I did a Google search for help and came up with one WinMailTray by Kristan Kenney. It did a very good job until I realised that it is actually more of a shortcut than a minimized tray icon. Even though the icon is in the tray, Windows Mail will not check for any new mails at every set interval. When Windows Mail is minimized, it is actually not running. And thus the reason why new mails will not automatically be retrieved even though WinMailTray is running.

So the solution, make one myself. Using AutoIt v3.2.12.1 on my Vista x64 rig. And the result is this:

Vista Mail Tray (64-bit) v0.0.0.7
(IMPORTANT! Read the following notes below.)

Vista Mail Tray (32-bit) v0.0.0.7
(IMPORTANT! Read the following notes below.)

How to use Vista Mail Tray:

1. Download the correct version (32 or 64 bit) for your system
2. The file doe NOT contain any virus/malware/whatever. But anyway, you can always scan the file at VirusTotal. Judge for yourself if those are real virus or just false alarms.
3. Extract the file to any folder on your Vista computer. (C:\Program Files\Vista Mail Tray\Vista Mail Tray.exe would be a good choice.)
4. If you want this utility to run every time Windows starts, create a Vista Mail Tray.exe shortcut in your Startup folder.
5. To use, left click on the Windows Mail icon in the system tray to start/show or minimize Windows Mail. Right click to view menu.
6. Have fun!

Notes:

1. This program is provided for free, but all rights are still reserved by me. In other words, I still own rights to this program.
2. You DO NOT have the right to redistribute this program. Your friends need it? Link them here to this page (http://www.chewybyte.net/home-computing/tray-icon-vista-windows-mail.html)
3. Use at your own risks. I will and shall not be held liable to any loss or damages resulting from the use of this program.
4. These zipped files are protected with the phase www.chewybyte.net
   

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1. I Am Finally Vista 64 After my first fling with Vista a few months ago,...
2. Windows XP or Windows Vista? If you are one of those average users planning to...

And so I started out on the tedious journey of backing up all the important files, imaging the whole XP hard disk for insurance, checking my hardware compatibility with 64-bit Vista and also downloading all necessary 64-bit Vista drivers. Started the format-wait-install-wait-toilet-wait-eat-wait process and voila!, I am now Vista 64.

Then come driver installations. Drivers for my Asus P5K/EPU motherboard installed perfectly. So did the nVidia GeForce Vista 64-bit driver. For my D-Link DWA-110 WiFi USB dongle, no Vista 64-bit drivers are available from D-Link. But Microsoft did say it is 64-bit Vista compatible with No Action Required. Luckily I was able to find a compatible Vista 64-bit driver for DWA-110 dongle. And some technical steps are required to install the driver. First hurdle.

Then came a minor bump. Microsoft IntelliType driver. The 64-bit version of the driver installed with no problems at all. But in XP, whenever I press the volume keys on my keyboard, an aesthetically pleasing volume bar will be shown on my screen. But in Vista, it is nowhere to be seen (Aero or non-Aero). So is Microsoft incompatible with Microsoft or did I just upgraded my Microsoft wireless desktop set to some unknown China brand? For me, this feature is important as I would always love to adjust the volume to a certain level before starting a game or movie session, and thus the over-reacting whining.

After all the drivers are installed, I started installing softwares as anyone would be doing at this stage. OpenOffice, Adobe, anti-virus applications, system tools, games etc… 32 or 64 bit, all went fine. I fact I was starting to like Vista.

But there are a few software that do not work in Vista. First to notice is a great free tool Unlocker. A version for 64-bit Vista is still in progress. Then the non-compliance of freeware jetAudio Basic with Vista Aero interface. So whenever jetAudio is running, Aero is automatically disable but will be enabled again after I close jetAudio. But the again, Microsoft should not be held responsible for these software problems. I’m just trying to let you guys know that not all XP applications will work in Vista, especially the 64-bit flavour.

So in summary, I had honestly begun to like Vista. Aero is not necessary but nice (2GB ram with 9600GT). And I am still with Vista at this very moment of writing. But unless you have a quite new computer (with quite new hardware with), Vista is still not yet the way to go unless you are capable of solving (or at least going around) these driver and software issues. As I had predicted in my first article on Vista, half a year from now would be a good timing.

Stay tuned as coming soon… my very own Windows Mail tray icon minimizer!

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1. Windows XP or Windows Vista? If you are one of those average users planning to...

And so I eagerly downloaded Google Chrome and tested it out. Installation was a breeze. Importing bookmarks, history and settings from my Mozilla Firefox was a breeze. All my imported bookmarks were filed into the folder “Imported From Firefox”. Neat.

So now I want to move the bookmarks into the root folder as well as to move my Firefox “Bookmarks Toolbar” items into the “Bookmarks Bar” folder in Chrome.

And so I ….. from all that I had tried, there is currently no way to do that. In fact, Google Chrome does come with any bookmark manager. Ok, maybe it’s just Beta.

The next thing I had in mind; I have tonnes of custom GreaseMonkey scripts installed in my Firefox browser. Some I can do without, some are really essential. And so inside Google Chrome ….. a search on Google reveals that Chrome does not support add-ons as Firefox does. Some even say that Google have no plans to support add-ons on Chrome because add-ons such as Ad-Block is capable of blocking Google’s advertisements. It’s not official. Maybe the feature will be added later. Ok, maybe it’s just Beta.

And so, nevermind. I’ll just go check out some sites and see just how fast the pages are loading. (Nearly all the reviewers praised Chrome for its speed.) What about checking out some of my RSS bookmarks. And so ….. nada. Google Chrome does not import RSS bookmarks from Firefox. In fact Google Chrome does not automatically recognize sites with RSS feed. Ok, maybe it’s just Beta.

“Just click on the damn RSS links lazybum!”, I told myself. Since it was a Joomla! site, there were links for RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, ATOM 0.3 and OPML. And so I click on each and every link and ….. all I get was raw text without any formatting or indentation. Ok, maybe it’s just Beta.

As a web developer, I originally intended to test Google Chrome for CSS and Javascript compability with other browsers. But then I realize that Google Chrome is just what it said it is - Beta.

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1. Lelong Utilities (Greasemonkey Script) Started in 1998, Lelong.com.my (or just Lelong)  had been to...

But I am not here to discus about the right or wrong of the decision. I am here to share my knowledge on how to bypass the blockade.

At the time of writing, Malaysia ISPs had blocked the site through their DNS server.

The Domain Name System (DNS) associates various information with domain names; most importantly, it serves as the “phone book” for the Internet by translating human-readable computer hostnames, e.g. www.example.com, into IP addresses, e.g. 208.77.188.166, which networking equipment needs to deliver information.
Source: Wikipedia.org

In simple terms, whenever you type a domain in your browser, your computer will ask the ISP’s DNS server(s) for the address of the domain. So when these DNS servers gives you an incorrect or null answer, you will not be able to access that particular website at the domain.

To bypass this blockade, the easiest way is to not rely on these DNS servers for the correct answer. As long as we already have the IP addresses of these domains, we do not need the DNS servers. All we need to do is to add 3 lines of text to the “hosts” file. Using Notepad, open the file “C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\Hosts” (Yes, this is a file without extension. The entire file name is “hosts”. ) and add the lines:

202.71.97.141	malaysia-today.net
202.71.97.141	www.malaysia-today.net
98.131.13.102	m2day.org
98.131.13.102	www.m2day.org
72.47.236.85	harapanmalaysia.com
72.47.236.85	www.harapanmalaysia.com

Remember to save the file after editing.

Example of the “hosts” file after editing.

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
202.71.97.141 malaysia-today.net
202.71.97.141 www.malaysia-today.net
98.131.13.102 m2day.org
98.131.13.102 www.m2day.org
72.47.236.85 harapanmalaysia.com
72.47.236.85 www.harapanmalaysia.com

Remember, this is for Windows users only. And if any of you have problems editing or saving the file, you most probably have some kind of anti-virus/anti-malware/anti-spyware protecting the file. You will have to disable the file protection from the software before editing this file.
After that clean the DNS cache on your computer by running the command “ipconfig /flushdns”.

Those who would like to know how I got the IP addresses, I used this external website to convert the domain names to IP numbers. So you know that to do next time. And let’s hope this workaround lasts.

Updates:

• At the time of writing, only http://malaysia-today.net is fully accessible with images and CSS loaded.
• If this is not working for you, try clearing you browser’s cache/temporary files.
• You might need to stop and disable ‘DNS Client‘ service on your compuiter. (Run the command “sc stop dnscache” without the quotes. Then run “sc config dnscache start= demand” again without the quotes. Note the space after the “=” sign in the second command.)
• For those who trust me, download a small program here to automatically modify everything for you. Source code of the small AutoIt script is here. Download and scan for virus before running the file. But analyze the result with a grain of salt. False positives is a norm.

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Two security researchers have developed a new technique that essentially bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in the Windows Vista operating system.

…

By taking advantage of the way that browsers, specifically Internet Explorer, handle active scripting and .NET objects, the pair have been able to load essentially whatever content they want into a location of their choice on a user’s machine.

…

Source: Windows Vista security ‘rendered useless’ by researchers

And to make matter worse, (according to the researchers) “there is little that Microsoft can do to address the problems”.

It that’s true, then there is no more reason to continue using Vista since security is one of the main if not the only selling point for Vista. At least that my own personal view. But we all know that migrating your computer operating systems is never and easy task. And there is a certain risk of data loss in the process. So what are we going to do?

The obvious reason is to stop using MSIE in Vista. Get on the alternative browsers bandwagon. Get Firefox! And if for some reason you do not like Firefox, there also Opera. And my opinion, these browsers are way better than MSIE.

We did it! We set a Guinness World Record.
Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. On June 18, 2008 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and better Web.
Source: Spread Firefox

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But as a user of both auction sites, I notice (and I believe most of us do) the lackings of Lelong when compared to eBay. For example, there is no feature for sorting of the list items by price or ending time. And thus is is a real pain when comparing auction items.

So I had cooked up a Greasemonkey script to add some important features to Lelong. And since I had the script up and running, I might just as well post it here of other users.

Features I had included in the script includes:

1. Sort item listing by total price (price + shipping).
2. Sort item listing by auction ending time.
3. Hide ‘Closed’ items.
4. Show total price (price + shipping) in item page.

The script does come with certain terms and conditions. Please do understand the terms and conditions before downloading.

This is a Greasemonkey user script. You will need to install Greasemonkey from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748 or http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ before using this script.

DEVELOPMENT (’TESTED WORKING’) ENVIRONMENT:
OS: Windows XP SP3 32-bit
Internet Browser: Firefox version 3.0
Required Internet Browser Addon: Greasemonkey version 0.8.20080609.0

LICENSE:
- Free for non-profit personal usage upon total agreement and acceptance of this license.
- Author reserves all exclusive rights for distribution of this script. (DO NOT link directly to script download URL. Link to the download page.)
- Author reserves all rights to seek and take legal actions for any usage/distribution/modification deems unappropriate by the author and solely by the author.
- Author will have the final say in all other usage/distribution/modification circumstances not covered by this short, simple license agreement.
- Author reserves all rights to amend terms and conditions in this license as deems appropriate by the author and solely by the author.
- Use this script at your own risk(s). Author will not be held liable for any loss from usage or this script.
- Do not expect the author to give your ‘after sales’ services. Use the script as is or don’t use it at all. However, constructive feedbacks will be greatly appreciated.
- There is no guarantee this script will work, especially in other versions of OS, browsers and/or Greasemonkey.
- The only guarantee author gives is that this script DOES NOT contain any intentionally included malicious codes.
- In general terms, this script DOES NOT contain/download/generate/produce any kind virus/malware/security exploits/adware. The only ‘ad’ is the credit to author as stated here.
- Author is reachable at admin [at|@] chewybyte [dot|.] com OR admin [at|@] chewybyte [dot|.] net

As promised, the links to view/scrutinise/download/install the script. Both files have the same features/functions. Just that the original version is bigger in size but easier to read/view/modify and the compact version is…. well, compacted version of the original. Why? Ermm… for the smaller size?

REMINDER: As stated in the license agreement
DO NOT link directly to the script download URL. Link to this page.
(I could have disabled hotlinking, but let’s see how honest we are…)

Lelong Utilities (original) v2008.07.18 [ VIEW ] [ INSTALL ]
Lelong Utilities (compact) v2008.07.18 [ VIEW ] [ INSTALL ]

Version 2008.07.18
- Fixed strange error when calculation goes into more than 2 decimal places.
- Sorting remains after search.
- Minor stylesheet updates.

Version 2008.07.17
- Added new regex for item page URL. Just one of the ‘lackings’ where they wasn’t even able to have a standard uniform URL format for different site sections.

Version 2008.07.16.2
- Updated stylesheet to differentiate bids below reserved price.

Version 2008.07.16
- Updated script to calculate total price (sale + shipping) in item sale page.

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As we all should know, prevention is better than cure. And this law applies to computer viruses as well. So installing an anti-virus software on your computer will be the first line of defense. There are actually quite a number of free (mostly for home or non-commercial users) anti-virus software available from the World Wide Web. Just to state a few, there is ClamWin, Avast!, BitDefender and AVG.

ClamWin is a free open-source antivirus released under the GNU General Public License.
At the time of writing, ClamWin had not implemented on-access scanner. In other words, files being read or written will not be automatically scanned.

But even with an anti-virus software installed and running, some complex viruses are able ‘neutralize’ these anti-virus software through various ways. So whether you have an anti-virus software installed or not, it is still advisible to run some online scans every week or so. And here’s my list of online anti-virus scanners (do take note that most of these scanners requires Microsoft Internet Explorer to run):

To scan a single file, use VirusTotal, a free online virus and malware scanners that uses several antivirus engines to scan the file.

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Previously know as Windows Live Folders, the service was only available only to a few testers in the United States. On August 1, 2007, the service was expanded to a wider audience. Shortly after on August 9, 2007 Windows Live Folders was renamed Windows Live SkyDrive and the participation was expanded to testers in the United Kingdom and India. As of May 22, 2008, Windows Live SkyDrive is available to 62 countries and regions.
Source: Wikipedia

With 5GB of free online storage, Windows Live SkyDrive will arguably be one of the most significant free online service since GMail (Google mail). When compared to other free storages offered online such as Xdrive, ADrive, DropBoks just to name a few, the 5GB offered is big, but really not that big. Maybe Microsoft is planning on upgrading the free space gradually like what Google did with GMail?

So are there anymore limitations or drawbacks? The first thing, though the free space offered is 5GB, there is a file size limit of 50MB. To me, this is acceptable. After all, is not this a free service. But the thing I find annoying is that the upload page only have slots for 5 files. And SkyDrive currently does not offer any FTP or Windows Explorer integration of easy file uploading. Just imagine how long it will take if you are to have hundreds of photos to upload. Maybe we should zip the files?

The user interface of SpyDrive is simple, loads fast, esthetically nice and easy to use. Viewing uploaded photos is easy as it is presented in manual slide show. (And that is why I would not like to upload the photos in a zip file.) But uploaded videos will only show an icon. For the AVI and FLV videos that I uploaded, there is no playback or preview feature. Hopefully this feature will be added soon.

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Aptly named site or URL submission, not only does the site URL needs to be submitted to these indexing sites, the webmasters themselves will need to be submissive to the all kinds of ‘demands’ from these search engines lest the site is not indexed. But of course, these are just the hidden ‘costs’ of the free services.

Well, going straight to the point, here’s a simple guide which hopefully will be able to make site and article submissions less painful.

Generating a Sitemap

The first thing to do would be to have a standard-compliant sitemap ready. There are numerous free sitemap generators online but not all generates standard sitemaps. XML Sitemaps happens to be one of those generating sitemaps in accordance to the standard sitemap protocol and it is free.

For more information on the standard sitemap protocol, visit Sitemaps.org

Submitting the Website

Webmaster Page: https://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
URL Submission: http://google.com/addurl/
Sitemap Ping: http://google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=[Your Sitemap URL]
(eg: http://google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http://chewybyte.net/sitemap.xml)

URL Submission: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
Sitemap Ping: http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=[Your Sitemap URL]
(eg: http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://chewybyte.net/sitemap.xml)

Site Feed Ping: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=[Your Site Feed URL]
(eg: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.chewybyte.net/feed)

Webmaster Page: http://webmaster.live.com/
URL Submission: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Sitemap Ping: http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=[Your Sitemap URL]
(eg: http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://chewybyte.net/sitemap.xml)

Webmaster Page: http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml
Sitemap Ping URL: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=[Your Sitemap URL]
(eg: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://chewybyte.net/sitemap.xml)

When you ping a search or indexing site, you’re actually telling the site that certain pages or articles had been updated or added. In the case of sitemap pings, it is just an easy way to inform the search or indexing sites that the sitemap file had been updated.

(Subscribe to my RSS feed here.)

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If you have never heard of it, My Search Funds is new hot topic on the Internet right now. This site claims to give you money for each search you do through their site. Although you may only get 1 cent for a few searches, but what is there to lose? At least I believe that is what most users of this site thinks.

A search on the domain info reveals Alpexus Ltd as the registrant as well as the administrative and technical contact.

Alpexus Ltd.
Unit 1A Wrexham Enterprise Park
Ash Road
Wrexham Industrial Estate
Wrexham, Wrexham LL13 9JT
GB

At the homepage of Alpexus Ltd, I was greeted with a one-page website stating that the company is a specialist web marketing company helping the 3rd Sector ie. charities, voluntary groups, CVS etc to take advantage of the opportunities the internet brings.

‘Contact us’ on alpexus.com
Address: 17 Canal Wood Industrial Estate, Chirk, Wrexham, LL14 5RL
Telephone: 0800 2888669
Email: info@alpexus.com
Company Registration No: 5151615
VAT No: 811 5241 70

See the difference in address? But maybe both address are valid? So is it a scam? I do not know at this time, but I do intend to find out. Viewing the traffics details for My Search Funds on Alexa reveals that this website amazingly went from a 294,524 to a 18,972 ranking in just 3 months time.

For more information, visit my My Search Funds affiliate link. (Browsing to mysearchfunds.com will not display any information. An affiliate or ‘friend’ link is required to see the FAQs, Terms and Conditions and other pages.)

Look at the comments and judge for yourself.

Searches from my MySearchFunds are now redirected to results from yahoo.com. Previously it was google.co.uk

The MySearchFunds.com account admin page has been moved to a new domain myhpf.co.uk with the title set as ‘homepages friends’. Strange move. Could it be because of the bad reputation linked to the keywords ‘My Search Funds’. From my point of view, ‘homepages friends’ is just seems too generic.

One other thing. The logout button is not available in the new account admin site. So how do we log out? Clear cookies? Definitely not something a reputable company which cares about user security and privacy should overlook. Case of hasty copy-and-paste? Frankly, the amateurish feel had been there since the very beginning.

For the past few days, connection to mysearchfunds.com returns “Network Timeout” error. Is this the beginning of the end?

Update (August 02, 2008):

More readers are leaving a comment on this page confirming that MySearchFunds @ Homepages Friends could potentially be a scam!

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