LAN messaging with XMPP protocol (jabber) to chat or to copy and paste links and texts in rdp sessions
Here is how I satisfied my need to have a LAN messaging program, not really to chat with other users on the same LAN, which I could do, but to copy and paste links or texts between a rdp client and a rdp server when copy and paste from/to clipboard does not work in rdp sessions, for instance with some Android rdp clients.
These are the programs I used:
- Openfire 3.9.3 on the "server" (which can be a simple Windows pc): a realtime collaboration server using XMPP/Jabber
- Miranda IM 0.10.23.0: a multi-protocol instant messaging client
- Xabber 0.9.30b: an Android Jabber client


Posted by: Z24 | Wed, Aug 27 2014 |
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Tagged as: android, chat, client-server, configuration, howto, jabber, messaging, network, phone, rdp, software, xmpp
"If you had a PC and you listened to MP3s in the late 90s, chances are you managed your playlists with Winamp." This is how TechCrunch begins the news of AOL going to shut down Winamp website, community, services and upgrades on December 20th, 2013. Now, a few hours into the 21st, it appears Winamp can still be downloaded on the official website, but we don't know for how long.
So what happens now? On the still alive forum there's a good summary made by user Victhor; I copy and paste it here before the forum gets shut down.


Posted by: Z24 | Sat, Dec 21 2013 |
Category: /software/windows |
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Tagged as: mp3, software, windows
Create a VPN to connect from an Android client to a home Windows XP server
If you want to connect to your home computer using rdp when you are not home and are connected to the internet, you have to open a port on your firewall; changing the standard rdp port on both your server and your firewall increases your security (or decreases your unsecurity); configuring a Virtual Private Network (VPN) increases your security even more, and you can close the rdp port on your firewall: in fact, when you connect your remote client to your vpn, your remote client comes inside your LAN so that you can remote access your server from inside the LAN.
- Configure server to create a VPN
- Configure router firewall for VPN passthrough
- Configure VPN on Windows clients
- Configure VPN on Android devices


Posted by: Z24 | Sun, Sep 22 2013 |
Category: /windows |
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Tagged as: android, client-server, configuration, rdp, router, software, vpn, windows, xp
CodeLobster
License: Freeware (registration required); Professional version is shareware and it's included with the freeware version for a trial period, after that the professional version's features are disabled.
Author: CodeLobster Software
Install: yes, but in the setup process there's a check to choose between portable and classic setup.
Size: about 50 MBytes (about 17 MBytes setup)
Requirement: Windows ME or later
CodeLobster is an application to develop in PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript languages (it's a free IDE -integrated development environment- supporting autocomplete, highlighting, and PHP debugging), but it has some features which need to be noted because they are so good, and rare to find all in just one program, that you don't need to be a developer to use CodeLobster.


Posted by: Z24 | Mon, Aug 13 2012 |
Category: /software/windows |
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Tagged as: freeware, programming
, software, windows
How to get rid of googleupdate.exe
Google Update is a tool that Google installs on a pc when some other Google software is installed, and runs each time Windows starts; it's supposed to update Google software, but a comprehensive description can be found on this blog.
I tagged this article as spyware, because Wikipedia defines it as
Point 4 of Google Earth License Agreement recites:
So, Google Update is certainly installed surreptitiously because while regular software setups show the components that will be installed, the Google Update application is never mentioned during Google Earth setup, and the only mention of something vaguely resemblant to Google Update behaviour is in the License Agreement, that's a good place where to put information which you want that nobody reads: I firmly believe there is no informed consent about Google Update installation. Moreover, it appears that Google collects information about Google software usage through Google Update, still without informed consent (usage information collection is not mentioned in License Agreement either).
So, Google Update is a spyware.
How to get rid of Google Update
- First, kill it by the Task Manager
- Google says it's listed amongst windows applications and in the start menu, where it should be possible to uninstall it, but that was not true on my system
- remove or disable the
GoogleUpdateTaskMachine
scheduled task from Control panel, Scheduled Tasks - run
services.msc
and disable theGoogle Update Service
- if you use Firefox, go to Tools, Add-ons, Plugins and disable
Google Update
(or remove it; maybe if you want to play with the registry, this is its placement:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\@tools.google.com/Google Update;version=7
- finally, if you want to remove it "physically" (metaphorically speaking), you can find the exe in
C:\Program Files\Google\Update\
and its subfolders
Once I disabled the scheduled task, the service and Firefox plugin, googleupdate.exe was never launched anymore, neither after launching Google Earth. I'll see if the Google spyware will reappear when I will update Google Earth manually (when a new version will be available).
I hope this helps, and if you still can't get rid of it using these methods, or if you find other places Google Update is hidden, please let me know. I'm curious how deep Google decided to fall.


Posted by: Z24 | Sat, May 02 2009 |
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Tagged as: google, software, spyware, windows
How to broadcast audio with Icecast
You need to install Icecast and Winamp with the Shoutcast plugin for Winamp.
In this howto I explain:
- how to set up Icecast and Shoutcast plugin to broadcast audio over a LAN or the internet
- how to reduce the audio delay between the server source and the client playback
- how to use Icecast to replace Skype or MSN voice chat when using RDP


Posted by: Z24 | Sun, May 04 2008 |
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Tagged as: broadcast, howto, mp3, software, windows
How to catalog audio files (MP3, OGG, etc.)
This is one of the many ways to keep order amongst audio files and to catalog them. The purpose of cataloging is to have an instrument to always know where a MP3 or OGG file is, if it has been backed up on cd or dvd, how many audio files or hours of music there are on disk, nonetheless to generate playlists by genre or author or by other criteria.
- I name the audio files using this schema:
Author - Title.mp3
. When they are many, a big help come from tools to rename multiple files at once, such as Total Commander Multiple rename function (Ctrl + M) (Total Commander is shareware) - sometimes a MP3 editor to cut and paste pieces of MP3s can be useful, for instance when you bought a remix cd and you want to keep on the disk the single songs, or you want to cut a boring piece at the begin or end of a song (some techno remixes are long and boring at the begin, but great after the first 1 or 2 minutes). A fast and very small editor is mp3DirectCut.
- correct the ID3 tags of title and author to make them identical to those in the file name: this way all MP3s will be displayed in the same way in MP3 players such as Winamp (for Windows) or XMMS (for Linux) and in the car audio system display (if some MP3s miss the ID3 tags or have them all uppercase or all lowercase). To do that, a useful program is ID3-TagIT: select the files, then select the menu item ID3-Functions, Filename -> Tag ver. 2 and type
<A> - <T>
(artist, hyphen, title) or whatever you like, then ID3-Functions, Filename -> Tag ver. 1 and still<A> - <T>
; finally File, Save to apply the changes - I lower the bitrate to 128 kbps when it's too high, for instance 320 kps. Why? It would occupy too much space while having no hearable advantages (for my ears). The program I use is CDex: Convert, Re-encode Compressed Audio Files; the encoding options can be customized in Options, Settings (the encoder, the bitrate, etc.).
To see the bitrate of many mp3s at the same time, Windows XP Explorer is very useful: View, Choose Details, Bitrate; the files can be ordered by bitrate, selected and moved in another folder, so that when you have to reencode them with CDex you can select all the files in the "wrong bitrate" folder instead of selecting the "wrong bitrate" files one by one. - when some mp3s have a volume that's too high or too low compared with the average, with MP3 Gain the volume can be normalized to the dB specified (I use 96.0 dB): Track Analysis to see the current dB, then Track Gain.
- if I'm going to add a bunch of mp3s to my collection and I want them to have the same date and time (to know they came together), I touch * them in the temporary folder they stay before moving them to my collection folder: touch.exe is a command coming from unix which sets the current (or the specified) timestamp to the specified files.
- organize the audio files in folders as you wish, for instance by genre or author.
- first I generate a list of mp3s with MP3 Lister, a tool which can be configured to export all the ID3 tags you want in the order you want, and it can create a txt, csv or html list
- then I import the text file in a spreadsheet (I wrote a macro to make the import automatic).
- I wrote other macros to automatically order the MP3 files, check for duplicates and generate playlists by genre.
m3u files (Winamp playlists) are simply text files containing a mp3 path and file name on every row.


Posted by: Z24 | Sun, Jan 20 2008 |
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Tagged as: howto, mp3, software, windows
Windows Remote Desktop (RDP)
Windows Remote Desktop allows to remotely get a Windows session on a Windows XP/2000/2003 machine on which it is enabled from any machine running the RDP client: the RDP client asks the name of the machine and the user and password and then the client opens a window showing the desktop of the server machine.
I'll show:
- Comparison between UltraVNC, Windows Remote Desktop and Citrix ICA connection
- How to enable Windows Remote Desktop in Windows XP SP2
- How to connect to a Windows Remote Desktop from Windows 98
- How to secure RDP
- Troubleshooting


Posted by: Z24 | Sat, Sep 15 2007 |
Category: /windows |
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Tagged as: client-server, rdp, security, software, vnc, windows, xp
FileDate Changer
License: freeware
Author: NirSoft
Install: no
Size: 50 KBytes
Requirement: Windows 95 or later, comctl32.dll
With this very little tool you can change the Created/Modified/Accessed dates of one or more files at the same time.


Posted by: Z24 | Fri, Mar 16 2007 |
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Tagged as: file management, freeware, software, tools, windows
Convert
License: freeware
Author: Josh Madison
Install: no (optional installer available)
Size: 560 KBytes (153 KBytes compressed)
Requirement: Windows 95 or later
Convert is a compact and simple unit conversion program: it converts distance, speed, pressure, temperature, time, volume, angle, area, mass, power, and many more measure units, and it allows to create custom conversions.


Posted by: Z24 | Fri, Mar 16 2007 |
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Tagged as: freeware, measurement, software, tools, windows
Panorado Flyer
License: freeware for private use
Author: Karl Maloszek
Install: yes
Size: 250 KBytes (114 KBytes installer)
Requirement: Windows with COM support
Panorado Flyer is a compact program that gathers GPS coordinates from Google Earth and writes them into images EXIF information.


Posted by: Z24 | Fri, Mar 16 2007 |
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Tagged as: freeware, google earth, gps, images, software, tools, windows
CamStudio
License: freeware
Author: RenderSoft
Install: yes
Size: 8 MB (1.3 MB install), 33 KB codec
Requirement: Windows 95 or later, comctl32.dll
CamStudio is a free screen and audio recording tool and comes with a swf flash converter and a lossless codec.


Posted by: Z24 | Fri, Mar 16 2007 |
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Tagged as: freeware, screen recording, software, tools, windows
AMD Cool'n'Quiet
I'll try to answer these questions:
- What is AMD Cool'n'Quiet?
- Requirements
- Does it really work?


Posted by: Z24 | Sat, Feb 17 2007 |
Category: /configurations/both |
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Tagged as: configuration, cool'n'quiet, cooling, cpu, hardware, silencing, software, windows