Oracle UPK users

I was surprised by the lack of information available for the very mature Oracle UPK software package.  I may dig into this more in the future but a few quick tips about that program:

1. I strongly recommend exploring the PowerPoint export and edit function.  There are a number of oddities with this program, but it drastically sped up minor changes to the UPK file edit process.  If your company has not enabled this feature, make a BIG fuss about making it available.  This can save a huge amount of time both editing and re-recording UPK sequences.
2. There were a few places where LibreOffice Impress was able to do some things that Microsoft PowerPoint couldn't, especially around creating precise, full screen presentations to import individual frames into.  Having that program handy can compliment PowerPoint in a few areas.
3. If you haven't checked it out yet, definitely look into the excellent ActivePresenter program, which has quite a bit of overlap with the Oracle program.  Additionally, there may be areas where the two are compatible by using ActivePresenter export to PowerPoint and then importing to Oracle.  This is especially useful if your version of the program was as slow and problematic as ours.

Recent places (Win7 trick)

This is an old trick that I'm sure has been highlighted elsewhere at length, but to me felt like a new discovery.  There's a place on your computer where the machine automatically saves things you've been doing.  It works like a browser history and is helpful if you just can't find what you were working on yesterday.

On Win7, you can find this here:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\

If I remember correctly, this had a standard presence on your start menu back on Win2k and before, but somehow got pushed out, and I had a hard time finding it.  Right now I'm working day to day on any one of a hundred different files on my machine so this has become increasingly important.

Note that unlike browser history, if you want additional privacy, just clearing this folder is not the answer.  Definitely look into disk encryption and programs like CCleaner and BleachBit.

Encrypted email tools

It's a little out of date, but here's a very good overview of the encrypted email situation, even with NSA leaks and OpenSSL vulnerabilities.

It's roughly the same as it was ten years ago: GPG / PGP is annoying and nobody wants to use it (I've even traded emails with GPG devs that don't actively encrypt their mail).  Similarly, S/MIME has been around forever but nobody uses it.  Even though both Enigmail for Thunderbird and gpg4usb radically simplify the process, there's been little impact.

Basic Sony Clie usage guide

Background

I kept telling myself that I'd eventually find an a replacement device for the Sony Clie device I found back in 2009 and finish this intro.  Unfortunately, it's been quite a few years and it's just not a project I'm going to come back to.  What follows is hopefully some useful data for someone who finds an old device and wants to breathe some life into it.

This discusses the Sony Clie device of the PEG series.  It may serve as a kind of HOWTO and FAQ in place of many that exist on the Internet, including Sony's Web site, which was mostly useless.

I have spent an enormous amount of time working and researching and reading to try and make the device work *relatively* well.  It is useful now but its features are tightly restricted by how much energy and focus I'm willing to put towards the device.  Busy professionals should steer away from this model as inefficient and unintuitive.

History

Sony started out the market in the 1980s with the walkman and started the whole hand-held market.  However, it's clear that they have not followed up into the digital age in any way, shape, or form.  This author has had similar problems with their MiniDisc series.

Sony's Web site was largely useless.  You cannot download the drivers, you must either order a CD from Sony or find someone on the Internet who will let you download the CD's contents from them.  I was lucky enough to find the second option.

Common operations

Playing Music on your Clie

Note:

• You cannot transfer MP3s that have odd characters (such as parenthesis, !, or others) or files with especially long names.
• Transfer is *extremely* slow over the PDA or IR (approx a minute per megabyte).  Try to find an adapter for Sony's Secure Digital cards and transfer the files independent of your PDA, then insert it.  This may significantly increase transfer rates.

First, you must move MP3s over to the device.

1. "Install" feature in the Palm Desktop (just drag-and-drop mp3s into the window and it will transfer them).  Note: you can also use the Infrared transfer, which you must somehow turn on on the palm's IR.  All that is necessary is to somehow initialize ANY infrafred transfer activity on the palm which may be done via using the sync tool over IR, trying to "beam" practically anything, or otherwise.  (This is highly unituitive and confusing.)
2. The files will slowly transfer to your PDA
3. Move them to the /Palm/Programs/MSSOUNDS directory on your memory card.
4. Eject the memory card and re-insert it.  The MP3 files should then be available.

Moving ATRAC3 files over to the device

This section is unfinished because it is so difficult.  Presumably the same as above but because SonicStage does not transfer the files directly from CD to Palm, this has been very frustrating.

The device plays both MP3 files as well as ATRAC3, which can be generated almost exclusively by Sony's poorly made SonicStage software.  Although much smaller than MP3, it is also very low quality.  On portable devices with poor headphones, this may not be an issue but making ATRAC3 files is painfully difficult and the files do not transfer

The frequently asked questions, documentation, and other elements seem to have been updated *only* when the device first arrived on the market.  Although there is a wide variety of feature-rich software and it is clearly a step forward in many ways, it is disjointed, hard to use, and (again) uninuitive.

Notes on Recording Audio

• Make sure to set Mic Sensitivity under the Preferences menu.  High and Low are drastically different, with Low being much more suited for personal recordings and High for lectures.
• Recording mode should, with rare exception be set to SP (higher quality).  LP sounds "foggy".
• The A->B button is useful for repeating a specific phrase or statement.  It does so by repeating specific parts of an individual file.  Hit A when you wish the file to begin and B when you want it to end.
• To prevent the record button from being accidentally pressed while being jostled around in your pocket, set the power button to "hold".

Copying recorded files to your computer

This is easy.  You may either "Beam" (Infrared) or "Send" (USB cable) via the sound recording application.

Encoding the copied files into MP3

The files copied to your computer are not in a normal format that can be transferred easily to MP3.  At the time, I used Winamp to re-encode them as raw WAV format, but there are a lot more tools available than back then.  Here's the process I used:

1. Use Winamp software (http://www.winamp.com) and go through the "Options - Preferences" ... Under "Plug-Ins" on the left-hand menu, select "Output" and choose Nullsoft Disk Writer Plugin.  Then, in the same window, select "Configure" and set the output directory (probably the Desktop or c:\Documents and Settings\'''YOURUSERNAME'''\Desktop).
2. Now, simply click the play button on Winamp and it will output to regular windows-format WAV files.  These files are the correct format to be encoded in MP3.
3. If you wish, you may edit the files using a program called [http://audacity.sf.net Audacity] to cut out silent portions or to do minor fixes poor sound recordings.  For a more advanced software for audio cleanup, look to SoundForge.
4. To encode high-quality MP3s, look to the program [http://www.google.com/search?q=lamedrop&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official LameDrop].  LameDrop is easy to configure by right-clicking on the small window.  Be sure to set the program to the lowest setting (all the way to the left) and on "mono".  Then just drag-and-drop the Winamp-created WAV files onto the window and wait for the progress bars to convert them.

Sony Clie downloads: http://sony-clie.pdatopsoft.com/  (may be down but includes freeware)


Device Technical Specifications

Info taken (and modified in places) from
Sony CLIÉ PEG-TG50
Manufacturer: Sony Electronics, Inc.
Part number: PEGTG50

General

    * Built-in devices
    * Display, Speaker, Jog Dial, Keyboard, Microphone

    * Weight: 6.2 oz
    * Included expansion base(s)
    * Docking cradle
    * Keyboard back-light

Operating System / Software

* OS provided: Palm OS 5.0

* Software included: SMS, HotSync, Reversi, Vindigo, Breakout, Contacts, Memo Pad, NetFront, PowerOne, Security, Bejeweled, CLIÉ Mail, CLIÉ Memo, Card Info, Date Book, WorldMate, CLIÉ Album, CLIÉ Files, Calculator, PhotoStand, To Do List, CLIÉ Viewer, AcidFreecell, Address Book, Audio Player, Movie Player, Photo Editor, CLIÉ Launcher, Remote Camera, Sound Utility, Flash Player 5, SonicStage 1.5, TakTik (Trial), Voice Recorder, QuickTime 5.0.2, Mobipocket Reader, Sound Converter 2, World Alarm Clock, BumpAttack Pinball, Image Converter 1.0, Memory Stick Backup, Memory Stick Import, Intellisync Lite 4.0, StreetFinder Express, CLIÉ Remote Commander, Margi Presenter-to-Go, PictureGear Studio 1.0, Memory Stick Export 1.3, Palm Desktop 4.1 for PC, Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1, Picsel Technologies Picsel Viewer, Stand Alone Crossword Puzzles for Palm OS (Trial)

Supported operating systems
Microsoft Windows XP Home/Professional, Microsoft Windows 98 SE / Windows ME, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional

Memory
* Installed RAM: 16 MB
* Installed ROM: 16 MB ROM

Processor: 200 MHz
Input Device: QWERTY Keyboard

Audio:

* Digital audio standards supported:MP3, ATRAC3
* Audio input type: Microphone
* Audio output type: Speaker(s)
* Voice recording capability

Display
* Display type: TFT active matrix
* Color support: 16-bit (64K colors)
* Max resolution: 320 x 320

Expansion / Connectivity
* Wireless connectivity: IrDA, Bluetooth
* Expansion slot(s) total (free): 1 Memory Stick
* Total free slots: 1

Power
* Battery installed ( max )
* 1 Lithium polymer
* Mfr estimated battery life* 10 hour(s)
* Power supply device* Power adapter
* Power device frequency required: 50/60 Hz

System Requirements for PC connection
* Min RAM size
* 96 MB
* Min hard drive space
* 200 MB

Firefox plugins I'm using at work

It would definitely hurt not to have these on hand:

• DownThemAll - for yet another really slow and uncooperative SharePoint installation
• Open in IE - for the same reason as DownThemAll -- the site sometimes works better with IE
• HTTPS Everywhere - have this on all my machines for overall better security and privacy
• Print Edit - I print a lot and this saves me a *lot* of ink.  The PDF save tool inside it is also excellent.
• TileTabs - lots of our tools are web based so being able to fit more on one screen makes me more productive
• uBlock Origin - I don't really have strong feelings about adblocking tools, I just need to keep distractions to a minimum.
• Theme: White Glossy Look by DreDre

Secure your documents

I was really impressed by an article talking about the various different ways to ensure document security across multiple formats.  Based on what I know about the topic, this is very accurate.

Crop your images

Maye it's just me, but a huge percentage of screenshots I see have some amount of space around them.  Here are a few programs available that do intelligent autocrop:

• GIMP
• Irfanview
• Greenshot (and of course ShareX which contains Greenshot)

Fixing MS Office 2013

I've been really surprised with some of the frustrating updates to Microsoft Office 2013.  I've already had issues with Microsoft Word going way back but this was several additional stages of unpleasant.

PCWorld put out a breakdown on the problems and available cures but one one not mentioned in this list was setting up to auto-save to .doc rather than deal with checking "compatibility mode" on every single save.

Microsoft's insistence on adding pointless additional format updates that don't work with earlier programs helps sell software but doesn't help users.  While Excel and PowerPoint keep getting better, Word hasn't seen any dramatic feature updates (that I've seen) since 2003.  On average I use Word at least an hour a day so I feel like I would have seen something in the past 8 years.  Here's a breakdown on all the compatibility oddities.

PowerPoint 2010 trick: large "hook" arrow

I spent SO much time trying to get very long, very thin arrows in PowerPoint to look the way I wanted (more like Visio) and finally found out the gimmick: giving the program real things to connect to.

This may be obvious to everyone else but it took me quite a while to come up with.

Edit: Left off the link, updated.

PowerPoint 2010 trick: file comparison

I know I haven't done anything like this before, but I came up with a quick PowerPoint trick on how to do a comparison between PowerPoint files when PowerPoint's own compare function won't work.  Hopefully someone will benefit from this.

EDIT: Sorry, I thought the file linked.  Updated.

Bleachbit system cleaner

An excellent community-developed free software program, Bleachbit cleans up all the space-hogging temporary files on your computer and can even wipe these files to protect your privacy.  The program isn't the most beautiful of the computer cleanup group (an award that would go to CCleaner), but its power, ability to work on Linux, and open source code make it a very reliable system tool.

Wuala backup service review

When I purchased a LaCie drive, I got a free subscription to the Wuala service.  Although initially the program was just what I needed, I wanted to add that various problems have cropped up on my Windows XP drive.

Good things:

1. Cheap, good upload speeds, and secure
2. Cross-platform
3. Reasonably easy to share files and folders from your library.  Not as simple as Dropbox.
4. Located in Germany, which has better privacy laws than most countries

Problems:

1. High processor usage - anytime I'm uploading something, its frequently using 100% of my system.  On a modern computer, file uploads (even encrypted ones) should not require this kind of power.
2. High disk usage - even if you set the temporary directory to only a few megs, it will still save a ton of temporary data to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Wuala\Data.  I have to manually zap this whole directory every week or two.
   
3. High RAM usage - about 45 megs.  This isn't too bad for machines with lots of RAM but backup programs that run in the background should be -- you know -- efficient.
4. Frequently requires you install updates (and restart the computer) to enable the listing of a "W:" drive on your computer.  Why does this constantly need to get reinstalled?
5. Does not support encrypted volumes (e.g. TrueCrypt).  If you use the Sync program, it will constantly get confused by your encrypted volume and try to update your files with older versions.  I don't even use the included Sync program now and have instead switched out with DSynchronize.

I'm now looking into Netdrive + Tunnelier to plug into a remote SFTP account.  Before that was a lot more work, but with Wuala's poor performance, it would probably end up a lot easier.

Selling your conversations

Running an instant messaging service (such as AIM, Facebook chat, or Google Talk) isn't cheap.  Companies running these programs need to make money somehow, so knowing what people are exchanging and selling that to advertisers / marketing types is one way.

What can they sell?  How about every time someone mentions the latest action movie?  Advertisers can know if they've played too few or too many of a given commercial.  That might sound innocuous, but what about if you're arguing with your wife?  Wouldn't you like to see ads for divorce attorneys?  Customized search results sound like a great thing, but are only good for the companies that compile them.  It might seem like paranoia, but the more information search companies can get about an individual, the more targeted their searches and advertisements.  For Google and Facebook, that's most of their business.

Instant messaging service privacy reports don't paint a pretty picture and, as you might expect, Facebook is the worst.

Solutions?  Many online services host their own chat servers (known as XMPP Servers), but another option for Windows is using Pidgin with OTR installed or Adium for Mac (with OTR installed by default).  That way you can benefit from the fast, reliable commercial servers without giving up your privacy.

Myth of the Intuitive Interface

An outstanding article critiquing the format and systems behind Android and iOS menu systems.  It also provides a little background on the conventions and thinking behind interfaces over the last 20 years.  A great read.

I hate my iPhone

After the recent frustration with this bewilderingly stupid device, I came up with a list of things I hate about my iPhone:

• Requires entry of a valid credit card before using the phone
• Extension cable is not an acceptable accessory
• When downloading updates, the device cannot go into an off state or it will quit downloading them.  You have to keep messing with the phone.  This would be fine when its not plugged in to save power, but when it is?  Annoying as hell.
• On 2 occasions now has deleted all my settings, folders, and organization
• On 2 occasions, I've used the iTunes program manager to organize things and it just drops my changes and reverts to the original.
• Poor battery life is manageable by turning off Wifi but its 4 button presses before I can get to a wifi management screen.  It doesn't sound like much until you're doing it 3 times a day and wonder "why isn't this on the home screen?"
• Voice memos tool that comes with the device is unresponsive until about 10 seconds after the program actually comes up
• Device usage must be reset every month to keep track of data use.  It doesn't do this automatically.  The AT&T app you can download to handle this in the iPhone's place is not easy to use, probably because they have a financial incentive to let you go over your minutes.
• iTunes is bloated, difficult to use, and doesn't back up my device correctly.
• On a Mac, if you don't have iPhoto installed, it won't copy over your pictures.
• When using the App Store and surf through categories of programs, every time you download a program, you must start over at the beginning of that category and can't keep surfing through that section.
• I "authorized" a second computer to manage my music and now when I connect it to the first computer, it insists on deleting all the present music before I can manage my library.  Ugh!
• Much prefer my Android music player to the iPod program included on my phone.
• Can't connect my iPhone via BlueTooth to my computer and transfer files or sync the devices.
• No system for backing up iPhone programs or settings outside of the iTunes software.  If iTunes doesn't work or messes it up for some reason, you're screwed.
• If an application update causes problems, there's no way to go back to the previous version.  This isn't easy on Android, but can be done.

Anticipating the question: "Why don't you stop complaining and get another phone?" I'm working on it.

Beware iOS 4.3

Deleted:

• More than half my applications, including stuff I paid for, including settings
  
• When I was able to restore some of those apps, it dumped all the categories I'd set up
• Lost a text message I got during the process of updating

After frustrations with accessories, lack of media support, lack of openness by Apple, and continuous problems with iTunes of one kind or another, I won't be buying iAnything.

Don't use Google with IE

Just logging into Gmail anywhere using IE means that your password is saved on that computer in a way that can be instantly retrieved.  A simple program can be downloaded and run to find your password.  Test it for yourself.  If you're forced to use IE to check a Google account, make sure you go through the process of clearing all browser information.

This is not an issue on Firefox, but its not entirely IE's fault as Google could disable this and many other Google applications store their password in a totally insecure way.  Firefox users should not save their password and, if they do, should set a master password.

Related: IE usage drops below 50% in the US.

Don't use Microsoft Word

...or if you do, avoid the .doc or .docx format.  Save to RTF or HTML.

Related:

• Please don't send me Microsoft Word documents

Recent Mac finds

• MenuMeters - I was upset when a similar program went payware until I found a free, open, and just as good alternative.
• Keka - Finally a high compression opener and creator for Mac.  Now if they would only integrate a file manager.
  
• Miro Video Converter - Send files into formats that will work with your devices.  Simple, clean, and pretty.
• Mplayer OSX Extended - Finally broad format support like SMplayer for Windows.

Updates on stuff posted here before:

• Perian - broader format support for Mac's own Quicktime player.  Primarily use it to play Windows Media format files.
• Growl - notification system for OS X that Windows would do well to mimic.  I've probably talked about it before but oh well.
• Burn - really got to test out this program out recently and wow did it perform.  Great stuff.
• Audacity Beta - leaps and bounds above the non-beta version.  Remember auto recording based on noise detection (like if you talk?).  Its in there.

Favorite ugly Mac software: Retriever

Its not easy to use or pretty but its proven to be supremely useful.  Retriever is an open source download manager that supports web, FTP, and BitTorrent downloads and works spectacularly well for wireless connections that will occasionally have corrupted or unfinished downloads.  Also works great with secure websites that require a login.

Its unclear why Firefox doesn't have something built into it already that does this but until then, Retriever works beautifully.