I remembered a friend talking to me about a tiny freeware that lets you resume copies in case there were problems so I figured it would be a good idea to give that a shot.  Enter Teracopy.  This Windows “Copy replacement” lets you copy files much much faster than Windows ever could and adds many new features to the standard function.  Here is some information from their site:

• Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.
• Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.
• Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.
• Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.
• Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.
• Full Unicode support.

Teracopy impressed me quite a bit.  it uses different techniques to make sure your copies are completed faster, and that’s not just a catch phrase.  I’ve never heard my USB hard drive work that hard.  The estimated time for the Windows copy was about 55 minutes for each file.  Teracopy got everything done in about 30 minutes.

Once installed, Teracopy completely replaces your windows functions so whenever you make a copy/paste operation, Teracopy takes over.  At the time of writing this article, there is a portable version in beta.  There is also a Pro version that lets your play around in the copy queue and gives you support & upgrades as well.

• SolarWinds Free TFTP Server – upload and download executable images and configurations to network devices – our most popular free network monitoring tool!
• IP SLA Monitor – quickly troubleshoot network slowdowns between sites and easily understand device-to-device performance using sophisticated Cisco® IP SLA operations.
• Free Kiwi Syslog Server – receive, log, display, and forward syslog messages from network devices with this easy-to-use Syslog Server.
• Free Kiwi CatTools – simplify daily management tasks with the ability to manage and backup network
• VM Monitor – continuously monitor a VMware® ESX Server and its virtual machines with at-a-glance virtualization health statistics.
• SolarWinds Free Real-time NetFlow Analyzer – capture and analyze up to one hour of NetFlow data to see what types of traffic are on your network, where it’s coming from, & where it’s going.
• SolarWinds Free Exchange Monitor – continuously monitor Exchange and get real-time insight into services, mail queue sizes, and host server health with this clever desktop dashboard.
• SolarWinds Free NetFlow Configurator – configure NetFlow v5 via SNMP on supported Cisco® devices – a perfect complement to Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and our free Real-time NetFlow Analyzer tool!
• SolarWinds Free Advanced Subnet Calculator – compute addresses for IP subnets – another perennial favorite in our suite of free network monitoring tools!
• SolarWinds Free Wake-On-LAN

  – remotely power up network PCs

I have not tested all of these tools of course, because some of them are too specific for my needs, but the Exchange Monitor and the Kiwi Syslog Server work great and do exactly what you expect them to.

Free tools are always welcome and the quality products offered by Solarwinds are an excellent addition to any administrator’s toolset.

Cozi.com is basically an all-in-one organizer for your family.  You can enter all of your family members (even if they can’t use the computer…) and enter a color-coded schedule that allows you to see where everyone is at all times.  You enter your grocery lists, or any other kinds of lists you can think of and every member of the family can pitch in.  You can send messages to members and get reminders for anything that is in your calendar.  For the author in you, there is even a blogging feature, called a family journal, that lets you chronicle anything and everything that goes on with the family, including pictures.  The features as listed by Cozi are:

• Family Calendar
  
  

  The Cozi Homepage

• Family Journal
• Customizable Lists
• Photo ScreenSaver ( requires a Download)
• Reminders and Messages
• Cozi and Outlook Sync
• Mobile Access

I can tell you first hand that Cozi is a very useable tool if your family is on the go.  There are no excuses for your tech-savvy kids not to use the site as well because they can get everything on the move.  Cozi offers mobile web access, SMS and even lets you call-in through a toll-free number to have your lists and schedules read to you.  All of these features will let you work with your iPhone and any Smartphone.

If you also like to use smartphones with Outlook, Cozi offers a plugin for outlook that will let you synchronize everything in your Cozi account with your Outlook.  This can be very useful if you don’t always have an available internet connection.

Aside from all the cool features and the nice way to implicate my family in my techno-crazed lifestyle, the interface and ease of use are the things that have caught my attention the most.  This is a great example of a very well done Web 2.0 application.  You get a framework that lets you do exactly what it was designed to do, and your data isn’t trapped inside of it.  You can access everything in more than one way.

Even without a family, Cozi can help you or any group get organized.  If you live with someone, you may want to give this one a try!

PhonEx is one of those plugins that once you get used to having it around, you just can’t live without it.  I’ve tried many plugins and applications that modify my contacts and/or my phone, but I always ended up removing them because they either caused problems or simply didn’t have the features I was used to with the standard WM6 functions.  PhonEx is not subtle in its changes and that’s what makes it work for me.  I love the scrolling contacts and the large dial-pad the most.  The Today plugin is also a very nice feature and let’s you change settings and access your contacts and favorites in no time.

The contacts manager is probably the most interesting feature there is because it is the one that sold me to this extension.  You can scroll through your contacts using just your thumb, just like on the iPhone.  no need for the stylus or the scroll bar.  Not only is this convenient, but it make your phone look and feel less antiquated.  Everything moves around smoothly, even on my older processor.  When you select a contact, the screen slides to the left and brings up the details of that contact, with a larger image and options to contact that person in a variety of ways: Call, Email, SMS etc… whatever you have entered is available.  This is where you can modify your contact’s information, assign a new picture etc…  I didn’t have pictures for everyone before, but since I installed PhonEx, I’ve been taking more pictures and trying to get more of my contacts updated because it simply looks good and makes that contacts list more attractive.

PhonEx Phonepad

From there, you can access your favorites, which is a list of people you choose to be easier to reach instead of having to go through your entire contacts list.  You can see a list of all your calls including incoming/outgoing and missed calls.  Finally, you can also go directly to the phone pad for manual dialing.  You could use the “send” key which gets reassigned to PhonEx and takes you to the phonepad as well.  The large buttons on the phonepad allow you to use your thumb only and, in my case, responds much much faster than the standard WM6 one.  For instance, when accessing my voicemail, there was a huge lag when entering my passcode.  With PhonEx, I can tap the numbers as fast as I want and everything works just fine.

There are a number of other great features like the full screen incoming calls.  When you receive a call, you get that on the entire screen, showing a picture of the contact (if you put one in) along with the number and location if it’s available.

Once you’re in a call, you have access to all the usual features, but with large buttons and it even lets you see if you are on Bluetooth right away.  You can conference someone else in and put them on Hold, Speakerphone or Mute.  You have access to the phone pad as well which is useful for dialing extensions or passcodes as I mentioned earlier.

PhonEx is certainly an excellent extension to have on your Windows Mobile Smartphone.  You can give it a try for free for 15 days and see for yourself.

]]> http://www.techforlunch.com/phoneex-makes-your-wm5-6-phone-act-like-an-iphone/feed/ 0 http://www.techforlunch.com/how-to-download-albums-from-facebook/ http://www.techforlunch.com/how-to-download-albums-from-facebook/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:12:58 +0000 Pascal Roy http://www.techforlunch.com/?p=296 Have you ever wanted to grab an entire photo album from one of your friends on Facebook?  It can be pretty annoying to download every single picture from an album, one by one.  About a year ago, I had a plugin for firefox that could download an entire photo album in a single click.  But after firefox changed to version 3.0 and facebook redesigned their pages, that plugin no longer worked.

Last week, I heard about FacePAD (Facebook Photo Album Downloader), a nifty little plugin that does exactly that; it lets you go inside an album, right-click on it and download every single image to a folder of your choice.

All you have to do is make sure you are using firefox, and install the plugin. Once installed and running, log on to Facebook and find a photo album from one of your friends that you would like to be able to browse offline.  Simply right-click on the link to the album that you want to download and select “Download Album with FacePAD”.  If you already clicked on that link and you are already in the album, you can simply right-click on one of the page numbers at the top of the album and you will get the same result.

Some people have complained that the plugin only downloads the first page of the album or gives javascript errors.  I have not had these problems and all pages of the albums I tested downloaded just fine.  The only slightly annoying thing with this plugin is that you have to confirm the download for each picture as if you were clicking them individually.  It’s not too bad considering the amount of time you save from having to do all the work yourself.

Happy Downloading!

Have you ever missed an album of one of your favourite artists only to discover it by accident weeks after the release? Do you spend a lot of time on official websites looking for release announcements? With Muspy you will save time and won’t miss any releases.

After you sign in, you may add the artists you want to follow. You can add them one-by-one, copy the list of artists from your Facebook profile, or import the top bands from your Last.fm profile.

When one of the artists releases a new CD, you will receive a short e-mail notification with the album name and release dates. You can also see the new releases on the website sorted in the chronological order, or subscribe to the rss feed and receive release alerts using the feed aggregator of your choice.

Muspy.com is one of those great little services that make the internet such a useful tool.  It’s free, simple and does exactly – and only – what it’s supposed to do.  If you are a music lover and like knowing about album releases before it’s been out for 3 months, then Muspy is something you may want to take a look at.

What does it do? It backs up and updates the drivers of your computer and suggests new ones…

It will automatically download the latest drivers for the PC like… video card, sound card, network card, modem, digital camera, mouse, keyboard, etc.. It also removes the unused drivers.

Another nice thing for people who re-install their PC regularly… It allows you to save your drivers to an .EXE file. Very useful when re-installing a machine… it accelerates the process!

In short, it takes control of the management of your drivers so that you no longer need to deal with it.

If you are interested, you download it online by clicking on the following link.. Right here!

There is a free trial, test it!

Chrome, is Google’s new Open-Source browser, which has been in the works for the last 2 years now. It combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.  It offers many features that are very interesting.  Here’s a quick list of new features:

• One Box for Everything: Web search. Web history. Address bar. Suggestions as you type. One unified box serves all your browsing needs at the top.  You simply type in that box and results begin to appear as you go.
• New Tab Page: Every time you open a new tab, you’ll see a visual sampling of your most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages and closed tabs.  I like this feature very much.
• Application Shortcuts: Use web apps without opening your browser. Application shortcuts can directly load your favorite online apps
• Dynamic Tabs: You can drag tabs out of the browser to create new windows, gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange your tabs however you wish — quickly and easily.
• Crash Control: Every tab you’re using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it won’t take anything else down.
• Incognito Mode: Don’t want pages you visit to show up in your web history? Choose incognito mode for private browsing.
• Safe Browsing: Google Chrome warns you if you’re about to visit a suspected phishing, malware or otherwise unsafe website.  That’s not really new, but it’s implemented directly in the browser.
• Instant Bookmarks: Want to bookmark a web page? Just click the star icon at the left edge of the address bar and you’re done.
• Import Settings: When you switch to Google Chrome, you can pick up where you left off with all the bookmarks and passwords from your existing browser.  That’s also a vey common feature, but it would have been silly to leave it out.
• Simpler Downloads: No intrusive download manager; you see your download’s status at the bottom of your current window.
• V8 Engine: A better, faster and more robust Javascript engine, designed by the guys at Google.

Giving Google Chrome a test run is certainly the best way to see and experiment with all the features and the somewhat different interface.  The approach and presentation are excellent but there are naturally some things missing right now.  Keeping in mind that this is still a Beta version, there are some applications and sites that simply do not run with Chrome. Toolbars and plugins are also not available yet, so functionality is limited for power users.

If you are still using Internet Explorer, giving Chrome a try in something you should really go ahead and do because you are probably not surfing as fast and as easily as you should.  If you are a Firefox user, then it all depends on what your surfing habits are, but it doesn’t hurt anything to give Chrome a try anyway!  I’m sure that many features in Chrome will get their Firefox plugin equivalent in no time, but the speed of a browser is pretty difficult to replicate in a plugin.

Chrome is built with Google Gears, so there should be version for all platforms eventually.  Right now, it’s only available for Windows.

Refreshingapps.com was built primarily as a showcase and gallery that shows some of the fantastic Adobe AIR applications that are being developed today. So if you have seen a great AIR app, or you have built something cool go ahead and submit it to our showcase.

Everyone knows I love applications built with Adobe Flex/Air and this site is what it’s all about. You can find a bunch of applications described, reviewed and, best of all, divided into categories according to their purpose and application. The site also has some news articles about the RIA world and gives some useful links to different Resources for developers of all skill levels. Visitors can also rate the listed applications so you can view top applications as voted by actual users.

If you like Air applications, refreshingapps.com is certainly a bookmark to add to your list.

The biggest new feature on the iPhone, and what gives it its name is the 3G capability.  3G is the most recent cellular network standard and allows service providers to offer greater speeds and services on their networks.  Apple has added the GPS functionnalities directly on the iPhone this time around.

I had a customer ask me to setup his iPhone to connect with his Exchange Server with the first version and, although I got it to work, it was still a pain to setup.  This new version boasts better Exchange server support.  I will certainly be taking a look at that one to see if the improvement was worthwhile.  The other new features are listed below:

• Flush headphone jack
• Improved audio
• Thinner edges
• Longer battery life
• Firmware version 2.0
• Syncs with MobileMe

The new firmware includes support for the AppStore so you should be able to get many new applications for you iPhone 3G.  The new set of features is pretty good and may make the upgrade worthwhile to many avid users but it shouldn’t anger the early adopters by making their “old” iphones too deprecated just yet.

For those who are hoping to hack or “jailbreak” their iPhone 3G, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before you can do so and install all the 3rd party apps you want.  Although Apple is forcing end-users to get a contract in order to buy an iPhone, some units will surely be available via eBay or other outlets when a hack becomes available.