Thankfully we don’t have to deal with that anymore, right?

Wrong.

A smartphone’s browser interface more or less acts the same way our desktop PCs did in the late ’90s.

While it’s true that 3G connectivity – when it works – is faster than dialup was, you’re still stuck waiting for things to load. And when it does load, the browsers that smartphones have are watered down to the point where many "regular" web sites are simply unusable on a mobile device.

Developers are making continual improvements to make smartphones more usable, but the overall browsing experience hearkens back to a day when internet browsing was a chore at best.

Using the iPhone as an example, it only has a 480×320 screen resolution. That’s lower than VGA spec which is 640×480. Anybody who uses an iPhone or like mobile device knows full well that the browser has "creative" ways of getting around a resolution so low. And you have to use those creative ways (such as zoom and pan in/out) else you can’t browse with it regularly at all.

For you older ladies and gentlemen that think the kids today don’t know what it was like to browse the internet Web 1.0 style, they do because current browser technology and network speed on a smartphone is pretty darn close to the mark of what a browsing experience was like in the late 1990s.

How long will it take smartphones to graduate to a desktop PC’s level of web browsing?

Indeterminate. But there are three things that will kick-start mobile browsing forward exponentially.

The first is the network itself. 3G is just too darned slow. Better than EDGE, yes, but still slow. The next-gen network for whatever it will be called should fix that ill in short order.

The second is the hardware, namely the processor. Newer chips will be introduced within the next five years that run faster without adding any additional heat. (It’s always the heat that’s the big deal by the way.)

The third is the software, but that’s being attended to right now. All the major players have good solid OSes for their respective platforms. Better mobile browsers like Opera Mobile (which does do tabs very well by the way) means a better mobile browsing experience.

A problem all software developers for smartphones face is having to work around – meaning not with – the aforementioned points above. It seriously curtails development when your biggest roadblocks are the processing speed of a smartphone and the network in which it connects to. Shades of how software development used to be for PCs? Oh, yes. Even the programmers have to deal with Web 1.0 era style crapola.

I want to make clear that I’m not saying smartphones are unsuable. They obviously have their place in the modern tech world, and tons of people use them on a daily basis. However you have to admit, browsing on one is very reminiscent of the usability problems we had years ago.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

On Mobile, It’s Web 1.0 All Over Again

"Advanced Device" in plain English: Smartphone. If using a non-Smartphone, you don’t have to worry about this.

The exact verbiage from Verizon is this:

Beginning 11/15/09, customers purchasing an Advanced Device with a 1 or 2 year service agreement will be subject to an ETF of up to $350 if they disconnect service prior to the minimum term. The $350 ETF will decrease $10 for each month of service completed.

If you’re asking, "So what was the previous ETF?" The answer is $175 – which was already a snow job to begin with.

What’s the justification for the ETF increase? Answers vary. Some say it’s Verizon attempting to keep people from buying a high-end smartphone, immediately cancelling service then hocking the phone on eBay for a quick buck. Others believe it’s Verizon’s way of keeping you locked in, because with an ETF so high it costs too much to cancel.

Whatever the reason, the ETF increase just plain sucks.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Verizon To Raise Wireless Cancellation Fees

That being the case, MSN’s upcoming changes are sure to get noticed. The logo changes both with the butterfly and font, the blue background is (finally) gone and said honestly the overall experience of using it is a whole lot better. Heck, you might even find it useful because we all know the current MSN just plain sucks.

Why does the current MSN.com suck? Because the design coddles to a bygone era where web designers were deathly afraid of making anybody scroll for anything, hence the stupid tiny text on the current MSN. There’s this ridiculous belief that if anybody has to scroll down for any content on your web site, you lose. This is only true if your content sucks. Scrolling down is not evil, never has been and never will be. If you’ve got something worth reading, the reader will happily scroll; there is nothing wrong with that.

What makes the new MSN.com a notable improvement?

Color coded organization:

This is a big deal and it’s not easy to pull off design-wise, but the new MSN makes it work. And when hovering over menus, a nice dotted border appears with menu choices below.

Tabs:

The blue "Games" in the screen shot above is an example of a tab in the new MSN interface. These are located in several areas and yes, they work well. Like with the top menu, some (but not all) tabs will have different colors compared to others.

Social connectivity:

Oh yes, it has it. The old-school Web 1.0 portal finally jumps into the modern age with Facebook and Twitter connectivity right from the same page. This is a really big deal because it gives people a reason to use MSN as their home page other than for just looks and information.

The beauty of the way it works is that the new MSN doesn’t shove you elsewhere, such as a "my.[web-service-here].com" just to get this feature. It’s on the home page right where it should be. That counts and counts huge. And YES, you can post status updates right from there as well for Facebook or Twitter. I tested it myself.

Microsoft said a few years back that they were going to put a huge effort into making their offerings modern. This started with Windows Live, then Bing and now MSN. I never thought I’d ever see MSN get out of Internet Stone Age, but it looks like it finally will – and do so in a way that truly will wow you and prove to be useful at the same time.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

The Soon-To-Be New MSN.com

Everybody knows that in order to get the computer, you have to subscribe to the ISP. And of course this never applies to the "basic" internet plan. You’ll almost always have to go with the mid-to-premium plan.

In some instances, getting the computer requires you to jump thru a lot of hoops, such as is the case with Sprint. Where they nail you with first is the mail-in rebate. As you know, once you mail that sucker in, you’re the sucker because yet another company has your mailing address to send junk mail to. And then comes the fact that the broadband modem is embedded in the netbook, so you can’t move the service from the netbook to another computer whatsoever.

Very crappy. This is not a "deal" at all.

There was a time not-so long ago when certain ISPs tried to hock supposedly "free" computers, so this idea is nothing new. Back then the PC you received was annoying slow, riddled with built-in spyware/malware and did nothing but make your computer experience nothing short of a nightmare. The modern variant of this is the netbook, but instead of spyware/malware, they lock you in with ISP-specific proprietary hardware.

Note that not all ISPs who offer free netbooks are shady. Some do deliver on their promise and you do legitimately get a new netbook with no hassle or any up front cost for the computer. But I’d still recommend buying a computer outright instead of receiving anything via an ISP "deal."

This is yet another one of those instances where you have to read the fine print, because if you don’t, well.. you know what happens.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Beware Of Netbook "Deals" By ISPs

When it comes to email, there are many who prefer the convenience of web-based mail but wish there was a local application that looked and acted like a mail client. Zimbra Desktop is it. This software absolutely nails it in terms of friendliness, ease-of-use, convenience and everything in between.

First of all, it’s multi-platform. Windows, Mac or Linux. Any truly good application these days supports all three, and this does.

Second, it has support for multiple types of email:

Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Mail, two types of IMAP and POP.

It always pleases me when I see an offering by a major player like Yahoo! that is willing to support a competitor’s product like Hotmail or Gmail because it shows confidence in their own offering.

It should be noted however that only some Hotmail accounts are supported due to compatibility issues. Most will be, but if yours doesn’t connect, the software will explain why.

Third, look at this interface:

Slim, clean and super-easy. Look at the tabs on top. Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Documents and so on are all just a single click away. Folder support is easy too.

Oh, and speaking of which, did you ever want your Gmail account to have accessible "normal" folders like all other webmail does? It will when you use Zimbra. Simply add a folder via a connected Gmail account, and it will create nested folders that look and act just like normal ones – and yes they’re completely accessible via the regular Gmail interface as well.

Fourth, although this sounds a bit dopey I really dig it – a mail indicator icon in the taskbar in Windows when new mail arrives:

The yellow envelope is the new mail indicator. This seemingly insignificant feature is just so nice to have.

Fifth, yes it has multiple account support. In the screen shot above, look on the left sidebar. Your other accounts are listed at the bottom and can be accessed easily with a single click. If there is any new mail in accounts lists there, there is a small number in parentheses telling you how much new mail there is.

Sixth is the synchronization features. Using Yahoo Calendar and Contacts? It will sync seamlessly. Using Gmail’s version? It’ll sync that too.

It goes without saying that Yahoo! Mail users will appreciate Zimbra the most because it FINALLY brings a true native client to the desktop. This is Yahoo’s equivalent of Windows Live Mail and it does a fine job even though it’s beta software.

And yes, it’s beta. That means some things may go buggy from time to time. But in my use of it I’ve encountered no issues as of yet.

The way Zimbra works in Windows is by installing itself as a service. You will see a small red icon in your taskbar (when no new mail is present) like this:

This is not a bad thing whatsoever, because when the Zimbra client is minimized, it goes completely out of the way and shrinks to this little icon, which can be clicked to bring the client back up. In addition, it can be right-clicked to completely shut down the service.

Zimbra Desktop was definitely done right the first time. It is the only software I’ve seen that offers a true alternative to Windows Live Mail (especially if you don’t use Hotmail) and the feature set is just plain great.

Oh, one last note. This may be a frilly feature but still worth mentioning. It has 12 different themes you can use:

This is available via the Options tab.

Let’s say for example you want Zimbra to look like Gmail. You would choose "Zmail." This is what it looks like:

Looks pretty close to Gmail, doesn’t it?

Zimbra’s dev team really thought this product through.

As said at the top of this article, this is a product that accesses web-based mail but still retains the total look and feel of a local mail client – and has the very-super-awesome-cool sync features like Windows Live Mail does, so it isn’t an island unto itself whatsoever.

Two huge thumbs up for Zimbra Desktop. You’d be very hard pressed not to like this.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Zimbra Desktop Is Just Plain Awesome

Here in the U.S., Comcast is gunning to impose monthly data restrictions widely, however there’s a problem and a huge one at that. There’s no way for the customer to check what they’ve used. This is like having a car without a fuel gauge or a cell phone without a battery life indicator. Comical? Yes.

Here are some things that are even more comical.

If you use any online banking at all, every time you login to whatever system you use, you’re blasted to "go paperless." The supposed benefits are that it saves trees. Not true. All it does is save the bank the cost of mailing a bill to you. Regardless of that, what’s the point of going paperless if it puts a draw on your monthly bandwidth restriction that would potentially cost you more?

Want a better example? No problem.

Video web sites like YouTube and Hulu tell everybody that you should watch them instead of regular television. So let’s say you do. Do you have any idea how much draw all that video Flash content has? Quite a bit.

And the best example of all:

Our own President want to make sure that the entire nation has a minimum 10 megabit connectivity speed for all broadband connections. This is a good idea. But then all this means is that you’ll tap your bandwidth limit faster, so it serves no benefit.

It could be that our very own ISPs make this massive speed-increase effort by our own government to drop like a brick by widely imposing bandwidth restrictions. They have a saying in the military to describe this scenario: "Hurry up and wait."

Do you have a monthly bandwidth limit where you are?

If you do, do you have some sort or metering program that tells you what you’ve used? If so, great! Comcast doesn’t.

Have you found your bandwidth restriction to get in the way of doing things you want to do on the internet?

Let us know by posting a comment.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Are You Under The Thumb Of A Bandwidth Restriction?

Unfortunately it is the case where the process of getting the source of an email is distinctively different per provider or mail client, so here’s a quick cheat sheet on how to do it:

Hotmail

1. Right-click the email you want to view the source of.

2. Left-click View Message Source.

Example:

Important note: This can only be done when your emails are shown as a list. If you double-click to open an email whereas the message list is not seen, there isn’t a way to view the message source from there. You must right-click specifically on the email in list view (regardless of whether the reading pane is on or off.)

Yahoo! Mail

There are two ways in Y! Mail to view the source.

1. While in list view, right click the email you want to view the source of.

2. Left click View full headers. It will be last in the list.

Example:

or..

Whether reading a message or having it highlighted in list view, click the Actions button then Full Header.

Example:

Yahoo! Mail Classic

1. Open the email you want to view the source of.

2. Scroll all the way to the bottom and look for the tiny text on the extreme right that says Full Headers and click it.

Example:

Gmail

1. Open the email you want to view the source of.

2. Click the small down arrow on the right to drop down a menu.

3. Select Show original.

Example:

Windows Live Mail or Microsoft Outlook Express 6

The super-annoying long way

(This is not the way you want to do it because it takes too many steps. See super-easy way below this.)

1. Right-click the email you want to view the source of.

2. Select Properties, like this:

3. From the window that opens up, select the Details tab, like this:

4. In that same window, click the Message Source button, like this:

The super-easy way

1. Highlight or open the email you want to view the source of.

2. Press CTRL+F3

The F3 method is a completely undocumented feature, both in OE 6 and WL Mail. But trust me, it’s there. Try it for yourself.

Mozilla Thunderbird

1. Highlight any email in the message list or open an email.

2. Click View then Message Source.

Example:

or..

1. Highlight any email in the message list or open an email.

2. Press CTRL+U

Incidentally, this is the exact same keystroke used to view web page HTML source in the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

What headers should you check in the source?

Okay, so you know how to view the source of an email, but what do you look for?

The easiest thing to check is the Received: header. This will tell you up front where the email came from originally. The part that’s most important is the very end of the line where the dot-com/net/org is.

Example:

This email came from google.com (it was a Gmail address,) so I know this email is safe. What’s before the google.com doesn’t matter much as it’s the tail that counts. Spam and phishing attempts will attempt to fool you into thinking the mail was delivered from a trusted domain by inserting said domain in the middle. For example, a spam/phish would show as google.com.some.bad.site.ru or something similar. The google.com is in there, but not at the tail. That’s bad and it’s a spam/phish attempt.

Keep an eye on the tail side of a Received: header and you’ll easily be able to identify true trusted domains from spam and phishing attempts.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To View The Source Of An Email (Spam/Phishing Prevention)

There are several different ways to archive web pages.

You could use ScreenGrab for Firefox. But the problem is that you can text-search anything in an image.

You could use PDF Creator and "print" pages to PDF. This does allow text searching, but the PDF rarely looks anything like the original page and any images present look "off."

What truly works are MHT files. I’ve mentioned this before but have a few extra goodies to make it even easier.

What’s the difference between an MHT and a regular "Save Page As.."? The MHT is an actual single-file archive that contains all the code and images. It’s a great way to archive web pages that contain information you want to save.

Firefox does not have native ability to read or save MHT files, however with UnMHT, you can. It will even read MHTs saved by Internet Explorer, and IE will also read MHTs saved by Firefox. In addition to that, UnMHT has the ability to save all open tabs at once – something that IE 8 doesn’t do.

See video below for details on how it all works.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To Easily Archive Web Pages Using MHT Files

For years I’ve heard that toothpaste will make a scratched optical disc readable again. I never believed it.

I’ve had in my possession a CD I burned 6 years ago that would fail on every attempt to have an optical drive read it, but kept it anyway in the hopes someday I could find a way to get it readable again. The disc was scratched slightly and I’ve definitely seen ones in much worse condition. In fact one time I was able to get a CD read that was cracked – although I wouldn’t recommend that because it can break apart in the drive and spread itty bits all over the place, ruining the the inside of the optical bay completely. That didn’t happen to me, but it could have.

As a last-ditch effort, I tried the toothpaste method because darn it, I want the f**king data off this disc, and if not it’s getting tossed. Six years is long enough to wait for anything. I smeared the paste so it completely covered the data side of the disc, let it dry for a few minutes, then washed it off thoroughly and dried with paper towels.

I expected this to do nothing but make the disc really clean and nothing else, thinking, "This will make a good article for PCMech because it will totally prove without a shadow of a doubt that this never works."

After the disc was completely dried, I popped it in the bay and waited a few seconds.

Nothing.

But the read pattern was slightly different compared to before (I could tell by the sound,) and the activity light was flickering rapidly.

Okay then.. I’ll just let it sit in the drive for a minute or two, then give up because I know this is going to fail again.

About 90 seconds later, Windows pops up a prompt asking me if I want to see the contents of the disc. What? This disc is now readable? No way!

Way.

I was surprised, elated, shocked and whatever other descriptive feeling you want to throw in there.

Not only did the disc read, but I was able to copy every single file off of it, at a numbingly slow speed, but it did work. No corrupted files, either!

HOWEVER..

I’m still not convinced it was the toothpaste that saved the disc. For all I know this could have been sheer dumb luck that the disc read this time and not all those other times.

Articles, some of which go back years like this one, claim toothpaste works on optical discs as a mild polish. What supposedly occurs is that when you polish enough, this will remove a tiny layer of plastic, fill in the areas caused by the scratches and make scratched optical discs readable again.

But I still don’t know if I buy that either.

What do you think? Was I just lucky or did the toothpaste actually work?

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Does Toothpaste Truly Make A CD Or DVD Work Again?

Y! Mail doesn’t have either of those options.

A full backup includes not only your inbox, but also the "Sent" folder and any other folders you have. Even if you have a Yahoo! Mail Plus account, the only thing you can ever download is the inbox and nothing else.

With that said, this is how to perform a full Yahoo! Mail backup. The process of how it’s done is long and tedious, but if you care about your mail at all, this is better than nothing.

To note: These instructions are the same whether you’re using Windows 2000, XP, Vista or 7.

1. Download and install FreePOPs

(Yahoo! Mail Plus users can skip this step because you’ve already most likely set up your POP access and use it regularly.)

Quick question answered: Why not YPOPs? Because it times out too much on attempt to connect. It works, but not nearly as well as FreePOPs does.

FreePOPs is easy enough to set up. Download the program, then install it and run it. You’ll see a small green icon indicating it’s running in the taskbar next to the clock.

After that, run the FreePOPs Updater…

…and let it update whatever it needs to. This will include a small Y! Mail update that’s necessary to have.

Remember that FreePOPs must be running in order for the next steps to work. If you see that little green icon in the taskbar, it’s running.

2. Configure a mail client to download your Y! Mail

For this example I’ll be using the Windows Live Mail client.

Below: Click "Add e-mail account" from the left.

Below: Enter your Yahoo! Mail address, Yahoo! Mail password, and your name. Then check "Manually configure server settings for e-mail account."

Below: Set your incoming mail server as POP3. Set the incoming server as localhost (FreePOPs is acting as the localhost.) Set the incoming server port to 2000 (FreePOPs requires this.) Set the authentication method to be clear text. Set the login ID as your full Yahoo! Mail address.

Where people get most confused is with the outgoing server. This is the mail server used to send mail and not receive. FreePOPs has no ability to send mail; it can only receive. Therefore to send mail, should you wish to do so from the mail client, you need to use your ISP’s outgoing mail server. This information will be listed at your ISP’s web site. As for whether it not it requires authentication in order to use, that’s dependent on how the ISP has it configured for access. Some require it while others do not. If it does require a separate username/password to use the outgoing mail server, you would want to check "My outgoing server requires authentication" seen below.

Below: When finished, Windows Live Mail will immediately start downloading mail.

WL Mail is configured by default for new POP accounts to purposely leave copies of the mail on the server. This is good, because it will not remove mail out of the Yahoo! Mail system.

Once all the mail from the inbox is downloaded, proceed to the next step.

3. Backing up the mail out of the other folders in your Yahoo! Mail account

This is the "fun" (as in annoying and tedious) part.

On the local client side, we first create a folder to temporary hold the contents of the inbox.

Right-click the header text, usually titled "Yahoo (YOUR-YAHOO-ID)" and choose to create a new folder, like this:

Title the folder "inbox backup." After that, click the Inbox and highlight all mail by pressing CTRL+A, then drag to the "inbox backup" folder you just created.

It will look something like this when completed:

Go to Yahoo! Mail and do the exact same thing. Create a folder called "inbox backup," then highlight everything in the inbox and drag it there. It will look something like this when completed:

Now that we’ve backed up the inbox on both local and web, we can backup another Y! Mail folder.

For this example, we’ll backup the "Sent" folder.

In Yahoo! Mail, click the "Sent" folder, highlight all mail in there, then drag it to the Yahoo! Mail inbox, like this:

Perform a Send/Receive locally with your mail client to get this mail. It will go to the local inbox and look like this when completed:

Highlight all these mails and drag them to the "Sent Items" folder locally. At this point, now they’re backed up and in their proper location.

Go to your "inbox backup" folder locally, and drag those mails back to the inbox.

Now is the time when you perform your official backup. Use a utility like KLS Mail Backup to back up all the mail in the client before continuing.

In Yahoo! Mail, drag the "Sent" mail you dragged to the inbox back to the "Sent" folder, then drag the "inbox backup" mail back to the inbox.

Perform these steps for each folder you want to backup in Yahoo! Mail.

Quick questions answered

Why do I have to backup the local mail before I move anything back to the inbox in Yahoo! Mail?

If you don’t you’ll get duplicate emails, and that’s annoying to deal with. This is why you backup your local copy before moving anything back to the inbox on the Yahoo! Mail side.

Will the timestamps be kept on each mail downloaded?

Yes.

Why do I have to keep moving around mail to the Y! inbox just to download it via POP?

Because Yahoo! allows mail to be downloaded via POP from the inbox only.

Can I move mail from local to Yahoo! Mail?

No. You can only get mail from Yahoo! to local and not the other way around. That’s the way POP works. The only way to get mail from local to a Yahoo! Mail account is to forward it. Yes, this sucks, but that’s the only way.

If I send a mail via the client, will this sync to my Yahoo! Mail "Sent" folder?

No. If you want that ability you’ll have to use YPOPs, linked above. It has the ability to copy sent mail to your Y! Mail’s "Sent" folder on each send. However I don’t recommend the use of that due to the fact it times out so much. This can prove to be very frustrating in short order.

If I create folders in the client, will they sync with Yahoo! Mail?

No.

Being that FreePOPs supports a ton of different mail besides Yahoo! Mail, could I use it to back up a different account, such as mail.com mail, aim.com mail and so on?

Absolutely. Using the methods above you could backup mail the exact same way with any one or more of these providers.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To Perform A Full Yahoo! Mail Backup