache Web server. In this tutorial I will show you how to install Apache Web server on Windows XP.

1. Download Apache Windows MSI (installer) file from http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi. I have downloaded version 2.2.4 from http://www.devlib.org/apache/httpd/binaries/win32/apache_2.2.4-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi. This download is about 5MB.

2. Install Apache using the MSI installer. During installation fill in network domain, server name and email. These need not be valid if you plan to use Apache for local use. Note that I have decided to install on port 8080 and use manual startup. I want to start the server only when I need it. You may get an error saying the port is in use which means that something else is running on port 8080 or 80. Correct this by uninstalling or changing the configuration of the conflicting program.

In the next screen select “Typical” as the setup type. For destination folder I have used “c:\apps\apache”. You can decide to go with the default if you want - which is typically “C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\”

3. Run Apache from the program menu. By default this appears under Apache HTTP Server 2.2.4=>Control Apache Server=>Start Apache in Console. You may get an alert from your firewall program saying that a program is trying to listen to 8080. Allow apache to continue.

4. Open a browser session and point to http://localhost:8080/. You should see the following screen.

This file (index.html) we are seeing is located under “C:\apps\apache\htdocs” (note that you may have installed Apache somewhere else). If you edit this file and refresh browser, you will see the changes reflected!

Now you are all set with your Apache Server installation. In the next tutorial, I will show you how to install and enable PHP on Apache Web server.

Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform out there. One of the things that made Wordpress so popular is the availability of hundreds of cool plugins and themes(most of them free!).

But plugins come with a price. Since plugins are developed by third parties, not all are very reliable. A single bad behaving plugin can bring down your entire blog! So install only necessary and useful plugins on your Wordpress installation.

I have a very limited set of plugins installed on this blog. To me, one of the most important plugin is the Related Posts plugin. Whenever you write a blog entry, this plugin automatically finds related previous posts which you can display anywhere. In my blog, you will find related entries on the right side.

Installing related post plugin is simple,

1. Download Related Posts plugin from here. If the site is down (500 error on his Wordpress installation!), direct download is here.




2. Upload the plugin file (related-posts.php) to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory and activate it.




3. Once you have activated it, a new option “Related Posts Option” will appear under plugins tab. In that you need to click on “run this script” link at the bottom. This modifies Wordpress table wp_posts to enable FULLTEXT indexes.

This should setup the Related posts plugin. But on certain Web hosting platforms I have found that “run this script” fails. This is because of the MySQL engine settings.

Following is the error I got on Globat host (on dreamhost it works fine),

#1214 - The used table type doesn’t support FULLTEXT indexes

This means that wp_posts table is NOT using MYISAM engine which is needed for FULTEXT indexes. To solve this problem run the following SQL on your PhpMyAdmin SQL console.

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ENGINE = MYISAM;

And then you can run the following SQL to configure FULLTEXT indexes.

ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ADD FULLTEXT `post_related` (
`post_name` ,
`post_content`
)

Now you are all set. To display Related entries you can put <?php related_posts(); ?> . You can also control how the related entries should appear on your blog (For more details see Related entries readme file).

If you still face any issues, feel free to write to me.

I use w.bloggar to post to this blog. This desktop tool allows me to update my blog fast, without logging onto the wordpress console. The only problem is that w.bloggar doesn’t support creation of new categories (which I don’t need very often, but if you are using categories as tags you will find it a problem).

Here is a list of free desktop based blog publishing tools. Most of these atleast support Wordpress and Movable Type platforms. Please note I haven’t included any commercial or trial versions (for example, ecto).

Are you using one of these tools? Please let me know if I have missed out anything.

Free Desktop blogging tools for Windows

• Bleezer
• blogBuddy
• BlogDesk
• BlogED
• JBlogEditor
• IMHO
• Lycos-Qumana



• PowerBlog
• Post2Blog Express
• PostXING
• Qumana
• RocketPost Basic (Remember it is really basic!)
• Semagic
• SharpMT
• Slug
• Tanjunka (no longer available since domain expired!)
• w.bloggar
• Zoundry

Free Desktop blogging tools for Linux

• Bleezer



• BloGTK
• Drivel
• Gnome Blog
• JBlogEditor

Free Desktop blogging tools for Mac

• Bleezer



• BlogED
• iJournal
• JBlogEditor
• Lycos-Qumana
• Qumana
• Xjournal

The recently discovered Adobe Reader bug allows an attacker to inject JavaScript via a PDF which is hosted on a trusted domain. For example, assume that a user clicks on a link in site A (which is not very trusted) to go to a PDF on site B (which is a trusted site). Site A can inject JavaScript via the PDF link which will appear to be executed from site B! This is possible since additional commands can be sent to Reader when opening a file.

What makes this scary is that there is nothing site B can do to prevent this (of course, other than taking down all PDF documents)! But this flaw appears relatively harmless since only things that can be snooped are the cookies and session data. It won’t be able to format your machine or steal your local files.

Adobe recommends upgrading your Adobe Reader to version 8 to fix this bug. Adobe may not enjoying all the bad publicity it is getting!

Here are some Windows keyboard tricks you can use to impress your friends! These are nothing but less known features of the Windows XP operating system. To revert back the screen to previous state, repeat the key combination again.

Trick 1 (High Contrast) - Hold Shift, Alt and Print Screen keys together. Click on “OK” when a message appears (this enables high contrast on Windows system). The screen should change to black! There is even a Youtube video for this trick!

Trick 2 (Magnifier) - Hold Windows key (logo key) and R key together. Type magnify in the run box and then press Enter. This enables magnifier tool and anything near the mouse trail will now appear magnified on top!

Trick 3 (Invert Windows screen) - This is one of the scariest tricks which turns Windows upside down. You can press Ctrl, Alt and then any of the four arrow keys (Ctrl-Alt-Down will rotate screen by 180 degrees)! I have noticed that this doesn’t work on certain Windows XP machines (It is dependent on video driver).

You can check out these and many more accessibility tutorials here.