Sigh.

Yes, I got excited about RSS Bandit a couple of days ago after it was released in Alpha with NewsGator and Google Reader Syncing capabilities. I have yet been able to get this to actually work and have found the program so buggy as to be unusable. It frequently crashes, spiked the CPU and cause other system instability.

It’s a non-commercial product however so I’m no going to complain too much, just wait for the next version to be released… hopefully a usable beta! A quick Google showed that other users have found it fairly unusable as well.

continue reading "RSS Bandit is a Fail."

The so called Places Bar is a sidebar on the right side of Open and Save dialogs in Windows and Office that provide the user with a way to access specific folders faster. It shows My Recent Documents, Desktop, My Documents, My Computer and My Network Places by default and there is no apparent way to change or edit the default places with some that make more sense. A user without a network connection would probably like to see a different folder in the Places Bar instead of the My Network Places link.

Users can either edit the five quick links in the Windows Registry which is not as trivial as it sounds or use a application like Places Bar Editor (via Lifehacker) to edit them comfortably. The software is compatible to Windows ME, 2000, XP and Windows Vista and supports the (different) Places Bar of Microsoft Office, or precisely Microsoft Office 2007, 2003, 2000 and XP, which is different from the standard Places Bar.

The software displays the five places that can be changed in tabs. One for Windows and one for Microsoft Office. The user has the choice to pick a system folder, like Desktop, Send To or Printers or chose a folder from his system that will be placed as a quick link in the bar. Please note that all five locations will change even if you only edit some of them. By default all are shown as Desktop links and you could end up with one custom link and four links to your Desktop if you changed only the first quick link manually.

I’m not using Instant Messengers and also do not use the Web 2.0 equivalent in the form of Twitter and comparable services. That’s something that stuck with me since I began using the Internet in the early 90’s and I never changed my stance on the subject. Instant Messengers are nevertheless highly popular and Everton came up with a nice addition for MSN Messenger.

One of the reasons why I never bothered to use Instant Messengers was the “spammy” connotation of them. There have been many services on the Internet that offered add-ons, smileys and other gimmicks for Instant Messengers that turned out to infect the user’s computer with malicious software or use the information entered by the user to spam him into oblivion.

HiYo seems to be different. The add-on for MSN Messenger comes without adware, spyware and other malicious software. It adds a new toolbar to the compose window that provides access to new content that can be added to posts like images and animations.

continue reading "Pimp your MSN Messenger with HiYo"

The Windows Registry is a book with seven seals for many users. Many know that one can change Registry settings to apply tweaks or change system settings in Windows but most do not know what their applications are writing in the Registry. Not all applications make use of the Registry, especially portable applications do not need it at all hence the name portable.

Reg From App is a portable program that monitors a specific application on the system and writes the changes made to the Registry in the program window which can be exported as a standard Registry file that contains all the Registry changes that have been made by the application since the monitoring process started.

Only running processes can be selected by Reg from App and the user is asked to pick one of the processes that will be monitored constantly from that point on. Constantly meaning as long as the program is running or the user is not stopping the monitoring.

continue reading "Monitor Software Registry Changes"

Bandwidth usage can be extremely different for Skype users which can be attributed whether computers are being used as Skype Super-Nodes. A Super-Node is basically a computer that is running Skype and not preventing the software access to the ports 80 and 443 which are used to route traffic from other Skype users who are behind a protected system.

The major problem with being a Skype Super-Node is that the bandwidth usage per hour will be much higher which might cause concern for users with Internet accounts that are having bandwidth limitations.

A great way for finding out if your system is being used as a Skype Super-Node is by installing a software that logs the bandwidth usage of Skype when the application is running. One tool that can do that is the trial version of Netlimiter which can be used for 30 days before it has to be registered.

continue reading "Find out if your computer acts as a Skype Super-Node"