Category: Geek Stuff

So my new Motorola Triumph phone has a nice big screen and rich sound via headphones. I used to use an Archos AV-420 to watch downloaded video, but when its AC adapter died, I switched over to using my iPod Nano to watch TV shows and movies. But while the Nano has a vibrant screen, it’s awfully small. And the iPod requires most videos to be converted to mp4 – a simple process using VidCoder, but an annoyance all the same. With the free MoboPlayer app for Android, I can watch those same video files on my phone – with its relatively giant screen – without conversion!

Here’s the thing, though: as of now I only have an 8GB memory card in my phone. With storing camera pictures and videos, apps, data and music for Spotify I only have around 4GB of free space on the card. This is plenty for the moment, as TV is mostly airing re-runs until after Labor Day.

One day soon I’ll upgrade the card to a 16GB model. But in the meantime I use HFS (a simple HTML-based file sharing app) to share my video folder on my local network. I watch a video on my phone, delete it, and then fire up the phone’s web browser to download a new TV show or movie to watch.

But the thing is, I’m lazy. I don’t want HFS running all the time on my computer, but I don’t want to go “all the way” upstairs or get out of bed to start it up as needed, either. And that’s where Outlook comes in.

There’s a little known feature in the rules section that allows you to start a program when an email arrives that meets certain criteria:

In my case, I set up a rule for Outlook to start HFS when it receives an email with the subject line “WH47H*QA-HFS” (not the actual text I use, but something similar). I then created this simple batch file which forces HFS to exit:

taskkill /f /im hfs.exe
exit

I then set up another rule, which runs the batch file any time an email is received with the subject line “WH47H*QA-KILLHFS” (again, this is not the actual text I use, but it’s similar).

So now when I need to download a new video to my phone, I just use the Gmail client on my phone to send an email with the appropriate subject line to my POP account. True, I have to wait 4 minutes for Outlook to do a send\receive before starting HFS, but it’s a small price to pay for laziness. And you could use this method to start (or end) any number of tasks remotely.

Try it out for yourself and let me know what you use it for!

Ever heard of Knuffingen Airport? You probably haven’t, because depending on how you look at it, Knuffingen is either the world’s smallest airport… or it’s the world’s largest model airport. I can just hear my mom making a “more money than sense” comment, but this is just the most awesome thing ever:

If I’d had unlimited funds as a kid, I would have totally made this!

Although the video is embedded above, it’s really worth your time to watch it full screen in 1080p… seriously!

Many people have switched over to Google’s Gmail service. But there are millions of folks like me who still use POP accounts from web hosts or ISPs. And this presents a problem for people with Android phones: how to get that POP mail on your phone.

Let’s be honest: while the Gmail client for Android is pretty slick, the native email app kind of sucks. And while there are several worthy replacements (like K-9 Mail, for instance), it’s kind of silly to have to use two different email apps on your phone.

The obvious solution would be to have Gmail pull the email from your POP account(s). But this presents two problems.

For one, Gmail only pulls POP mail every so often, using a secret algorithm that’s roughly based on how many emails the POP account receives. So a POP account that gets hundreds of emails a day might get checked every 20 minutes or so, while an account that gets a handful of email a day might only get checked once a day (or less!). This is unacceptable, because an important email might sit in your POP account, unchecked, for a couple of days before it’s pulled down to your phone.

Secondly, Gmail can suddenly stop pulling emails from the account for no good reason. In fact, this happened to me just the other day. It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t seen any POP emails in my Gmail inbox for several days. I logged in to Gmail from a desktop computer, and low and behold, the POP account settings said: “last checked 4 days ago”.

Continue reading “A Gmail (Droid) Tip”

I wouldn’t call standalone GPS units “disposable”… but nowadays you can buy entry-level Garmin car units for as little as $89.99, and refurbished units can be had for as little as $59.95. This makes paying $49.99 for a map upgrade seem like a losing proposition. $50 didn’t seem like much back when a GPS cost $700. But now that you can buy a whole new (refurbished) unit for only $10 more than a map upgrade… why bother?

If you’re still rocking a Garmin GPS unit, you might not know that updating the maps for free is amazingly easy. I would never, ever recommend that you put an illegally hacked map on your GPS. But if you were the kind of person who isn’t opposed to that, all you need is some spare time, a computer, a Bittorrent client, a USB mini B cable and, most likely, a small (2 to 8GB) SD card. And although I would never, ever do this to my own GPS, I could, theoretically, report that Method 2, Part A on the linked page works like a charm on Nuvi 260W units. (see updates below)

Theoretically, of course.

Yeah, I have GPS on my smartphone. And it works well, too. But if I use my phone as a GPS driving aid, I can actually watch the battery drain. And I don’t have a windshield mount for my phone, either. So I’ll keep using the Garmin for the foreseeable future.

UPDATE (01/25/2016): I thought standalone GPS systems were all but dead, but looking at my site logs today I found that 20+ people visit this page every day. I decided to take a look at this article, and found that the haklabs page I linked to in an earlier version of this post is gone. So I thought I’d elaborate a bit for people who still need instructions.

The first thing you need to do is connect your GPS to your computer via USB cable and go to Garmin’s site. I actually recommend using Internet Explorer for this, because you’re going to need to install an ActiveX plug-in (Garmin’s site supports Chrome and Firefox, too, but you’ll need to restart those before continuing).

Create an account on Garmin’s site if you haven’t already. Then login to the site, attach your GPS to the USB cable and click the “Update” link. You will be prompted to install an ActiveX plug-in, which will search for your GPS and report its software and map version info to Garmin’s site.

See update below

UPDATE (09/07/2016): Thanks to jimcofer.com reader Joe, who pointed out that Garmin has retired their web browser plug-ins and has a new app you can use to update your unit: Garmin Express. So if you want to update your Garmin’s OS before updating the map – and you really should – click the link, download and install Garmin Express, connect the GPS to your computer via USB and start Express. Thanks, Joe! 🙂

UPDATE (02/24/2017): I just wanted to mention that the Garmin Express app comes with an auto-start feature. Unless you’re managing a fleet of cars and update Garmins constantly, there’s no reason to have Garmin Express start when your computer boots up. In modern version of Windows, you can disable this from starting by opening Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC), clicking the Startup tab, and right-clicking on “Garmin Express Tray” and choosing “Disable”. For older versions of Windows, click Start > Run then type MSCONFIG and press ENTER.

Anyway, if there an update for your Garmin’s OS, go ahead and install it. Always install the software updates; they’re free and add new features and fix bugs. Also, if you have an old (very old) Garmin you’ve never updated, an update might enable support for SDHC cards, which is the format most SD cards use these days.

Next, you’ll need to go to a certain PIRATE website, located in a BAY of some sort, and search for “Garmin North America” (or “Garmin Europe”). You will get many results: look for the one with the most recent map; this is currently 2017.10 (Garmin names maps by year and version, so “2015.20” would be the second version released in 2015). Download the file as one normally would.

Once the file is downloaded, you have to decide what to do with it.

If you have an older Garmin, you likely won’t have enough storage space available to store it internally. If this is the case, insert the SD card into a card reader on your computer, format it as FAT32 (if necessary) and create a folder called “Garmin” in the root of the drive. Then copy the gmapsupp.img file into the Garmin folder. When that’s done, eject the card, put it in your GPS, turn it on, and go to Settings > Maps, where you can select the new map.

If your Garmin does have enough free space to hold the new map, you’re probably going to want to connect the GPS to your computer via USB and copy the existing “gmapprom.img” to your computer (it’s always good to have a backup). Next, delete the gmapprom.img file on your GPS, rename the downloaded gmapsupp.img file to gmapprom.img, and copy it to the same folder on your GPS. When that’s done, unplug the GPS, power-cycle it and make sure the map is correct.

Either method works if you have enough storage space. But I prefer the SD card method, as this is easily reversible, especially if you’re away from your computer: just turn the GPS off, remove the SD card from the GPS, and power it back on. The unit should default back to the previous (internal) map.

For over 15 years, Microsoft has distributed Windows installation media on optical disc. And why wouldn’t they? CDs and DVDs can hold significantly more data than floppy disks, and optical drives are (were?) far more ubiquitous than competing technologies like Zip, Jazz and LS-120 disks.

But times have changed. Most netbooks and many “ultralight” laptops don’t come with optical drives. And, let’s face it, new technologies like flash drives are much, much faster than optical discs.

Thankfully, Microsoft listened to IT folks and came up with an easy way to install Windows 7 via flash drive. I’ll show you how below. Although it might look like a lot of steps, I’ve just been very thorough with my documentation. In practice, it’s really quite easy.

To create a Windows 7 installation flash drive, you’ll need the following:

1) A working Windows 7 computer with DVD drive.
2) A 4GB (or larger) flash drive.
3) A Windows 7 installation DVD.

The first thing you’ll need to do is make sure that the computer(s) you want to install Windows 7 on can boot from a flash drive. Most computers built in the past five years should be able to do this; computers built in the past three years almost certainly can. To test, insert a flash drive into one of the USB ports on a target computer, then power it on. At the boot (BIOS) screen, you should see something that says Press ESC for boot menu (the exact key will vary; F10 and F12 are also common choices). Press the key. If you see the flash drive listed as a boot choice, you’re good to go. If not, see if you computer or motherboard manufacturer has a BIOS update on their website. Run the update and try again.

Continue reading “Installing Win7 via Flash Drive”

Nobody likes rebooting their Windows computer… especially when you have to do it in the middle of the day when you have 16 different programs running. Although Cache My Work won’t stop the reboots, it will make life a bit easier for you when you have to.

Just install the app, and before you reboot your computer run Cache My Work from the Start Menu. You’ll see a box that looks like this:

Just check the apps you want to restart after the reboot, and CMW will automatically open them for you. Be sure to save your work, though: although CMW can restart apps like Word and Excel, it won’t save the data you’re working on, or re-open the specific documents you have open. Still, CMW seems to work well and is better than nothing.

Cache My Work is free and works on XP SP3 (32-bit) and Windows Vista\Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit). The .NET 2.0 CLR is required.

I’ve loved desktop widgets since Konfabulator was ported to Windows. But then Yahoo! bought Konfabulator, and Yahoo! Widgets have spiraled out of control with bloat and frequent updates. Windows Vista shipped with the Windows Sidebar, which allowed widgets to exist in a bar on the side of the screen. Windows 7 improved on that by allowing widgets to live anywhere on the desktop. But come on… the Microsoft widgets just suck.

Like a lot of folks, I really like the old-school clock widget on HTC devices. So imagine my joy when I found HTC Home, a free app which adds a similar looking widget to the Windows desktop:

It’s pretty, it’s easy to install and use, it’s well-behaved, and it even has nifty animations (lightning bolts and thunderclaps during storms, for example).

Don’t like the HTC look? That’s cool. The same folks also offer Metro Home, a similar widget based on Windows Phone 7’s interface. But I’ve been kickin’ HTC Home for some time now, and I really like it.

HTC Home (and Metro Home) are free and require Windows Vista or Windows 7 (32 or 64-bit). Microsoft.NET Framework 4 is also required.

Have an Android device and a Wi-Fi network at home? Then I’ve got something nifty for you! It’s called LazyDroid, and it gives you access to much of your phone from your desktop computer!

How does it work? Click the LazyDroid link in the last paragraph from your Android device (or just search for it on the Android Market). Install the “server” software on your device and start it up. You will be given the IP address and port number you need to access your phone. So you then go back to your desktop computer and enter that IP and port into the address bar… and you’ll see this:

From here, you can do all sorts of nifty things. “FileManager” is a Windows Explorer-type file manager that allows you do upload, download, delete or rename files on your device’s internal storage or SD card. “SMS” lets you read or send text messages from your phone via your desktop. “Contacts” lets you add, remove or edit any contacts on the phone. “Camera’ lets you take pictures from your desktop. “Clipboard” adds a needed cut-and-paste feature to the OS. And “Sensors” lets you muck around with the GPS and accelerometer settings of your phone. What’s more LazyDroid offers pop-ups for events like SMS messages and phone calls. If you have LazyDroid running on your phone and a Bluetooth headset when you receive a phone call, LazyDroid will pop a message up with the caller information so you can decide whether to answer or not. Similar capability exists for text messages, making LazyDroid a kind of convoluted instant messaging client.

Continue reading “COOL APP: Lazy Droid”

I post this both as a tip and as a lesson that even IT guys can sometimes miss the obvious:

I’ve used Firefox for years, and one of my favorite things about it is the “session saver” feature. If you have ten eBay tabs open, you can close Firefox and those same ten eBay tabs will reload the next time you open Firefox.

But I never figured out how to restore multiple windows. If you have, for instance, one window with ten eBay tabs and another window with five Amazon tabs, you have to choose which window you want to close first, as only the last window will be restored. So if you close the eBay window and then the Amazon window, only the Amazon tabs will be restored. Or if you closed the Amazon window first, only the eBay tabs would be restored.

And then it hit me last night: if you close Firefox by clicking File > Exit (or, in Firefox 4, Firefox > Exit), the browser will restore multiple windows when you restart.

Duh!

I love Firefox 4, but one thing I don’t like about it is having the download manager as a separate window. I can’t stand Google Chrome; believe it or not, IE 9 has replaced Chrome as my “second choice browser”. But one thing I do like about Chrome is the way the download manager appears as just another tab.

You don’t need an extension to replicate Chrome’s behavior in Firefox. In fact, setting Firefox up to do this is pretty easy:

1) Click on the  Firefox button in the upper left corner of the browser window and select Options > Options. On the “General” tab, uncheck the box next to “Show the Downloads window when downloading a file”. Click “OK” to exit the Options screen.

2) Cut and paste the following address into the address bar:

chrome://mozapps/content/downloads/downloads.xul

This will open the download manager in a tab.

3) Right-click the downloads tab and select “Pin as App Tab”.

The download tab will then appear to the left of your active tabs: