Archive for March, 2009|Monthly archive page
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What’s the deal with Latitude
I’ve been using it since release more or less as I’ve always liked LBS and sharing but it’s kind of odd that everytime I go to iGoogle the gadget is broken and apparently not available in my location…
However if I search for Latitude and click on the link I get it working, URL and example below, how odd….
Works perfectly on my N95 though 🙂
Business Everywhere on Windows 7 – How-To
Need to get Orange Business Everywhere running on a Windows 7 installation ? Well I didn’t absolutely have to but given that I’m liking of Win7 I thought I would give it a try but as it’s not officially supported I wasn’t sure if it would work out, to my surprise it was relatively easy but is not as streamlined as it could be since it needs an extra click or two which I could do without to be honest.
I downloaded the latest version directly from the Business live site here and choose options for your ‘ahem’ Option modem and ran it using the ‘Troubleshoot Compatibility’ menu option (right click)
Then click next to run the check and wait while it determines what’s required
after 30 seconds or so you get some options asking what you would like to do, I hadn’t done anything with this yet so choose ‘The program worked in earlier versions of Windows but won’t install or run now’ and hit next
I decided to play safe as wasn’t sure of Vista support (apologies to OBS if it works perfectly in Vista but I had no opportunity to check and didn’t want a failed install, system restore etc) so I choose Windows XP as I know it worked there
Finally you get a dialog confirming the options selected and the chance to run the program to test, I did this and it installed with no errors
After installation I had an icon on the desktop with the security shield, in order to run it I right click and run as administrator et Voila!
I still have a few issues with the look and feel of the software, don’t appear to be able to TAB between fields but as this only affects setup it’s not a big deal and once it’s setup it runs very well indeed, I’m writing this while flying along in the Eurostar and a rock steady connection.
Caveat: This is just how I got it working, there may well be other ways but this is my way and I’m not mucking about with it now that it runs fine 🙂
Feel free to add comments on how to improve if you like of course
footnote : while I wrote the piece above i had a steady connection, once i tried sending though I couldn’t keep a steady connection long enough to complete it!
Windows 7 ‘almost’ doing quicksilver
This is the same in Vista but I’ve never used that other than to fix my parents-in-law’s computer but now that I’m using it constantly in it’s much nicer form I’m finding my app launching habits from the Mac are easily done on Windows.
Now let’s be clear this is only the app launching bit and none of the clever stuff that Quicksilver does but if I want a certain app, rather than clicking around All programs trying to find it, hit Windows Key, start typing and there it is, just like in Quicksilver but without any of the learning that happens there, still it’s better than mousing around 🙂
Browsers and shortcuts
I like keyboard shortcuts a LOT; due to bad RSI that gets away from me very easy if I’m not careful; and so it’s important to me to reduce mouse work as much as possible, on my Mac at home i use Quicksilver extensively and can do most anything without a mouse which is cool, way cool. However I also have to use a work provided laptop which has a locked down build on it so I have invested some time in trying to reduce the pain there too, this post is about my experiences with the browsers I’ve used recently.
I’ve been using Chrome for a while and got quite used to it, preferable by a long way from the version of Internet Explorer I’m stuck with on the work laptop I have; the current build has IE6 on it, no tabbed browsing which is a huge pain when you are used to having it, however my biggest gripe is one of my most frequently used shortcut keys which is CTRL-l which puts me in the address bar and highlights all the text so I can type over, especially useful with the auto-search bar in Chrome, once you’ve used it for a while you don’t need bookmarks really as it is intuitive and even replaces the search box, which I still tend to use out of habit only really.
In IE6 (and I’ve since learned even in IE8) pressing CTRL-l brings up a dialog box asking to open a Location; now you can type a URL in and it works kind of but not as good as Chrome and having a dialog box come up is off-putting, to me at least. edit: I just recalled why it’s no good, you can’t hit CTRL-l and highlight a URL to copy it ! Something I do using a keystroke on my Mac
The other one is CTRL-E to get to the search box, now this does work well in IE and so this is basically how I get around the web on a windows machine, it works well in IE once the default search engine is set, on Firefox and Chrome it’s CTRL-K and now in Safari it’s CTRL-ALT-F which is getting to be a pain, perhaps I can change it but I’ve not looked in to that as yet as it’s not something I do on my work windows machine.
I also can’t find a shortcut on Safari to get to the Top Sites page which does provide a hybrid page that allows for less clicking, unless of course you are on a connection where authentication is required and then all your icons auto-update to show the same login page, then if you can’t recall which is which you have to mouse over each one to see the URL !!
I’m liking the speed of Safari which is probably the best, however IE8 is very, very close on the particular laptop I’ve tried it on but in the end I may go back to Chrome, my main issue is switching between Mac and a poor windows installation I guess but either Chrome or the new Safari seem better to use, with Safari having more awkward keyboard shortcuts ….
Tech Evolution In A Wirefree World 