Software Gadgets

.CHM files are the “compiled HTML” files used for most Windows Help files. If you use Windows, they are easy to read. If you use Linux, it is not so easy. While there are several programs that will read and display CHM files, none of the work all that well for me. So I was very happy to discover CHM Reader for Firefox today.

CHM Reader is a Firefox extension that opens and displays .CHM files. While it is not perfect (text resizing that sticks from page to page would be very nice, for example), it works better than any other CHM file reader I’ve tried for Linux. It will even work when I click on a CHM file in Nautilus after I selected “Open with Other Application” then “Use a custom command” and typed “firefox chm:%U” in the input box.

This extension will work on either Linux or Windows (but apparently not on MacOS). Of course, if you use Windows, you don’t really need it unless you just want to do everything you possibly can in Firefox. However, if you use Linux and still need to use Windows CHM help files (many e-books come in this format, for example), the Firefox CHM Reader extension is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Operating System: Windows and Linux and using Firefox
Price: Free
Web Site: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3235

Tags: firefox, windows, linux, CHM, Compiled Help Files

I’ve posted about TrueCrypt before (here and here). Encryption software like TrueCrypt has become even more important with all the reports of stolen laptops full of private business data, not to mention new government powers to snoop into computers many governments around the world are giving themselves. Everyone needs a way to keep their (or their employer’s) private data private. TrueCrypt is a free and open source way to do so. Truecrypt 6.0 has a number of new features:

* Parallelized encryption/decryption on multi-core processors (or multi-processor systems). Increase in encryption/decryption speed is directly proportional to the number of cores and/or processors.

For example, if your computer has a quad-core processor, encryption and decryption will be four times faster than on a single-core processor with equivalent specifications (likewise, it will be twice faster on dual-core processors, etc.)

* Ability to create and run an encrypted hidden operating system whose existence is impossible to prove (provided that certain guidelines are followed). For more information, see the section Hidden Operating System. (Windows Vista/XP/2008/2003)

For security reasons, when a hidden operating system is running, TrueCrypt ensures that all local unencrypted filesystems and non-hidden TrueCrypt volumes are read-only. (Data is allowed to be written to filesystems within hidden TrueCrypt volumes.)

Note: We recommend that hidden volumes are mounted only when a hidden operating system is running. For more information, see the subsection Security Precautions Pertaining to Hidden Volumes.

* On Windows Vista and Windows 2008, it is now possible to encrypt an entire system drive even if it contains extended/logical partitions. (Note that on Windows XP you can encrypt an entire system drive as well, but it must contain only primary partitions.)

* New volume format that increases reliability, performance and expandability:

o Each volume created by this or later versions of TrueCrypt will contain an embedded backup header (located at the end of the volume). Note that it is impossible to mount a volume when its header is damaged (the header contains an encrypted master key). Therefore, embedded backup headers significantly reduce this risk. Also note that a backup header is not a copy of the original volume header because it is encrypted with a different header key derived using a different salt. For more information, see the subsection Tools > Restore Volume Header.

Note: If the user fails to supply the correct password (and/or keyfiles) twice in a row when trying to mount a volume, TrueCrypt will automatically try to mount the volume using the embedded backup header (in addition to trying to mount it using the primary header) each subsequent time that the user attempts to mount the volume (until he or she clicks Cancel). If TrueCrypt fails to decrypt the primary header and then decrypts the embedded backup header successfully (with the same password and/or keyfiles), the volume is mounted and the user is warned that the volume header is damaged (and informed as to how to repair it).

o The size of the volume header area has been increased to 128 KB. This will allow implementation of new features and improvements in future versions and ensures that performance will not be impaired when a TrueCrypt volume is stored on a file system or device that uses a sector size greater than 512 bytes (the start of the data area will always be aligned with the start of a host-filesystem/physical sector).

For more information about the new volume format, see the section TrueCrypt Volume Format Specification.

Note: Volumes created by previous versions of TrueCrypt can be mounted using this version of TrueCrypt.

* Parallelized header key derivation on multi-core processors (one algorithm per core/thread). As a result, mounting is several times faster on multi-core processors. (Windows)

* Ability to create hidden volumes under Mac OS X and Linux.

* On Linux, TrueCrypt now uses native kernel cryptographic services (by default) for volumes encrypted in XTS mode. This increases read/write speed in most cases. However, the FUSE driver must still be used when the volume is encrypted in a deprecated mode of operation (LRW or CBC), or when mounting an outer volume with hidden-volume protection, or when using an old version of the Linux kernel that does not support XTS mode. (Linux)

Operating System: Windows, Linux, MacOS
Price: Free
Web Site: http://www.truecrypt.org/

Tags: truecrypt, windows, linux, freeware, privacy

Go-oo is a fork of the free Open Office office suite with improved compatibility with Microsoft Office formats and a number of other improvements and tweaks, including speeding up the startup time. That along makes this branch worth looking at for anyone already using Open Office.

* OpenXML / DOCX support: Go-oo provides a built-in .docx (MS Office 2007) import filter.
* OpenXML / XLSX support: Go-oo provides a built-in .xlsx (MS Office 2007) import filter.
* OpenXML / PPTX support: Go-oo provides a built-in .pptx (MS Office 2007) import filter.
* SVG support: Go-oo provides a built-in SVG import filter.
* 3D transitions: Go-oo on Linux provides built-in 3D transitions within presentations.
* Rich fields support: Go-oo provides a powerful and interoperable fields implementation with nesting, in-place editing, multiple fonts & nested conditionals.
* Unix systray quick-starter: Go-oo can run in the background for a lightning second start.
* Calc solver: Go-oo has a linear optimization solver that can optimize a cell value based on arbitrary constraints, built into Calc.
* Improved Excel interoperability: Go-oo has improved interoperability with Excel, such as the ability to implicitly convert strings to numbers as context demands.
* VBA support: Go-oo provides VBA macro support for OpenOffice.org.
* GStreamer integration: Go-oo on Linux supports multimedia content using the GStreamer multimedia framework.
* Mono integration: Go-oo allows UNO automation with Mono, permitting automation from many languages such as C#, Boo, and more!
* Text Grid rendering: Go-oo renders Chinese much more pleasantly, using a familiar text grid.
* MS-Works import: Go-oo supports MS-Works files.
* Improved EMF rendering: Go-oo renders EMF+ content, giving a far better view of embedded drawings.
* WordPerfect Graphics import: Go-oo imports graphics in the WordPerfect WPG format which supplements Go-oo’s WordPerfect importer.
* T602 import: Go-oo supports T602 files.

This fork of Office Office looks like it is well worth trying, especially if you need the improved Microsoft Office compatibility.

Operating System: Windows, Linux
Price: Free
Web Site: http://go-oo.org/

Tags: windows, linus, freeware, Go-oo, Open Office fork

Find and Run Robot (FARR) is a program for Windows users who are keyboard maniacs — it uses an adaptive “live search” function to rapidly find programs and documents on your computer as you type.

Press your chosen hotkey to display the FARR window, then just start typing the first letters of the application you want to launch and the results appear instantly. Hit enter to launch the top result, or refine your search with special modifiers and commands.

FARR also lets you quickly run web searches, send email, manipulate files, control on-screen windows, and much more. Build and share custom commands or install plugins to add tons of new features, like live search features for your clipboard history and your internet bookmarks; a popup a calculator with history tape and persistent variables; and many more.

Some of FARR’s features include:

* Ready to run, right out-of-the-box with no configuration needed.
* The most customizable application of its kind, for those who love to tweak settings.
* Caches programs you launch for instantaneous repeat searches and adaptive scoring.
* Comes with dozens of built-in special alias commands that allow you to perform tons of different web searches and other operations.
* Create and share (xml) alias packs with your friends or download them from our site to add custom commands and menus.
* Install (open source) plugins to add advanced functionality.
* A dozen plugins are available at launch time, including a powerful clipboard monitor and searcher; a live calculator with history tape and persistant variables; a bookmark searcher plugin that supports firefox, internet explorer, and opera; plugins to manage running processes, uninstall programs, change the default printer, control external applications, and more.
* Low system overhead, fully portable and runnable from a USB thumbdrive, and doesn’t mess with your registry.
* Drag+Drop results from the result view; quick right click to access file system properties or advanced functions.
* No file indices are used, so results are always up to date with minimal memory use.
* Choose from dozens of skins and customize the fonts sizes of all graphical elements of the user interface, or turn off skins completely and revert to default Windows user interface. Choose between a compact small-icon mode, or an easy-to-read large icon mode.
* Full directory browsing function with live search filtering — manually browse and locate the files you are looking for.
* Customizable toolbar for common functions and operations (optional; with drag+drop support).
* Automatic updating for main program and plugins (optional).
* Customize hotkey triggers to launch and perform specific searches, or copy selected text to the clipboard at launch .
* Fully documented and actively developed with new features being added regularly based on user requests on the the Donationcoder forum.
* Completely free; Donationcoder signup requested and donation recommended — your donations fund continued development! Donations are not required, however.

A much more detailed list of interesting features and FARR details can be found here. FARR is the best windows “keyboard quick launcher” I’ve ever used. Sadly, there is nothing as powerful written for Linux.

Operating System: Windows
Price: Free
Web Site: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/

Tags: free, windows, keyboard launch, keyboard search

AutoHotKey is one of the few windows programs I have really missed using Linux. While it had a lot of power, I used it mainly for its “hot string” abilities. I’d type =btw and AutoHotKey would replace “=btw” with “by the way.” Linux didn’t seem to have anything that could easily replace that feature of AutoHotKey. That was annoying, but I learned to live without it.

No longer. I’ve discovered Snippits, a small Ruby program written by Ben Kudria. According to Ben, “This is Ruby text expansion program – it will type text for you. It uses ‘snippits’, small text files with a simple syntax to determine what to type. However, snippits can be very powerful, since they can contain embedded Ruby, special keys (Control, Shift, Up, etc), and can contain a cursor placement instructions.” It’s not quite as easy to set up (and a bit less handy to use) as AutoHotKey, but it works. I can type “btw”, press F6 (the key can be changed), and “btw” is replaced by “by the way” in just most Linux GUI programs where the feature would be useful.

Operating System: Linux
Price: Free
Web Site: http://ben.kudria.net/code/snippits

Tags: linux, autohotkey, macro, text replacement, freeware

After waiting for just over a week to allow others to discover if there were any major issues upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04, I finally bit the bullet Tuesday afternoon and decided to upgrade my system to Hardy Heron. This was my first distribution upgrade since moving to Ubuntu last fall, so I will admit that I was a bit nervous as to how it would go.

I decided to upgrade by downloading a alternate install disk as I could download it via bittorrent and not add extra load to the distribution package servers for the standard packages. As it turns out, the package servers apparently aren’t overloaded any more so this step really wasn’t needed. However, I now have a CD I can use to install 8.04 on other systems, so the extra effort wasn’t a total waste.

I popped the alternate install CD into a drive and my Ubuntu 7.10 autostarted it, noticed it was a distribution upgrade and asked me if I wanted to upgrade my system. Since that’s what I wanted to do, I told it to proceed. It did a bunch of housekeeping things, then asked me if I wanted to download updates to software not on the CD from the package libraries as part of the upgrade. I said yes and it told me over 700 megs would be downloaded. (I guess I’ve installed a lot of optional stuff in six months.) It then started to download 700+ megs of updated packages. Even with my fast cable connection, this was going to take about 30-40 minutes, so I let it do its thing when I went off and did some non-computer work.

I came back with to only a couple of minutes of downloading left. I sat there and watched it finish downloading and start actually replacing old packages with the new upgraded ones. This looked like it was going to take about 30 minutes so I walked away again. This turned out to be a bad idea as I came back 20 minutes later to discover that it had paused at about 10% completed to ask me if I wanted to replace some config file or keep the old one. Sigh. I had no idea which would be better, so I accepted the default. Upgrading restarted.

I decided to sit at the computer and read a book instead of wandering off again. Good thing I did as there were two or three more pauses for my decision on whether or not to replace a configuration file. I just accepted the default answer each time. Installing the upgrades finally finshed. The installer then did a cleanup and offered to uninstall a list of no longer needed packages. I scanned through the list, did not see anything that looked critical to the system actually running and said yes. A few minutes later the system booted into 8.04 with no problems.

I re-enabled some of my third party respositories (after changing the distrubtion in each one from gutsy to hardy). Synaptic updated its package lists and told me there were some new updates (from those repositories). I installed them and reran the Virtualbox setup program so Virtualbox’s kernel driver could be recompiled for the new version of the linux kernel that comes with 8.04. (Typing this one command was the only thing I did from the command line during the entire distribution upgrade, BTW). Then I rebooted the system.

After the reboot everything seemed to work fine. I’ll have to tone down the Compiz special effects over the next few days, but they are much faster in 8.04 so even the more silly ones (like the animated window opens and closes) aren’t that annoying. Windows XP still runs fine in Virtualbox, I can still print to the Windows printer on my wife’s machine, connect to the Net, etc. In fact, my only real complaint about Ubuntu 8.04 so far is that it installed Firefox 3 beta 5 — and about 50% of my Firefox extensions (including two I really use a lot) have not yet been updated for Firefox 3.

The upgrade was a much more smooth process than I expected it to be. My only complaint about the process is those questions about keeping or replacing various config files. Some warning that the upgrade process might come to a halt with such questions would have saved me 15 or 20 minutes of time. It would also be nice if some advice on what is best to do for the config file it is asking about in the dialog box would have been very helpful.

One very nice thing about Ubuntu 8.04 for people using Windows is Wubi: a method for installin Ubuntu 8.04 to a large file on your hard drive. This means that it is possible to create a dual boot system from a computer with Windows installed without having to repartition the drive. Better yet, you can remove a Wubi-installed Ubuntu 8.04 from the Windows Add-Remove Programs system. While is is not a great method for installing Ubuntu for permanent usage as your main OS, it is a great way to install Ubuntu to learn about it.

Get Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Tags: ubuntu 8.04, hardy heron, upgrade

I’ve finally upgraded to WordPress 2.5. My upgrade experience was quite good this time because I used the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin, version 1.1. Note that the version listed on the download link on the linkd page is “0.1″ but it actually downloads the current 1.1 version of the plugin. I installed the plugin and started it. It backed up my wordpress files and allowed me to download the backup, database and allowed me to download the back, it disabled all other plugins, fetched the 2.5 update from the Wordpress web site, installed it, allowed me run the 2.5 database update script, reactivated plugins, cleaned up after itself and exited. Very smooth and Far less work than doing it manually. Nats off to Keith Dsouza and Ronald Heureca for creating and maintaining a great plugin.

Operating System: Any Server Supporting Wordpress
Price: Free
Web Site: Click Here

Ever since I moved to Linux, I’ve been looking for a RSS reader that I like as much as Great News. I have finally found one that comes very close in Brief. Brief is a Firefox extension that adds a very simple, Great news-like feed reader to Firefox. It even stores the feeds locally for as long as you like, and just like Great News “as long as you like” can differ with each feed. It does not have some of the whiz-bang features of Great News, but if has most of the ones I regularly used.

From the Brief web description on addons.mozilla.org:

Brief makes reading RSS feeds as easy as it gets. It is designed to have the right set of features to be both powerful and simple. Brief stores feeds on your disk and presents them on a seamless, interactive page.

Easily mark articles as read and star the interesting ones. Browse your feeds anyway you want - view the unread or starred entries, display a single feed or a whole folder, show full entries or only their headlines. Quickly find a piece of news using full text search. Be notified when feeds are updated in the background and track the number of new entries using the status bar. Customize the Brief’s look by creating your own styles. Use keyboard shortcuts to faster navigate through the pile of news.

The Overview on the Brief web site shows off the extension’s major features very nicely. What I really like about Brief is that is uses Firefox to display feeds and web pages one visits from those feeds while Great News uses IE. Not only does Firefox provide a much safer browsing experience, but you can use all the nice Firefox extensions you are used to.

Operating System: Any Using Firefox
Price: Free
Web Site: http://brief.mozdev.org/

Tags: firefox extension, rss feed reader, windows, linux

Did you know that FLV files are really just wrapped boxes holding audio and video files in fairly standard formats? Probably not. Until I discovered this little gem, I didn’t know this either. This program extracts video and audio without decompressing them and then recompressing them. Therefore, this program avoids the loss of quality that comes from doing so. The video portion is saved to AVI (H.263/FLV1 and VP6/VP6F are supported). The audio is saved to MP3. It’s simple to use and very useful. The only drawback is that FLV Extract uses the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework, which is a very large download from Microsoft if you don’t have it currently installed on your system.

Operating System: Windows XP or Vista with .NET Framework 2.0
Price: Free
Web Site: http://moitah.net/#FLVExtract

Tags: FLV Component Extraction, Windows, freeware, mp3

Many parents want some way to control their children’s computer use: to help prevent them from accidentally (or purposely) accessing inappropriate sites, to prevent them from using the computer to play games when they should be using it to do their homework, etc. Most parental control software is not cheap, sometimes even requiring regular fees to keep it up to date and blocking the newest obviously inappropriate sites. Crawler Parental Control is freeware from the people who make Spyware Terminator.

Like most parent control programs, Crawler Parental Control has its odd quirks and occasional “why did they make this so hard” configuration methods, but overall seems a solid and powerful parental control program for Windows. CPC allows a parent to:

* Control the websites your children can browse
* Limit what installed software your children can run
* Limit or prevent the installation of new software
* Limit which folders your children can access
* Limit what times (and for how long) your children can access the Internet or use a particular program
* Hide content on your computer that you do not want your children to see
* Get detailed reports of what your children are doing on the computer. You can even access these records from another computer.

Like all parental control programs, Crawler Parental Control is not perfect. Some sites with content you consider inappropriate will not be blocked (and some sites you don’t want blocked might be blocked). Computer savvy teens may be able to figure out how to bypass the program completely. Etc. However, Crawler Parental Control seems to do as good a job as any of the expensive parental control programs I’ve seen — and it does it for a great price: free.

Operating System: Windows 2000, XP
Price: Free
Web Site: http://www.crawlerparental.com/

Tags: windows, freeware, parental control software, Crawler Parental Control