How well does WINE Work?

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

How well does Wine Work for most Windows applications?

Wine (Wine is Not an Emulator) is not an emulator (if you didn’t gather that deduction from the acronym definition). Don’t expect it to emulate. It provides an application compatibility layer for Windows programs.

Wine supports many programs. Most programs that are most successful are not graphics intensive — integrating support for graphic programs and DirectX seems to be the biggest problem in Wine right now. There are some programs that just are not going to work in Wine.

Winehq.org (Official Wine website) provides an Application Database in order to help you determine if a program will work under Wine, or what things you can do to make it work properly. If you are considering switching to Linux and want to check to see if your current [absolutely necessary] applications will run on Linux, check the AppDB. Be sure to look under the details about the program to see if any specific features [which you may or may not need] don’t work, or don’t work especially well.

Wine is compatible with Linux, Solaris, and MacOS — heck, there’s even a Windows version of it (I assume for developers).

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Adding Sitemaps to your Robots.txt

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

How do I add my sitemap to my Robots.txt file?

It is amazingly simple. Just add:

Sitemap: www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Easy, eh? More Information can be found out here, as well as the Robotstxt.org website

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Codecs Issues

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

Problem:
My media player (eg. Windows Media Player) is giving me an error saying it doesn’t have the codecs required to view/play a certain file.

What:
Codecs are a file format reader that allows different media types to be viewed/played. Though you may have a program that says its compatible with a format (eg: MP3, WMA, MPEG, MP4) you might not have the codecs that actually allow your computer programs to read them since there are many codecs.

Solution:
Download the latest K-Lite codecs pack (the Full version is more fitting for most computers) from here:
http://www.free-codecs.com/K_Lite_Codec_Pack_download.htm

Download VLC LAN
VLC is a very competent program for reading/playing/viewing many different media types. If you de-select the extensions while installing, it will give you many useful codecs.
(visit http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ )
(Kudos to Rob_Pomeroy for his extensive list of software http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,19999.html )

Upgrade your current media player (self explanatory)

If all of that fails, then you need to just uninstall your current media software, and re-install it

Problems with Quicktime or Quicktime codecs?
See http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm for an alternative to the over-powering QuickTime

Problems with Real Player or Real Player codecs?
See http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm for an alternative to the once-popular-but-no-its-no-so over-powering RealPlayer

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Why should I get Spyare, Adware, and Virus Protection?

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

Question:
Why should I get Antivirus, spyware, and adware protection?

Answer:
The question you should probably be asking is “What are viruses, spyware, and adware?”
Viruses are harmful malicious programs that are intended to cause damage to your computer, and, overall, havoc. They are something that you should take all steps to avoiding. One single virus can take your entire system down, and take all of your data with it.

Spyware refers to a program that has the intent of gathering your personal information, and using it for marketing/soliciting purposes. Spyware can collect a number of things, but are not limited to: phone numbers, email addresses, bank cards, Social security numbers, information about your bills, and much more.
Spyware can be dangerous, since it can be used to collect bank card information. Its not safe to use online shopping without good spyware protection.

Adware refers to a program that displays advertising on your computer. One very common adware program is the one that comes with Kazaa, which displays popups while Kazaa is opened. Adware such as this is called a “bundled software”.
Adware isn’t always bundled with software, sometimes, it is “sneaked” onto your system by other means. Though this advertising doesn’t necessarily steal your information, it is certainly a nuisance, and a waste of bandwidth.
Some people just assume that popups or messages they are seeing such as:

CLICK HERE FOR A FREE iPOD!”
are from the website they are viewing, but,  there is a good chance its from adware.

Adware and spyware are sometimes referred to as “grayware” simply since their intent is not to cause harm to your system, but to make money for themselves. They are not malware.

Malware or not, all of these programs will do the following for sure:
Slow down your system
Slow down your internet
Make the overall computing experience worse.

Solution:
Please see the following ComputerHope document virus, spyware, and adware removal: http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,16182.html

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Dell BIOS Update Error

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

Error: An  unexpected error occurred while running the Flash application.
Please reboot and try again.

If the error continues, please contact technical help.

Application Error Return: 0x00000610
Windows Error Return: 0x00000002
I experienced this issue on a Dell Inspiron E1505, it absolutely drove me up the wall.
Solution:
The following information is from:
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_bios&thread.id=42558
by ” Dan David”

“Click the Start button, and then click Run.
The Run window appears.
In the text box type regedit, then press the <Enter> key.
The Registry Editor window appears.

NOTE:  The User Account Control window may appear. If so, click Continue.

Double-click the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to expand its contents.
Double-click the folder SYSTEM to expand its contents.
Double-click the folder ControlSet001 to expand its contents.
Double-click the folder Services to expand its contents.
Right-click the DELLBIOS folder and select Delete.
Close all windows and restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
Run the BIOS installer to flash the BIOS.“

–  Dan David  Dell Community Forum Member
http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_bios&thread.id=42558

The more information links like this make their way across the Internet, the less questions you find that are unsolved for the solution, and the better sources you will find.

Do comment with your success — or even failures — of this advice.

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FireFox 3.6 Beta 5

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

FireFox 3.6 Beta 5 has been released to the public with a wide range of new features.

Stable enough to use, and with new and surprising features, who could resist downloading a beta program? Techno-Geeks, gamers, computer specialists — none of us seem to be able to wait for the title “Stable” to appear in front of our favourite programs.

FireFox is now introducing the ability to [easily] apply themes to the browser using a new feature called “Personas”. Personas are a very new, dynamic way of selecting a new theme. All the Personas in the Persona Gallery are clean, imaginative, and very well done. Selections vary from Winter and Christmas themes to beaches, movies, music artists, vacation spots, foxes (of course), modern, old, flowers — everything.

For the most part, FireFox 3.6 Beta 5 is visibly the same as the previous version of FireFox, with the exception of a few minor layout and menu shifts.

The following is directly from the Mozilla FireFox Release Notes

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IZarc and various archive formats

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

I no longer support using IZarc. 
For a very long time, I used IZarc for archives of all sorts. Unfortunately, they have made some interesting choices to fund their developments by including adware bundled with their software. You can opt out of these during the installer, but the amount of trickery in doing so exceeds the benefits of the program. 
I now suggest 7-Zip as a do-all, end-all to most archive formats. 

See my new review for 7-Zip here:
https://zylblog.com/2014/06/7-zip/

 

Q: How do I open a A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, or ZOO file?

A: In order to open most of these file types, you must have an archive program.
Archive programs will usually not only open these types of files, but will allow you to create them.
One archive program that I suggest using is IZarc.
Download/read about here:
http://www.filehippo.com/download_izarc/
We did a review on IZarc a while back, check it out


Other archive programs may work better on some systems. If you have a problem using IZarc, see a list of alternatives here:
http://www.filehippo.com/software/compression/

Other note:
Windows ME, 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista can all read .ZIP files, as they have their own built in ZIP Archive program.

Why would I use an archive?
Archives are usually used for two reasons:
They keep entire groups of folders and files in one file, so they can be downloaded and shared easily.
Archives often contain compression features, allowing you to make grouped files smaller than they originally were.

Are there any cons from using an Archive?
The two biggest cons of using archives for storage are:
Being able to open it on all computers. Not all computers have archive software on them. Most operating systems handle .ZIP archives, but many will not handle archives like .RAR, or .ISO (Linux being an exception)
Using compression with archives can take time. The more you compress a file, the longer it will take to compress it in the first place, and the longer it will take for the next person to decompress it.

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Dilbert

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

Dilbert.com

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Our New Domain

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

We have a new domain, http://www.zylblog.com

We hope that it will be easy to remember. The old www.zylstrablog.co.nr will continue to redirect direct links correctly, however the main .co.nr page will show a notice that the address has been updated. We expect to continue to support the zylstrablog.co.nr address for quite some time, it will expire once it reaches the minimum required uses per month.

WordPress is already set up to use the new domain, and within the next week, Google should index all pages once again.

Just a shout out: Thanks (again) to Co.nr for providing us with a free, short, easy to use domain redirect for nearly two years.

Thanks also to GoDaddy.com for providing us with a .info domain for $1.07 (Deal is still going as of December 2009, check it out)
If we become popular enough to care, I am sure we may upgrade to .com.

Also thanks to EveryDNS for hosting our name servers and records, for free. Very easy to use, easy registration, quick updating, no problems.

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Default Text and Formatting in Gmail

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Jesse Zylstra

Default text size, font, and formatting is now available in Gmail via. Google Labs.

Just log into Gmail, go to “Settings” and click the “Labs” tab, and then locate “Default Text Styling” by Johnathan K.

“Would you prefer Times New Roman to Arial, or perhaps large text to small text, in the e-mails you send out? Enable this lab, head over to the ‘General’ tab on the ‘Settings’ page, and change the default text styling to better suit your preferences.”

The official post can be seen on the Official Gmail Blog

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