Gadzooki

Fly Using Google Earth

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This is really cool, Using Google Earth you can practice flying by turning it into a flight simulator. I tried it and it works! I spent my whole day cruising and enjoying this cool hidden Flight Simulator.

To enter the flight simulator mode, press Ctrl + Alt + A (Command/Open Apple Key + Option + A on the Mac). Once you have entered flight simulator mode for the first time, you can re-enter the mode by choosing Tools > Enter Flight Simulator. To leave flight simulator mode, click Exit Flight Simulator in the top right corner or press Ctrl + Alt + A (Command/Open Apple Key+ Option + A on the Mac).

Now you can use your keyboard to control navigation and other stuff that you would in a flight simulator game. You can even use a mouse or joystick. It won’t let hook up my Xbox 360 controller, Google Earth can’t recognize my Xbox 360 Contoller. I’ll try sometime this week if I can have a workaround it and a critical plus it that the Xbox 360 controller won’t let you map it’s button setting manually. To disable or enable mouse controls, left click (single click on a Mac). Once mouse controls are active, the pointer shape changes to a cross on your screen.

Download Google Earth and try it. For the list of command here’s the Flight Simulator Cheat Sheet

Scariness: Windows Updates Sans Users’ Permission

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If there’s anything Windows users need to fear right now, it would be that Windows is actually updating itself without the user’s permission, and even if the user has opted not to have Windows updates.

In case it hasn’t sunk in, I’m telling you again, Windows, whether Vista or XP, is imposing updates onto your system without your permission. [Read more…]

Windows Vista fix for graphics issues released

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vista.jpgI’ve been using Windows Vista along with Windows XP Professional in my dual boot PC. So far my experience with Vista has been mostly pleasant. I still have not experienced any kind of problems with this new OS. But apparently there are some Vista users that have encountered problems. Some users have experienced having weird behavior with their Vista desktop. This particular issue is said to have been addressed in Microsoft’s latest update package, 932406. The update package fixes the following issues — which appears after Vista has run for a long period: sections of the screen turning black or transparent; toolbars disappearing or appearing at the top part of the screen.

This particular update is only available through the knowledge base link, but it is expected that this fix will also become available through Windows Update in the future.

[tags]Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Update[/tags]

A 12 Year old OS : Windows 95

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Microsoft Windows 95 is celebrating it’s 12th year anniversary since it was launched August 24 1995. The 32-bit successor of famous OSes Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups and MS-DOS. Windows 95 started it all. I remember an advertisement on a PC magazine — “DOS is Dead” — a Windows 95 Ad. Two months after the official launch, that Windows 95 had sold millions of copies. A year later, it boasted sales of 40 million units. Although Microsoftno longer supports Windows 95 there are still some that uses Windows 95. after it still has a DOS operating system to back it up, which is very stable OS.

“Windows 95 has been much anticipated and much has been written about it. But fundamentally, it is about unlocking more of the potential of computing,” Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman said in a statement about the launch. “We are moving into the next era of computing, which includes broader communications via email and the online world, dazzling multimedia and games, and richer educational software.”

“During the last decade, Windows 95 and Office 95 transformed the way people work,” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive said during the simultaneous business launch of Exchange 2007, Office 2007 and Vista in November last year.

I am a day late but heck… Happy Birthday Windows 95.

Swallow My Pride Part 1: Living on Dial-Up

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Back in my hometown, I had a 1MB DSL/broadband connection, and I was just zipping through the Internet at speeds that I was getting only too comfortable in. Now that I moved to my country’s capital, I am currently stripped of my DSL connection, as I have to wait for my account to be transferred, a process that would take a few days to a few weeks.

Because of that predicament, I currently have to put up with a maximum of 56KB in connection speeds. Last night, as I was turtle-crawling through the web, I was on the verge of an emotional breakdown, because several projects had come in and I didn’t know of a way to speed up my connection until I thought it was time to turn to my favorite resource: Google.com.
[Read more…]

Windows Home Server: networked computing comes to the home

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While not exactly kept under the tightest of wraps as WinFS was until it was unveiled, to everyone’s surprise, on a previous Microsoft PDC (only to be axed from Windows Vista later on), the project known under the name “” has gone “gold”, which means it is of production-level quality by software terms. The gold code has been released to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), and we can expect retail “boxed” editions and actual server boxes to hit the shelves in the next two to three months.

So what is Windows Home Server, and is there really a need for a “server” for the home? Now that digital media has reached ubiquitous levels, and storage – be it in the form of expansion cards that come with almost every consumer device there is (cameras, digital audio players, even cell phones – who would’ve thought three years ago?), front-end solutions (Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 equipped with hard disk storage that slideshow photos and play video DVDs), we how have more-than-ever loaded operating systems that arguably pushed the digitization of the media we’ve previously enjoyed in other ways (Premium versions of Windows with Media Center functionality and Apple’s FrontRow front-end to iTunes, iPhoto and the rest). (I have not verified whether Windows Home Server actually supports operating systems other than Windows, but that’s just ludicrous.)

Windows Home Server is built on the same core as Windows Server 2003. Think of it as taking out unnecessary functionality and all other entry points into the operating system (no fancy Windows Media Player, or the outdated Address Book, heck, even Internet Explorer is nowhere to be found!). ALL, except one – a “website” (it’s really just running off the box where it is installed) that is accessed from one of the other computers in the network the Home Server appliance attaches to – where all activity central to maintaining available storage is performed.

Windows Home Server is meant to take as much storage as you can give it – RAID up all the hard drives you have from your retired home computers, plug in the external hard drive you forgot about since you got the laptop with a terabyte hard drive, and don’t forget the cheapo, standalone NAS box (network-attached storage) you bought and realized did not come with automation software – Windows Home Server pools it all: no drive letters to be concerned about, it’s all one huge container.

As a bonus, it is also from here you can monitor whether the rest of the computers in the network have the latest Windows updates, antivirus and malware signatures, disk fragmentation and file backup status; and automating the across-the-board updating process. Microsoft will also provide a means for the users to have access to their storage pool from across the globe via an interface in the WWW.

At this point I may be making it sound all too nice – and I can most definitely say it is. Once the idea is implemented effectively, and if the Home Server product works as you’d expect it to (read: without the security holes brought about by deep-level Internet Explorer integration). The idea of pooled storage alone even without the “control room” technology that’s only been seen in corporate setups until now is very enticing. If Windows Vista is any indication that Microsoft has had its act together, we’ll be in the lookout to get our hands wet on a final shipping product and give it a long, good review. Do watch out for a full run-down soon. #

Taking portable browsing to the next level

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This would be the first of Fire Eye’d Boy’s software picks for the power users. No better way to start than with my favourite killer duo: Portable Firefox with Google Browser Sync

The first piece of the puzzle is Portable Firefox; if you’ve been living under a rock, Firefox is the alternative to that blue “e” you’re so familiar with, only with a bajillion more ways to make it work the way you want it to. The “Portable” part of the name is just that – it’s a version that extracts (like a ZIP file), say, to a USB thumb drive, that you can run from there without having to install the vanilla version on every PC you use. In our little experiment, we’ll put it in a folder in the network, say, \\FileServer01\User\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable.

Image credits to www.versiontracker.com

The other piece is a wonderful little Firefox add-on: Google Browser Sync. What it does is put all of your cookies and saved passwords, even bookmarks, browsing history and opened tabs and windows – up in the “cloud” (that’s tech-speak for a remote server, or servers) where you can access them from anywhere, given that this add-on sized at roughly the tenth of a megabyte (that’s 115 KB for those with OCD) is installed. Launch our FirefoxPortable.exe (why .exe, you say? Honestly now, how many all-Mac network environments are out there?) from the FirefoxPortable folder and browse to the download page. After restarting Firefox, signing in with a Google account is necessary (who doesn’t have one these days?)

Image credits to moz.sillydog.org

How is it in real-life use? In our little experiment, Google Browser Sync complements Portable Firefox such that you can take your Firefox from anywhere in the network (which is already an excellent thing on its own). When I get home, I jump onto Firefox on the Mac (yes, the system is OS-independent) and it takes all the bookmarks and passwords I entered while I was in the office, all without having to recreate my Blogroll RSS lists and re-entering my passwords each time.

Image credits to www.tinyscreenfuls.com

If this works for you, or if you know of any other Firefox add-ons that take portability even more notches higher, hit me up with a comment.

No, desktop mail is not dead just yet!

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If you happen to have lived your early- to mid-teen years in the late 90’s, you realize those years have greatly influenced your habits both online and offline. This was the height of the first dot-com era, when Yahoo! and Hotmail doled it out on a battle for audience share. Incidentally, this was also the time when people were weaned away from Eudora and the now-forgotten Netscape Messenger, among others, and the new age of web mail has dawned.

And it wasn’t a very bad thing. Browsers were able to cope up with their new role as desktop mail replacement clients. Fast forward to 2004 and Google unleashes Gmail with extensive use of AJAX, and it seemed like desktop mail is gone for good. It didn’t help either that Outlook Express (bundled with Windows) the earliest of which I remember is Windows 98, and even up to Windows Mail bundled with Windows Vista (more like putting lipstick on an old, farting pig) – is really just a farcically inept cough-up of Microsoft’s own cash cow of an enterprise (Exchange) mail client, Microsoft Outlook.

Me however, being a a tech hippie wannabe and a Windows fanboy, etc., and one who would want to do it another way when everyone else does it this way, started playing with old-school clients like Eudora (whose interface I never got wrapping my head around with), then eventually, and for the longest time, Mozilla Thunderbird (my attachment to Firefox of which is the primary reason).

To the dot-com babies who know no mail other than web mail (those at most in their early 20’s), using a desktop client’s biggest advantage is being able to funnel multiple email accounts into one single interface. If you’re like me with different accounts all over the place, a desktop client makes managing (read, reply, etc) your messages just a little less of a pain, and you can use a single account for all outbound email. You’ll need either a POP3- or an IMAP4-enabled service: most services offer either. If your email service is managed via cPanel, you’ll find the settings in a little option called “Configure Outlook” under Email > Manage Accounts in the main page.

Yahoo! Mail does neither POP nor IMAP, which is sad, where most of Asia’s netizens are dependent. For the rest of the world, though (read: America) Windows Live Hotmail is holding steadfast, and is now tightly tied to Windows Live Mail, and is the easiest one I’ve seen without the messy configuration screens other desktop clients are guilty of.

Tip for the geeks: IMAP > POP. Think of it this way: POP forces you to download your messages as they come, and when shuffling between email clients (your smart phone, the one in your personal laptop that you carry around, the desktop you have at work) – you’ll have messages scattered across each station and this defeats the everything-everywhere premise of desktop mail.

IMAP, however, synchronizes everything, anywhere you try to access it from. Since Google Mail cheaped out on us by implementing POP over IMAP, you can work around this limitation by using an intermediate service with IMAP, such as AIM Mail.

(1) Set up your client’s incoming settings to hose emails from your AIM Mail’s IMAP service; (2) set Gmail to forward ALL email to your AIM Mail; (3) set up your mail client to send email via your Gmail’s SMTP service.

Windows Live Mail’s interface is very much Outlook 2003-ish, here with Windows Vista’s Aero treatment:

Junk Mail controls that don’t work just yet: