Nice website [swe]

Hej alla,

Tänkte bara tipsa om en bra hemsida, http://www.gratissaker.com som bla nu i sin egna tävling delar ut Spotify invites.

Lycka till!

Howto: Setup Thunderbird with Avast Antivirus

Hello again, this is a guide for all of you using the best e-mail client Thunderbird with Avast Antivirus. The guide is originally a blog post from avast forums but it was a bit confusing so I’m trying to make it a bit more understanding.

The problem
In order to make Avast scan the incoming and outgoing emails with Thunderbird there is some settings and setups to do. Because Thunderbird encrypts the emails using SSL or TLS Avast cant scan them for virus and other damaging code. To make this work, thunderbird has to be set to send and receive unencrypted so Avast can scan them and then we need to encrypt them once again.

Todo this…
We need 2 programs,

• OPENSSL, download here
  http://www.slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html
• STUNNEL, download here
  http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html

Then, unpack and install OPENSSL and STUNNEL wherever you want.

Now we need to make some config changes in stunnel, goto the map you just installed stunnel in. Rightclick on stunnel.conf and open with notepad, if you dont know how to do this you could create a new text document.

Type;

client=yes

[gmail-pop3s]
accept=127.0.0.1:11110
connect=pop.gmail.com:995

[gmail-smtps]
accept=localhost:11025
connect=smtp.gmail.com:465

This is the settings used for gmail. You can use your ISP custom settings as well by changing smtp and pop. I will go through this guide using gmail.
Save this document as stunnel.conf

Now doubble click on Stunnel.exe (the icon that looks like a network map). Now you should be able to see the same network-map in the right corner of the screen. Double click it to view the Log to see if there is any errors, it should look something like this:

Config Avast
Right-click on the avast logo in the right corner,
Choose On-Access protection control
Goto Internet Mail
Click on the Customize button.
Goto Redirect.

Enter these ports:
POP: 110,1110,1120,11110
SMTP: 25,215,225,1025,11025

Uncheck “Ignore local connection”
It should look something like this:

Now avast is setup and we need to make the final touches in Thunderbird.

Thunderbird settings
In thunderbird, goto Tools / Account settings

Server settings for POP is:

• Server: localhost
• Port: 11110
• Username: Your gmail accountname
• Never use secure settings.

Server settings for SMTP:

• Server: localhost
• Port: 11025
• Username: Your gmail username
• Never use secure settings.

Thats it!
Now thunderbird should be able to send and recieve emails. If you are using any anti SPAM software, check out the blog post on avast forum for information of how to implement that.

Here is some related links:

• Avast antivirus v4.8
• Avast forum post
• www.stunnel.org
• OPENSSL
• Thunderbird

Avast antivirus v4.8

On the 29th March alwit software released Avast antivirus v4.8.

This interested me a lot because the new release updates include:

- Anti-spyware protection
- Anti-rootkit protection

You can see the whole list here, avast.com, the good thing is that this also is avalible for the free release that supports Windos Vista x64, and that is whats makes this update very neat. No other well knows antivirus companys has this support yet for theire free release, eaven if this has been a greatly requested feature for a long time. Not including these two features – as I see it, has always been the way to make the customers buy the complete versions of the software.

Anyhow, there is a lot of company’s developing free anti-spyware tools, but the “do not include all features” trend is all over that industry too.

As for me I have always wanted a free anti-spyware software with real-time scanning, but haven’t found any good software with Vista x64 support for free yet, until now.

But what about the other free anti-virus softwares?
Yeah, well.. The free version of avg for example supports Vista x64, it also supports scanning email through thunderbird or other email clients, when avast only support email scanning through Outlook (this is not really true because you can config avast to search email with other email-clients like thunderbird but it’s a bit more advanced setup). AVG only delivers antivirus scans in their free-edition, and they got a free anti-spyware software for download. But then you suddenly got 2 programs to update and scan with and thats just not the way a good anti-virus software should be nowdays.

my Conclusion
Though there is a lot of antivirus developers to choose from and a lot of them is really good, this last update v4.8 for Avast takes avast into another league in free anti-virus software. Well, for me this is the only choice right now on a Vista machine in order to get the complete protection. However you should always use a firewall, say comodo’s and other spyware software and rootkits software additional to your anti-virus software.

Avast is now up and running perfectly, I hope yours does too :D
If not, download your copy of avast, avast.com.

RSS with Firefox

I guess alot of people haven’t really bothered about RSS or ATOM Feeds on websites, and I didn’t either – until today.

I got interesting of learning who to make an dynamic RSS feed through asp.net and I started to read all about it. I finally made an RSS Feed from a MSSQL database to an XML file and posted it on one of my works websites. But that’s not what I’m going to talk about today, I just want to share how much I started liking RSS Feeds.

This little Icon appears everywhere on the web and it’s a great feature, you will always stay updated on all your favorite websites. It does sound a bit too much, and a bit fanatic to be updated on ALL your favorite sites but with the right tools it’s easy to separate the relevant info from the irrelevant.

Have you never used an RSS Feed,
here comes a quick guide. Checkout for the RSS Icon, klick it. The RSS should appear in order of posts with the recent updates from the website. Click the subscribe button at the top and add it to your favourites. That’s it! The really cool feature is that it will update automaticly and you will always get the latest info. To check it out you can view my RSS feed.

Handle your RSS Feeds with Firefox add-ons.
After a while when you have added alot of RSS feeds it will get a bit messy in your favorites. This is where a good add-on comes in handy. There are some add-ons for FireFox on their add-on page for RSS feeds and I have tried a bunch of them.

My favorite is Sage, a good stable add-on. It’s easy to import your RSS-map. It’s easy to see when your RSS subsriptions is updated and to see all the posts in the RSS Feed. You can also change the apperance on the RSS to your custom style (CSS) or download any of the skins from Sage’s website.

Download Sage:
Sage website
Mozilla FireFox add-ons site

Finally
Well that’s it for me, I hope this will help you a bit in the RSS jungle and gets your web experience alot easier.
A Howto is coming up on creating RSS Feeds for your website in asp.net C#, stay tuned :D

Howto: Install themes on Xubuntu

I didn’t thought there was any good guide of how to install themes on Xubuntu so I decided to write one.

First step is to lookup a style you want, www.xfce-look.org is a great website to custom your Xubuntu.

Murrine themes
If the theme is a Murrine style (often named murrina/murrine) you need to install murrine engine. Simply write:
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-murrine in Terminal.
If there is any problem or if you don’t run Xubuntu, check out http://www.cimitan.com/murrine/ for more info.

Installing themes
Next, we need to unpack the theme into ~/.themes , .themes is under /home and its hidden, to show all hidden files just do as follow while you are unpacking your theme

Next, unpack your theme in the map .themes. The folderstrukture should look like, Username/.themes/themename/gtk-2.0

Select the new theme
Now we have installed our theme, so the next step is to select it, goto Applications > Settings > User interface settings.
Select your theme and you are all set. Now keep customizing your themes, a good menu to reach all custom settings is Applications > Settings > Settings manager.

Icons

To install icons just do as you did with the themes, but unpack the icon stylepack in the hidden folder /.icons
If you can’t find the folder you have to create it.

Good luck, if you got any problems or something else that i could do better, just post a comment about it.

New operating system

Well, the os isn’t new but it’s new for me and I whant to share it :D

So 2 days ago I read a blog about ubuntu, and about freeware. Ubuntu is a linux ‘version’ and it’s a big community using it. I thought, what the hell lets try it out. So I got rid off windows xp and installed ubuntu. The nice thing about it is that it’s always going to be free end they release a new version every 6 months.

Another neat thing is that you can boot from the install CD, check out the enviroment and install it if you whant, if you dont – just reboot and go back your old os.

Well I installd the ubuntu version kubuntu, a bit nicer user interface but that was too much for my laptop to handle, so I installed ubuntu but I wasent saticfied with my laptop performance. so i tried the lighter version xubuntu and that it! A very good interface, easy to learn linux and it simple, works fast and just great. If it wasen’t for my webdeveloping I would install it on my stationary computer.

The coolest thing I discovered was not that everything was free, on “add/remove” programs there was a list of what could seem to be every program in the world :D and the easy part is that you just select the programs you want and ubuntu will install it for you. Thats a very neat and useful function, and you will never have to search developers websites or pay for the software.

I’m just saying that you should try it out for your self and have patients because it’s not windows and if you expect it to be like windows you will never learn it.

Download

AVG 8.0

The new version of AVG is out now, the AVG Internet Security 8.0 got some new cool features. It searches the url string before entering site to check for evil code. It also got link scan that searches every link you come across when surfing the net. It even scans search results on googel, yahoo & MSN and some additional features.

My only concern is how much this slows down the system and the net? They say on their website:

AVG has always delivered fast, effective security without the performance-sapping overheads of other security suites, and AVG Internet Security 8.0 continues that tradition.

but still, I have never believed in Security software’s performance information and test ratings because they heave a tendency to lie with statistics, only showing the good results and glorifying results that does not really matter (but sounds like it does).

They haven’t released the new version 8.0 as a free version yet, the current release is 7.5. So now it’s only to wait for the free release for a poor man like me :D

It’s going to be interesting reading some reviews of AVG Internet Security 8.0 and AVG Anti-virus 8.0 in the near future, if it really is so low on resources as they say and how good the security system really is.
Visit AVG for more information.

The waiting is over, or is it?

After a long time waiting for MySQL to release the connector for Visual Studio 2008 the day finally came a week ago. Myself and probably a lot of people is in desperate need of the connector for developing purposes. Sadly it’s only in alpha state right now and from previous experience of alpha-builds it is going to work fine for some people but not at all for most people.

Only by checking MySQL’s forum you get a pretty nice idea of all the problems occurring with the alpha-build, so maybe the day haven’t finally come. I guess I’m going to install and do a test-run home before I install the connector on my work machine, but still the fact lies, if the connector works at home, is it then going to work on my machine at work?

I do appreciate MySQL’s effort of releasing a .Net connector for Visual Studio 2008 and hopefully the alpha-release works fine for me. But the waiting is still a fact, and I hope all the problems in the alpha-release will only contribute to a better beta and finally, a better final-release.

And as a note; Today is the day MySQL is officially part of Sun, read all about it here.

Vista gadgets

For you running Windows Vista, here is some great Sidebar gadgets. I’m going to get wireless network really soon so if you know any good gadgets for it, pleas make a comment. Well, enjoy!

Code Converter
This is a really nice and usable sidebar tool for all the .Net C# and VB coders out there. You simply paste your C# or VB code in a convert field and whoops, get your code translated. Works from C# to Vb and vice versa.

Download from Windows live gallery.

System Control
System control is absolutly what it sounds like. It’s a customizable panel with system controls :D. Fast links for shutting down, restart, lock, switch users, task manager, sleep, run, log off, and of course cmd. It can also display RAM usage or CPU usage or time and date. It’s just simply the perfect gadget.

Download from buildagadget.com

Ping Pong Clock
I have seen a lot of clocks in different forms, vista clock, binary clocks, digital in all forms.. But this takes it all, the coolest clock i have ever seen. You just have to stop and watch the game everytime you want to know the time :D

Download from Windows live gallery

Multi Meter (THL)
This is the best CPU and RAM usage meter I have ever seen. I guess you know what it does. This one is from THL, read more about it in the note at the end of this post.

Network Meter (THL)
This is a nice network meter displaying upload/download and total upload/download. Very good if you are like me, obsessed of knowing everything that’s going on. This one is also from THL, read more about it in the note at the end of this post.

The note:
You have to register on THL (http://thehobbylounge.com) to download Multi Meter and Network Meter. It’s totally free and you get access to more useful gadgets, so really, why not register right away?

Security software

I have read tons of forum posts, articles in magazines and people talking about it. Security has always been a subject with A lot of opinions with right and wrongs.

I whoever will give you great tips on free software that will help you secure your computer.
I have tested all of them and I know it’s really good security-softwares. Enjoy!

#1 Firewall
First of all, A good firewall. Even if you think no hacker will even try attacking your PC it’s always good securing you from attacks from bots etc and of course keeping spambots, trojans and other nasty code that may already be in your PC from getting access of your Internet connection.

Comodo Firewall, image from www.comodo.com

The best firewall is free. Comodo firewall is the best firewall out there. With it’s new interface in version 3 is easy to setup and easy to manage. Get Comodo firewall for free here

#2 AntiVirus
It’s always hard to find a good antivirus that you are comfortable with and this is the one’s i like.

Paid:
NOD32 from ESET is the absolute best antivirus on the market. NOD32 always strikes the best result in AV-Comparatives antivirus tests. This is a standalone testcenter and it’s the only antivirus tests I trust.

On this site you will find independent comparatives of Anti-Virus software. All products listed in our comparatives are already a selection of some very good anti-virus products.
(www.av-comparatives.org)

Free:
There is some good free antivirus available as well.
The top 3 best ones is: AviraAntivir, AvastHome, AVG

• Avast (www.avast.com)
  Avast is the only one that protects against Spyware and you can change skin on the user interface.

• Avira (www.free-av.com)
  AviraAntivir is a really good antivirus but you will get a popup from Avira on every update with some commercial.

• AVG (free.grisoft.com)
  Ugly user interface but a strong antivir and it’s the only one capable of searching email through a standalone emailclient like thunderbird.

#3 Anti Spyware

There is alot of Anti spyware programs out there and in general they are really good.
Some free ones I like is:

• AVG Anti-Spyware Free Edition (free.grisoft.com)
• Ad-Aware 2007 Free (www.lavasoftusa.com)
• A-squared Free (www.emsisoft.com)

#4 Anti-Malware (www.comodo.com)
A must have is Comodo Anti-Malware, you should install it even if you have a Anti-Virus installed. And it’s made by Comodo so it’s free. Download and install.