The Next 'New Big Thing'?

Reader Asks Me To Guess The Future -- NBD

"Tech Paul,
I am going to comment, after this paragraph, on my interesting experiences with my new GPS toy. But, before I go to that, I have a question, over which I am puzzling.

Background:  All or most of the most fascinating new technologically-oriented new toys/tools of the last half century have been things so new in concept that it could hardly have been possible for most people to have anticipated them. To take just my latest toy, if fifteen years ago someone had asked me to dream up a new gadget that I would like to have invented, perfected, and given to me to play with, it would hardly have occurred to me to ask for something like a GPS to set on the dashboard of my car. If I had, somehow!, thunk up such a thing, I would have dismissed it, on the grounds that it would be technologically so impossible as to be, for all practical purposes, beyond the realm of possibility.

(But a similar case could be argued with regard to penicillin, the home computer, the Internet, e-mail, cell phones (in both the phone-only and do-everything versions), iPods, satellite radio, the various digital book-read devices, and some of the stuff coming with the emerging nano-technology.)

Now:  Regarding my new GPS toy, I am using it at every opportunity, but there are at least two things about this GPS unit which continue to amaze me, as I play with it. First of all, in this little GPS unit, the size of a paperback book, there is an amazing amount of information. Down to pretty much every street in every city-town-village in the country, and what are valid street numbers on every one of those streets. And every highway, and every junction, and so on. Surely there must be many, many gigabytes of data packed into this small box. And an auxiliary amazement is that all this can be bought for $120!

My wife and the granddaughters are bemused by my new toy, but they don't have the background to be awed by the level of technological achievement represented by this little toy. Like multi-function cell phones and all the other modern marvels, this is just part of how the world is. Especially the granddaughters really can not imagine what life was like when we were growing up on the farm with no electricity, only a hand-crank telephone, and with such a thing as television as not even imagined. So I just had to discuss this new technological marvel called a GPS with somebody who is a bit more into the technological side of the world of technology than they are. So thank you for tolerating my enthusiastic blathering.

Q: My question is this -- what do you envision might be the next "new big thing" which ordinary mortals like me do not even conceive of as an interesting and useful possibility? something which, once it was here and available, would be as fascinating and as useful as the newly-emerged GPS is now?"

Thank you for writing, and allowing me to share this letter with my readers. It is a good question you have posed.
A: All you have to do is look at Star Trek for the answer(s). Whether levitation, or a "Universal translator", or "cloaking" device (invisibility), or plasma rifle, or exceeding the speed of light (or just solar system - to - solar system travel), or "tractor beam", or needle-less hypodermic 'shots' (oh, wait..), or "hologram room" makes it out of the laboratories first.. I don't know. But the Next Big Thing that I'm waiting for is...
... teleportation.

How about you Tech -- for Everyone readers. What do you think the next technological marvel (quantum leap) will be? Click on the "comments" link, and let us know.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Make XP Look Like Vista or Mac OS X

Free Downloads Transform Your Desktop

In one of my prior articles (see, A Brief Pause/fun with XP Themes) I wrote about using Windows Themes to customize the look and feel of your Desktop, and make it more "you". I also told you about "wallpaper" and "skins", which much more radically alter the GUI ("goo-ey", aka Graphical User Interface), allowing deeper changes.

There is, literally, a whole world of Desktop wallpapers, XP skins, and pre-configured Themes available for you to explore. Do you love kittens? Unicorns? NASCAR? I'm sure there's a theme/skin for you.
(A couple of quick resources: The official Microsoft XP "Desktop enhancements" webpage, and Witt'sWallpapers.)

It's a fact -- though Microsoft did soften, and modernize the "Windows look" with XP (rounded edges, and a picture background), it looks quite dated to us today.. a bit stodgy and boring. (And to some observers, it kinda says, "we're too *thrifty* to buy new equipment.")

Today's free downloads: By downloading and installing a skin, you can change the face your computer presents to the world, without changing the essential code of the underlying operating system.

So, if you would like the Vista Desktop, Menus, Sidebar widgets and general look and feel, but XP loyalty/Vista hate, program compatibility, etc. means sticking with XP -- download the Vista Transformation Pack.

Or, you can really "trip people out" (to use a little California lingo) and put an Apple Mac face on your XP machine with RK Launcher. RK Launcher* gives you a customizable "Dock" to replace the Windows Taskbar.

Kind of hard to believe that both those screenshots are XP machines.. right?

* My thanks to Deb Shindler for mentioning this program.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Lost the Setup CD? How To Connect a Router*

Reader asks how to connect to the Internet without the original CD

Q: "How can I connect to the Internet with my laptop via D-link router from desktop? We have no CD ROM for d link."

A: You do not need the setup CD to make a router work (frankly, the following is my preferred method, as the CD’s usually install unnecessary “bonus features”.) Here is how you establish Internet connections (aka "configure a") on a router.

1) Assign your PC an IP address in the same range as the router’s default address– for most routers, assign the IP 192.168.1.2, but since this is a D-Link router, use 192.168.0.2.
(Look to “Assign Address” here for Illustrated instructions.)

2) Connect the PC directly to the router with an Ethernet cable.

3) open a web browser (IE, Firefox, Safari) and enter the IP address number of the router into the address bar. (If you don’t know this, look to the router manufacturer’s Website for “default settings”). Typically, this is 192.168.1.1, or 192.168.0.254 -- but D-Link uses 192.168.0.1.

4) Enter the default Name and Password (again, look to to the website’s support page/FAQ’s if you don’t know these). But typically these are “admin”+”admin”, or “admin”+”password”.
D-Link’s default is admin/admin.

Your are now in your router’s “web interface” Control Panel, and you can enter the PPPoE setting provided by your ISP. Typically all you need is an identifier.. which is an e-mail address + password.
If you can’t find or remember these, contact your ISP’s support. D-Link’s Wizard will help.

[note: Once your ISP has connected, and while you're in the Control Panel, set your router's security configuration, and set a new password (and write them down). Illustrated instructions can be found here, http://techpaul.wordpress.com/2008/01/01/how-to-secure-your-wireless-network/]

5) Return to Network Connections (from Step 1) and reset your PC to “Get address automatically–DHCP”. Reboot your PC if necessary.

Today’s free link: Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. (Full Install.) Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is a stand-alone multiplayer game in which players wage war as Axis or Allies in team-based combat. In Wolfenstein Enemy Territory Axis and Allied teams do battle in traditional single scenarios, or wage war through a series of linked scenarios in a totally new campaign mode. During combat players gain experience and skill, and through battlefield promotions are awarded additional abilities that remain persistent across an entire campaign.

* Orig post: 10/13/2008. For some reason, this has been getting a lot of 'hits' this week...

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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My Startup Folder Is A Clown Car*

You are familiar with clown cars. It’s that tiny little car that drives into the center ring at the circus, stops, opens its door, and an arm comes out, then a leg, and then a whole, seven and-a-half foot tall clown comes out…and you wonder what inhuman contortionist’s feat allowed that BIG clown to fit into that little car.
No sooner has that tall clown unfolded himself, then he reaches into the car and pulls out a fat clown. You think, no way!
Now a lady clown comes out of that car…and then a short clown…and then another fat clown emerges…and you’re thinking, there’s gotta be a tunnel under there…but you had just seen elephants parading all over that center ring…and another clown’s out and another clown and another clown. What you’re seeing just isn’t possible. You lose count of all the clowns that come out of that car. Yes…I just knew you’d remember. Clown car.

I have one machine that I use for pretty much everything — gaming, digital photography, building/maintaining my website, reading and sending email, instant messaging, video conferencing, doing my taxes, etc – and I have, literally, scores of programs installed on it. (I have other machines as well, but this one is my Swiss Army knife: it does it all.) This machine’s Startup folder has become like that clown car before it expels its load. Because of that fact it takes so long to get going at boot up that I never turn it off – I leave it running 24/7. That’s far from an ideal ’solution’, however.

The fact is, and this dates back to the days of DOS and TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs, just about every program and service you install wants to get itself loaded when Windows starts — so that it will be “immediately available” should you want it — and so it puts a shortcut to itself in the Startup folder. For some programs and services this is a very good thing; like your 3rd party firewall and antivirus program and updater. You definitely want those things running all the time, and just as soon as Windows boots.

But most of the others are unnecessary and merely slow down the boot process and waste valuable RAM memory space. Apple Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat (and Adobe Updater) and Real Player are notorious examples of programs that have no business inserting themselves into your Startup folder, but there are others: do you really need your webcam to start itself at boot? How about your instant messenger? Isn’t it sufficient to simply launch them when you’re ready to use them? Some of these simply launch themselves so that they can show you banner ads and make the owners money (like AIM and MSN Messenger), which is pretty darned-close to being adware…wouldn’t you say? (It is, in fact, the definition of adware.) Windows itself is often guilty of bogging itself down by loading programs (called “services”) that you probably don’t need.

Tip of the day: Speed up your boot process (and get rid of some of those icons down by the clock at the same time) by trimming shortcuts from your Startup folder and shutting down unnecessary services. Let’s start with the first one. In XP, right-click the Start button, and then click Properties. On the Start Menu tab, click Classic Start menu and then click Customize. Now click Remove. Open the Programs folder and open the Startup folder. Highlight the items in the Startup folder that you want to remove and click the Remove button. Close, and hit OK. That’s it. Restore your Start menu’s view if you prefer the “XP look”. (Remember, you are only removing shortcuts to the executable, and not removing the program itself: it is still there for when you want it.)

Now my advice on what to remove and what to leave alone: remove anything Adobe, remove anything that says “quick launch”, remove anything Apple, remove your webcam, and leave in place your Internet Security and anti-malware programs. It is up to you whether or not you want your instant messenger to be loaded at boot or not — I prefer it.

This next part, Services, is a little more advanced, and you should be real comfortable with Windows before you make too many adjustments — you will be doing more than just removing shortcuts here. Click Start >Programs >Administrative Tools (or, Start >All Programs >Accessories >Administrative Tools) and then Services. In the right-hand pane you will see a long list of services available to Windows, and columns labeled “Description”, Status, Start up type, and “Log on as”. The status shows you which ones are currently running, and as you will see, most of them are not (which is good).

Now since we’re in a province not meant for mere mortals, I’m going to suggest only a few “tweaks”, and strongly urge you not to do more.

Locate the service Messenger and check its status (This is not your instant messenger): it should be blank and the Start up type should read “disabled”. If not, double-click on it. On the window that opens, click the Stop button. Now use the drop-down menu to change the Start up type to Disabled. If you are not hosting your own website (and if you don’t know what that means, you aren’t) look for a service called IIS: use the above method to stop and disable this one also. If Telnet is running and you’re not a sysadmin, disable this one too.

If you are the only user of the machine, locate (and stop) the Fast User Switching service and set the Start up type to Manual. If it has been a long while since you’ve used Windows Help and Support Center, do the same to the service named Help and Support. And that, I believe, is enough for now.

Today’s free link(s): I have been talking recently about malware and I’ve mentioned the threats it poses. If you are concerned about, and have questions regarding, malware and ID theft, there’s a couple of great resources where you can get answers — Safer Computing.com and the US Government’s “one stop” National ID Theft Information Center.

For more on the Startup folder, see my new post, and also How To Manage Startup programs in Vista.

As part of his ongoing exploration of world of cloudware apps, Rick Robinette at What's On My PC.. has found a nifty screen capture tool and prepared a nice demo video (that I found very informative). Check out ScreenToaster – An “Awesome and Free” web based screen recorder!

* One of my first articles. Orig pub: June 20, 2007

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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