vincentkong.com » Software

Virtual Deskops for Windows

Vincent Kong — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:19:27 +0000

My computer desktop in the office is always clutter with many windows of open applications, and since I couldn’t get a second monitor I decided to go for an alternative solution: virtual desktops. The concept of virtual desktops is not new, it’s available on many operating systems such as Mac OS, and Ubuntu, but for some reason Windows doesn’t have this feature.

VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system. After installing VirtuaWin, I configured it with the settings displayed in the screen shots below.

To navigate between virtual desktops (also called ‘workspace’), I simply drag the mouse to the edge of the screen.

Configuring Pidgin to work with Google Talk

Vincent Kong — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:18:34 +0000

A while back the security department at work started to monitor our PCs more tightly which meant that I had to be more caution of what software I installed (including Google Talk…I probably shouldn’t be using Google Talk at all, but old habits are hard to break. ). Google Talk doesn’t have a portable version available for USB storage, so I decided to go with a portable version of Pidgin (a multi-protocol instant messaging client that supports Google Talks, MSN, Yahoo!,etc…).

Configuring Pidgin to work with Google Talk

Download and install the latest version of Pidgin
Open Pidgin and click on ” Add…”
From the drop-down box choose XMPP as the Protocol.
For Username enter your GMail username only (NOT the full email address).
For Domain enter gmail.com
For Password enter your GMail password.

Pidgin Add Account

In the “Advanced” tab:

Check “Require SSL/TLS”
Check “Force old (port 5223) SSL”
Enter for 443 for “Connect port”
Enter talk.google.com for “Connect server”
Click on “Save” and you are done.

Pidgin Advanced Settings

Personal Folders Backup for Outlook

Vincent Kong — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:20:27 +0000

Since I use a Windows Mobile phone, my contacts and personal information are sync with Outlook. I know it’s good practice to do backup, but I it’s a hassle to manually to do a backup each time. Unfortunately, that was a mistake as my Outlook content accidentally got deleted a while back.

To make sure that doesn’t happen again I installed an Outlook add on: The Personal Folders Backup which automatically backups your personal folder (.pst) file. The add on supports Outlook 2002/2003/2007.

The KMPlayer

Vincent Kong — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:50:21 +0000

When it comes to watching videos, there is not one format that dominates as a standard. We have Windows Media Video (.wmv), RealVideo (.rm or .rmvb), QuickTime Movie (.mov), DivX or Xvid (.avi), MPEG-4 (.mp4), Ogg (.ogg), Matroska (.mkv), and the list goes on. In the past I would have to install at least three media players so that I can watch all these different formats. Luckily, there are media players that are free and able to play all these formats.

The three that I know of are:

To watch RealVideo with these players you need to install the Real Alternative codec pack.

Out of the three players my preference is the KMPlayer because it produces the best sound quality. As well, it’s also able to play through incomplete or corrupted videos without stopping or crashing the player. I once tried playing a video which was only 80% complete from bittorrent, other than some cut scenes, I was able to watch the entire video without any hassles. The other two either stopped playing or crashed.

Protecting My Important Files

Vincent Kong — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:59:42 +0000

I always believe its a good idea to protect my important files even if my computer is password protected. Two key things to help protect my extra sensitive data is to encrypt it, and shred it when deleting.

To encrypt files I use AxCrypt a free software by Axantum Software AB.
To shred files or securely delete them, I use Eraser.

These two software also comes with portable versions so that it can be installed in a USB flash key or portable hard drive.

Another software that I use is TrueCrypt. This software is able create a virtual encrypted disk within a file on a hard drive and then mounts it as a real disk. What I find particular useful that “Traveller Mode” functionality. It allows TrueCrypt to be installed on any portable hard drive or storage devices.

To setup the traveller mode, I had to first create a new volume on my portable drive by following the tutorial.

After creating the volume, I followed these instructions to complete the traveller mode setup.

Organzing my Movies and Books

Vincent Kong — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:02:17 +0000

I watch a lot of media, this includes movies, tv series, and anime. As well, being in the IT industry, technology is changing all the time and I find myself reading through many articles and books. With so much material, it has become hard to track them inside an Excel spreadsheet. Searching through the web, I managed to find two free products which works well for me.

For movies: MeD’s Movie Manager
For books: eLib Pro

Analyzing My Hard Disk

Vincent Kong — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 03:42:06 +0000

No matter how large my hard drive is, it will eventually run out of space for me. When space is precious, I’m often left wondering where all the space went to. Recently, I downloaded TreeSize Free, a freeware application. With this software you can scan the drive you choose, and it will show you the size of all the folders, including sub-folders. Expanding a selected folder will give you the size of each sub-folders.

Editing 1GB Text Files

Vincent Kong — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 03:47:42 +0000

For the past couple of days I was required to analyse several web server log files that were as large as 1.3 GB. The first problem I encountered was trying to open these massive files with a text editor. I first tried opening the file with two of the most popular editors TextPad and UltraEdit. TextPad crashed before it even opened the file and while UltraEdit managed to open the file, it hung for a long time when trying to scroll through it.

I did a search on Google, and found an editor called LargeEdit, but it wasn’t as large as it name says it is and couldn’t open the file neither.

After doing a few more searches, I came upon Programmer’s File Editor a free text editor. The interface wasn’t the nicest looking and it hasn’t been updated since 1999. However, to my surprise it successfully opened the 1.3 GB log file, and I was able to manipulate the file without having much trouble.

Mass Image Resizing

Vincent Kong — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:45:07 +0000

Recently, I have been busy uploading photos to my gallery. Since the photos taken from my camera are much larger than necessary to be view on the web, all lot of image processing is needed to resize the images to a smaller resolution. I use Picasa mostly to manage my photo albums on my computer, and it comes with mass image resizing features. However, I also found two free software that allows me to do mass image resizing as well:

Photo Gadget freeware from XemiComputers Ltd. shell extension that adds image editing options to Windows Explorer.
FastStone Photo Resizer an image converter / resizer intended to enable users especially digital camera owners to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermark to images in a quick and easy batch mode

Windows Registry/File Cleaner

Vincent Kong — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:54:25 +0000

Recently I have found my laptop to be lagging very much during start up. After using it for a couple of years and with numerous installing and uninstalling of software, I knew it the problem was most likely the messy Windows registry. I didn’t want to reformat my computer so I decide to seach on Google to see what kind of registry cleaner software was available.

I ended finding a software called CCleaner, after a reading a couple of good reviews, and realizing that it has been downloaded about 2.7 millions times at Download.com (significantly higher than the rest of the software in it’s same category), I thought I couldn’t go wrong and decided to use the software.

After usage, the results were very satisfying to me, what once took almost forever for my laptop to boot now took only a few seconds resembling very closely to the boot time when I first go the laptop.

Other than CCleaner there are also other registry cleaners which appear popular as well: