Buynov

I went to the Eclipse website yesterday, to download the latest version (the JEE edition, if I have to be exact). I went to Enterprise Java -> Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers and the download started successfully, but I noticed that the file, that was being downloaded is old (not from the latest, Helios release). Thank God they put the release in the file name. I went to Downloads and managed to get the correct, latest version from there.

I wondered, however, what could be done to resolve the problem with the erroneous link. I remembered, that the Eclipse community maintains an issue-tracking system, Bugzilla. I went there and filed a new bug report, 329827. Within about 15 minutes, the problem was resolved (see the timestamp difference between the first and the next to the last comment in the bug report).

Now, if you think about it, I could have done nothing. Not only that, but I could have grumbled around what idiots the guys at Eclipse are and how their site sucks big time and the links don’t work. I pushed myself though, and did something else.

I’ll leave it up to you to deside which approach is better.

On the USB stick I carry with me, I have a directory (called InitialSetup) with software for Windows, which I update occasionally (with new versions of the applications). I install the software each time I do a new installation on my computer, or the computer of a friend. These are applications, which I had used for awhile and am pleased with their reliability. All of them are free, some are with open source code. I will list those application in a series of 4 posts – I hope they will be useful to you too.

I separated the software in the following four categories (thеse will be the names of the posts on the subject as well):

1. System tools
2. Internet/Network applications (this post)
3. Office applications/Tools for document (word) processing
4. Multimedia applications

Browsers

There are at least three browsers, that are much better than Internet Explorer for several reasons. They are more secure (in the sense of Security and Protection in the previous post on the subject), they are faster and they offer additional functionality to what IE has.

• Firefox - Internet Explorer’s main competitor according to usage statistics of the web browsers in the internet. Besides being quite fast and reliable, Firefox is also famous for abiding official internet standards (W3C) most strictly. It is very useful, that Firefox can be extended with a variety of add-ons, which improve your internet (and not only) experience. You can install, for example, status bar icons to notify you when you have new mail (without the need to log into your email account every time you want to check it), block Flash advertisements from the web sites you visit, to improve your Gmail experience and a bunch of other extensions.
• Opera - Alongside the most popular mobile browser, Opera Mini, Opera provide a desktop browser for quite some time. Very fast browser, the first one to introduce browsing in tabs (instead of different windows). This is a common feature for all modern browsers, but Opera made it first. The team behind Opera is known for their innovations, and they were the first to introduce the Speed Dial – when opening a new window/tab, the user is presented a preview of the most visited (or preconfigured) pages to choose from and go there fast. At present Google Chrome (and even Safari) provides the same functionality, but don’t forget that Opera were first in this as well. Opera also offers add-ons (widgets), but the choice is pretty limited, compared to what Firefox has to offer.
• Google Chrome – Google’s browser slowly (but consistently) gains traction and is based on the same open source toolkit (WebKit), used by Apple for their browser, Safari. It also introduced extensions recently, which will make it even more popular. The curious thing about Chrome is, that it updates itself automatically (without asking the user) and each website is opened in e separate process – meaning that if one page you’ve opened crashes, the rest are left intact.
• Launchy – Launchy is not exactly a browser, but this seems the most appropriate category for it. I mentioned this extremely useful application before and to be honest, I’ve been using it intensively ever since. A really useful tool for starting applications quickly, without having to look for them in the Start menu. Just press Alt + Space, and start typing the name of the application you want to start and Launchy will suggest the programs it found. Try it if you haven’t already – you won’t regret it.

Download Managers / Torrents

• uTorrent - Nowadays you don’t have to be a “pirate” to use a torrent client. A number of web sites offer download of software through torrents, to reduce the load on their servers. uTorrent is really, really small (the installation file is only 300k!) and fast client, which does not exhaust much of your system’s resources. At the same time it handles torrent downloads smoothly and efficiently.
• Azureus / Vuze – I had been using Azureus (long before it was renamed to Vuze) for quite awhile, before I came across uTorrent. The main reason I stopped using it, is that it is really, really sluggish – it loads very slowly and then you can feel it is working in the background (your whole PC becomes slower). Despite this shortcoming, it is one of the best torrent clients and handles torrent downloads wonderfully, even when other clients fail. They introduced media capabilities in Vuze recently, which will transform it in something like a Media Center (not just the next torrent client).
• DownThemAll! – Firefox add-on, which handles file downloads much better than the default download manager Firefox has built-in. It downloads files faster and supports resuming of downloads, if the connection is dropped, for example (and the server you are downloading from supports it). It also has a very useful dTa OneClick! function, which allows you to easily select directory for the download (from the most recent you’ve used).

Instant Messengers

• Skype - The most popular application for internet calls, which helped it become one of the most popular instant messaging clients, as well. One of the main characteristics of Skype is, that the communication is secure. A message sent on Skype does not go through a central server and is encrypted, which makes it almost impossible for someone in the middle to read it. A drawback of this approach is, that if you send a message to someone, who is offline, she will receive the message only when you are both online again, at the same time.
• Miranda - Great little instant messaging client for Windows. You can use it for ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and even Jabber. It is really small, does not load your computer significantly and works fast and reliably. Until recently, it’s major drawback was its ugly UI, but there are improvements on this front – there are better looking icons in the latest builds.

Remote Access

• FileZilla - Great open source FTP client, localized in a variety of different languages, including Bulgarian.
• Putty – If you ever needed to access remote machines over SSH (Linux primarily), this is THE client for Windows. It’s UI looks a bit outdated and clumsy, but it works great and once you get used to it, you stop worrying about it.
• WinSCP - Very good client for file transfer over SCP or SFTP. The user interface reminds about Norton Commander and helps to transfer files to and from Linux/Unix machines easily and without hassle.

Last Thursday, on Apr 08, Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall presented the plans for the new iPhone operating system, iPhone OS 4. The event itself can be seen on the official site. What are the highlights?

Multi-tasking

The purpose of multitasking is simple – to be able to run several applications concurrently. To be able to play some music, for example, and while listening to it to browse the internet, or write an SMS, or do something else. Or to run Skype and do other stuff until someone writes you a Skype message or initiates a Skype call. In iPhone this is currently impossible – if you start a program, it is the only one running, and in order to start another one, you will have to close the first. If you run Skype, it is the only application running and if you want to google something, for example, you must close Skype and run the browser. That’s it, these are the rules. For everyone. Except for Apple’s applications, of course.

This is a subject Apple’s been criticized about for years (literally) and now, with the release of iPhone OS 4, it is expected to change. From what I saw on Steve Jobs’s presentation, however, it is not likely that the iPhone multitasking will be anywhere close to what we are used to in other platforms (in terms of capabilities it gives the developers), but it is still something. As a matter of fact, the popularity of the iPhone (about 50 million devices sold in around three years time), without multitasking furthermore suggests, that this is not something you can’t live without. And Apple are so concerned that the multitasking could harm the battery life or the performance of the device, that the seven services for multitasking that are available on the iPhone, they implemented themselves (which is not such a bad idea, if you think about it for awhile).

I find Steve Jobs’s comment about the question how iPhone multitasking applications can be stopped interesting – “if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.” (you can follow the Q&A section, that took place after the presentation at the end of the Engadget’s live post). He commented in a similar manner the need of a stylus for touch-screen devices on the initial launch of the iPhone – do you recall the last time you noticed a release of a modern smart-phone with a stylus? He might just be right again.

“Multi-marketing”

The purpose of “multimarketing” is simple – to be able to release a product on several “markets” concurrently. To release the iPhone as a mass market mobile phone, for example, and at the same time to release it as a competitive offering for businesses, as a gaming console and as a digital book reader. All at once – in one product, one device. To see what I have in mind, read on.

iPhone as a (BlackBerry?) business phone

There are three characteristics that lead to BlackBerry’s dominance as a most popular mobile platform in the US:

• Secure (encrypted) communication – Every connection the BlackBerry device initiates to the BlackBerry server is encrypted. This means in practice, that nobody can “spy” your communication while you work on the mobile device. One of the new features of the iPhone OS 4, is that all incoming/outgoing iPhone email messages are encrypted, similarly to what BlackBerry/RIM are doing.
• Push email – Means that you receive your email messages on your BlackBerry device the moment they arrive in your Inbox. No delays, everything happens instantly. Additionally, the technology allows to improve the performance of the mobile device, because it doesn’t need to check if there is a new email message every 5 minutes (for example). iPhone has push email support for more than a year (I am not sure if it requires MS Exchange or not, though).
• Centralized device management - Likewise to what BlackBerry devices have, Apple will allow remote, centralized mobile device management. In the BlackBerry world this means the company administrators could, for example, install applications on company handsets without any user interaction. Another possibility is to disallow application installations for programs that the company did not authorize for use.

Keeping in mind the growth of revenue RIM are enjoying during the last couple of years, this might be a good attempt to attract at least some of the BlackBerry business users.

iPhone as a (XBox?) gaming console

There are games for iPhone since the very beginning, like in almost all mobile devices. New in iPhone OS 4, however, is the social gaming network, called Game Center. According to people who are familiar with the subject (I am not one of those), the good implementation of the XBox Live platform for online gaming is the main reason for the success of XBox 360. Well, apparently Apple are trying to do the same. And it is definitely not accidental that Steve Jobs compared the iPhone with another two popular, portable gaming consoles like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

iPhone as a (Kindle?) digital book reader

Apple released iBooks with iPad, and now the application (iBooks) will also be available for the iPhone. This is a direct attack towards the users of Kindle from Amazon, which by the way, already has an iPhone application.

iPhone as a (Google Ads?) platform for online advertising

According to Steve Jobs the online advertising, which is currently mostly effective for internet search engines (yes, Google) will transform in advertising for mobile applications (but not for mobile search). Currently a leader in this segment is AdMob, who were recently acquired by Google. And although the demo of the capabilities of iAd seems quite impressive, I seriously doubt that this will be the case with the regular adverts in iAd. They will probably look like the ones on AdMob/Google.

The new operating system will be available for the users of iPhone in the summer, and for iPad users in the fall. Not all new features will be available for the 1st and 2nd generation iPhones – multitasking will be missing, for example,  “due to hardware limitations”.

On the USB stick I carry with me, I have a directory (called InitialSetup) with software for Windows, which I update occasionally (with new versions of the applications). I install the software each time I do a new installation on my computer, or the computer of a friend. These are applications, which I had used for awhile and I was pleased with their reliability. All of them are free, some are with open source code. I will list those application in a series of 4 posts – I hope they will be useful to you too.

I separated the software in the following four categories (thеse will be the names of the posts on the subject as well):

1. System tools (this post)
2. Internet/Network applications
3. Office applications/Tools for document (word) processing
4. Multimedia applications

Security and protection

• Avira AntiVir – Anti-virus software, free for non-commercial use. I use it for a very long time and by far I got a virus only once (quite some time ago). Very reliable and one of the few anti-virus packages to be able to co-exist with another anti-virus software (not that you need one).
• Spybot Search & Destroy – Software for protection from spyware. In general, spyware are malicious programs that collect personal information and can enable a break into your computer.

If you doubt that the security of your PC is compromised, use these two products – the chance that you will be able to resolve the problem is pretty big. Well, it stil depends on how negligent you were and how far you allowed the malicious software to reach into your machine – sometimes the re-install of Windows is still the only option.

Archiver

• 7-Zip – Forget about WinZIP or WinRAR. This is a wonderful, free archiver with open source code and with a Bulgarian localization. It supports unpacking of (almost) any popular format, namely ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z. It can create archives in 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR formats, and the 7z is own format, which provides significantly improved ZIP compression, similar to the level of compression of RAR. Keep in mind that packing/unpacking a 7z file takes much longer than the regular ZIP, though.

Burning CDs/DVDs

• ISORecorder – Simple tool for creating and burning image (.iso) files. Although ever since Windows XP there is a built-in tool for writing files on a CD/DVD, it does not allow burning entire disk images. This simple tool helps to resolve this problem, without a tool like Nero, for example.
• Infra Recorder – Infra Recorder is much more capable than ISORecorder, as it supports BIN/CUE disk images, creation of audio/video disks, erasing RW (re-writable) diska, etc. Unfortunately it is still in beta, and this is obvious at some points (I did not have problems with the burning of disks itself, though).

Encryption

• Gpg4Win – A must have tool for everyone, who wants to use PGP/GPG under Windows, without paying the ridiculous 183 EURO (!) per license of PGP Desktop. It has an Outlook integration, which is pretty good (I used it several years ago for the last time), Windows Explorer integration (so that you can encrypt/decrypt files easily) and almost everything you would need. And the best thing is, that the project is still supported and updated regularly.

Java

• Java Runtime Environment – If you want to use some of the programs in these posts, you would need a Java Runtime Environment. You can get it here. You can see sample Java applications here. Don’t forget to check out the Java version of Quake 2 – Jake 2, an excellent example for everyone, who says that Java is slow.

Important updates

• Windows Service Pack – I’d say it is obligatory to install the latest service pack (a package with updates and bugfixes) for the version of Windows you use, right after the initial installation. The bugfixes are usually worth the effort (which is to wait for about 10-15 minutes for the package to install). How you can install the latest service pack for Windows XP, for example, you can see here.
• Office Service Pack – The purpose of the service pack for Microsoft Office is the same as the one for Windows – it contains improvements, which allow you to use the product more easily and reliably. For instruction on how to install the latest service pack for MS Office 2003, for example, see here.
• Hardware drivers – The drivers you got when you bought your computer/laptop (on a CD probably) are almost certainly out-dated (not to mention that in some cases they don’t even work). On the vendor’s site (with a 99% chance) you can find newer and better versions. It is a good idea to visit the site and download the latest drivers. Save them somewhere (on a USB stick, for example) before you re-install – because if you don’t manage to get the network to work after the Windows installation, this means you will not be able to download anything from the internet. If you have a laptop, it is easier – go to the manufacturer’s site and locate the Support link, then search for the model number of your laptop. If you have a PC, however, you will have to download drivers for the motherboard and the video card separately (if the video is not built into the motherboard), and in some cases you might even have to download additional drivers, like for the audio card, for example. Apart from that, the procedure is similar – go to the vendor’s site and locate the Support link. After that search for the component model number (you can probably see it on the papers you got when you purchased it).

Other

• Process Explorer – Very good task manager for Windows, much better than the original Windows Task Manager, that comes with Windows. It allows you to view all running processes, how much memory or processor time each process takes (including chronologically, for the last several minutes), kill selected processes (much more invasive than usual), etc. If your machine slows down occasionally and you have no idea why, try Process Explorer, it might help you identify the problem.
• JDiskReport – Quite simple and at the same time useful tool. It requires Java (see above). It helps when you experience shortage in disk space. It scans the disk or directory you pointed to, and tells you how much space each file/directory occupies on the hard drive. This helps you to identify the files/directories that take too much space and you don’t need (or you probably forgot to delete, for example). It integrates into Windows Explorer, so if you choose a directory or a drive and right-click on it, you have the option to start JDiskReport directly for the selected directory/drive.