AVG8 Personal E-mail Scanner Configuration

As I have promised in the previous post, I will show you how to configure AVG8 Personal E-mail Scanner. It is very simple indeed. In order to use e-mail scanner of AVG8 Free Edition, you have to setup it properly because it cannot be used out of the box. The e-mail scanner works as a proxy between e-mail client in your PC and e-mail server, for example at your service provider, as depicted below:

In this example we are going to use Google e-mail server, Gmail. There are 2 parts that we have to setup properly, ie: e-mail scanner proxy server (AVG) and e-mail client, that is Outlook Express for our example. I will quote the excerpt from AVG website about the configuration as below:

To set up AVG protection for e-mails on your Gmail account, please follow these steps:

• open AVG - menu Tools - Advanced Settings - E-mail Scanner - Servers
• go to POP3 - AutoPOP3, and edit this server:
  • Type of login: Fixed host; fill in your POP3 server and port (pop.gmail.com:995)
  • Local port: 5100
  • Connection: SSL (or SSL Default based on your e-mail services provider)
  • make sure that the server is activated
• now go to SMTP - AutoSMTP, and edit the server:
  • Type of login: Fixed host; fill in your SMTP server and port (smtp.gmail.com:465)
  • Local port: 5200
  • Connection: SSL (or SSL Default based on your e-mail services provider)
  • make sure that the server is activated

This way, the AVG E-mail Scanner is set up to communicate with the Gmail server using SSL encryption (using port 995 for POP3 and port 465 for SMTP) as required by Gmail. You can set up with similar configuration for Yahoo Mail connection but with different local ports (eg: port 10111 for POP3 and port 10026 for SMTP) and server name (in my case ie: pop.mail.yahoo.com.sg and smtp.mail.yahoo.com.sg). I have both Gmail and Yahoo Mail in the PC.

NEWLY REVISED! Then, please configure your e-mail client so that it connects to the AVG e-mail scanner as a proxy instead of the actual e-mail server (Gmail). Connection between e-mail client (ie: Outlook Express) and AVG personal e-mail scanner uses NORMAL POP3 and SMTP connection, and NOT SSL connection. The ports for normal POP3 and SMTP are determined by yourself but I suggest that only unused ports are selected in order not to interfere with other TCP communication. The servers configuration in Outlook Express will be:

• POP3
  • server: 127.0.0.1
  • port: 5100
  • user name / password: same as before (i.e. your e-mail username and password)
  • encryption: NONE (SSL disabled)
• SMTP
  • server: 127.0.0.1
  • port: 5200
  • authentication: yes
  • user name / password: same as before
  • encryption: NONE (SSL disabled)

Very simple, right? In my case, I set the local port for POP3 to 10110 and for SMTP to 10025 for easy reference only (note port 110 is for normal POP3 and port 25 for normal SMTP). After setting the configuration, all the incoming or outcoming e-mail traffic will be routed to AVG personal e-mail scanner for virus / malware scanning before dispatching them to the intended correct destination. If you have a firewall installed in your system, you can see the mechanism of exchanging the message between those 3 above entities.

That's it for now. Any comments, please welcome...

Mosquito Trap

Have you been annoyed by mosquitoes? Besides that, mosquitoes can infect you with many kind of diseases. One of them is malaria. For detailed information about mosquito and its diseases, you may visit this site http://www.comosquitocontrol.com/Mosquito_Biology.html

Here is a good short article about this biting insects:

Only the females bite!
Only the female mosquito bites. Male mosquitoes feed primarily on flower nectar, whereas female mosquitoes require a blood meal to provide protein for their eggs. Typically, they consume more than their own body weight in blood. Different species of mosquito prefer to feed at different times of the day or night.

Midges and sandflies, as well as mosquitoes, locate you by sight, smell and by sensing the heat radiating from your body. As well as being able to see you with their large compound eyes, they can smell the carbon dioxide you exhale and the lactic acid in your perspiration. What's more, they detect movement by infra-red radiation. This ability to sense you in three different ways means that mosquitoes can find you from up to 36 metres (120') away.

Methods of mosquito and midge control
The key to mosquito control is adulticiding the pests. This simply means killing the adult insects so that they don't have the opportunity to breed. Your local council helps to do this by using larvicides. Larvicides are simply chemicals that kill an insect's eggs or larvae. This might be effective in the short term, but it fails to eradicate an insect population in the long term. The Mostrap Mosquito Trap breaks the breeding cycle of these insects by eradicating the adult females before they have a chance to lay their eggs. The Mostrap Mosquito Trap not only controls the local insect population but also prevents new populations from establishing. Typically, most mosquitoes and other biting insects do not migrate. 90% live and feed within 100 metres (300') from where they breed (swamp mosquitoes are an exception) and the other 10% are blown in from neighbouring areas by the wind. By attracting and eradicating these renegade mosquitoes, the Mostrap Mosquito Trap prevents new populations establishing. Mosquitoes produce up to 3000 offspring during their six-week lifecycle, so for every mosquito killed it prevents 3000 offspring being born.

Biting insect fact: Carbon dioxide
In recent years, scientists have established that blood-sucking insects are attracted to their blood meal by the smell of carbon dioxide. That is, the exhaled breath of humans and animals. But while they are attracted by short bursts of carbon dioxide, continuously released carbon dioxide has the opposite effect. Carbon dioxide released mainly from the breath but also from the skin serve as a long-range airborne attractant and can be detected by biting insects at distances of up to 36 metres (120').

Biting insect fact: Lactic acid
Lactic acid is produced as a result of vertebrate muscle metabolism, and is released through human and animal perspiration. Mosquitoes have chemoreceptors on their antennae that are stimulated by the scent of acid. And, although humans are unable to smell it, blood-sucking insects find it irresistible.

Biting insect fact: Octenol
Octenol, described as 'cow's breath in a can', has been found to be a remarkable lure for mosquitoes. The discovery was made by accident by scientists in South Africa studying the Tsetse fly. It was later confirmed when a mosquito outbreak in Florida USA was killing cattle. It was found that the lungs of the cattle were filled with mosquitoes, they were inhaling more mosquitoes than air!

Biting insect fact: Heat & Moisture
At close range, skin temperature and moisture serve as attractants. It has been known for many years that females of many species of mosquitoes will be attracted to a source of heat via infra-red radiation, in particular warm moisture

Biting insect fact: Spectrum & Ultraviolet light
Adult insects possess both compound eyes and ocelli. Compound eyes are used for navigation and sensing movement, patterns, contrast and colour, while ocelli are believed to sense light levels. Research has found that the retina of the compound eye in differing species of flying insects is sensitive to differing wavelengths of light.

Biting insect fact: Color
Mosquitoes are attracted to dark colors.

There are many kinds of methods for avoiding and terminating this sucking-blood insects such as:

1. Mosquito Repellant Incense Coil
2. Mosquito Aerosol
3. Mosquito Repellant Electric
4. Mosquito Repellant Liquid for Skin
5. Mosquito Repellant Ultrasonic
6. Mosquito Electric Swatter
7. Mosquito Electric Killer
8. Mosquito Trap

I try to find a method of eliminating mosquitoes around my house without using any chemicals effectively. At last I found and selected the latest method, ie: using mosquito trap. I try 2 different brand which are used a similar method though a little bit different in just one piece of extra part that will be explained below. According to the supplier, the first one is made in Korea with a brand name "Black Hole" priced around Rp 550,000 and the second one is made in China with a brand name "Venus" priced around Rp 275,000. But I guess the first one is also from China :-) with doubled price. There is an extra part in the first brand Black Hole, a kind of conical screen made from plastic. This conical plastic screen is to retain trapped mosquitos from escaping the container whenever you turn off the fan. Some of the mosquitoes are killed by the rotating blades of the fan. But most of them are still surviving and trap into the bottom chamber of the container. Be careful not to turn off the fan, because they will fly off escaping the trap as soon as the fan stops. Black Hole has better capability of retaining those strong mosquitoes from escaping due to the extra conical plastic screen.

So how the mosquitos will die if they still survive from the blades of the fan. I do not know exactly but they might be dead after sometimes because of the heat and radiation of 2 small ultraviolet lamps at the upper chamber of the container. One UV lamps only consume around 10W so that the total power consumed by this device are around 30W. You can easily exchange the dead lamp with a new one by opening the lower chamber and reach for the lamp at the upper side. It cost you around Rp 30,000 for each piece of new UV Lamp.

You must maintain this mosquito trap at least once a week depending on how many it traps and kills mosquitoes. The supplier provides you with a small brush to clean out all the dead mosquitoes inside the lower chamber. Before opening up the lower chamber, I usually prepare with a sheet of tissue. Place the tissue from the top of opened lower chamber to prevent remaining strong mosquitos from escaping and then pressing it down to kill them all instantly. Furthermore, you must prepare yourself with very bad smells of the corpses. Once I heard it can also make you sick because they emits diseases.

The most important thing is how to place your trap appropriately in order to catch mosquitoes effectively. You should place it around a rather dark place without windy air. Usually I put it on a small stall or open chair with more or less 1 meter high from the ground. The mosquitoes like dark places and they will flying around the trap due to the attractive UV light and suction of the propelling fan. The brochure inside the product box says that the trap uses a kind of material TiO2 that reacts with UV lights to produce CO2 to attract mosquitoes. But in fact I cannot find such a material inside it. Maybe I miss it or don't know this kind of material at all :-)

Good luck for catching more mosquitoes then!

 

 

Ink Refill Kit

How much money do you spend for ink refill of your personal printer? In my case, it is quite a lot because I use it for my daily work. My printer is Canon PIXMA iP1300. It has 2 catridges in it. One is black color catridge and the other is 3-color catridge. A new original one will cost me around Rp 180,000 for black and Rp 225,000 for color (around USD18 and USD 22.5). They will last for about 1 pack of 500-sheet of A4 papers for draft mode and usually less than 1 pack for standard mode. But you can refill the catridge at refill or recycle center for Rp 30,000 for the black and Rp 50,000 for the color (around USD3 and USD5). In addition to these, you will spend some more time to get the new catridge or find the refill center.

Recenly I decided to install an automatic and continuous ink refill kit on my little printer. I think the kits have been popular for quite sometime but I just decide to use it now :-) Actually there are 2 kits. One for the ink refill and the other is the ink disposal. As you maybe know that, each time the printer finish all the queued jobs, the catridge will go to home positon and dump quite a lot of ink through intenal tubing to its sponge pad at the base. I guess a lot of the ink go wasted with such a mechanism :-) You will hear a lot of noise when the printer goes to its home position and wastes its precious ink.

To install the refill system is a lot more easier than to install the disposal kit. You need good catridges both for black and color because the system relies on the small flexible tubing which acts as a capillary tube, I assume :-) You make a hole on top of black catridge and 3 holes for the color. Insert one end of the tubing into the catridge through the hole by using a kind of special connectors included in the kit. The other ends go to 4 containers of black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink. The containers are already filled in with ink. Paste the containers with double tapes at the left side of the printer.

To install the disposal kit is quite hard. You have to open the upper cover of printer. There are quite many screws you have to dealt with. I will not cover how to do this in this post however :-) After opening the cover, you can reach the holders of the catridges from inside. There are 2 small tubings comes out of the holders each for black and color catridge. The ends of the tubings are left open and downward to the sponge pad which will adsorb the disposed ink everytime the printer does a home movement and cleaning task. Extend these 2 tubing with extra tubing comes with the kit. Join them so that the tubing run out of the printer. Put the other end of the additional tubing into a small transparent container which will accomodate the disposed ink. Paste the containing with double tape and extra tape at the back of the printer.

You must do several deep cleaning process and print trial until you can see that the ink can flow from the ink containers and out into the disposal container. It is enough if you can see that all part of the tubing is fully filled with ink. The appearance of the printer becomes quite ugly but anyway I just care for its performance and saving quite a lot of money. That's it folks.... You can see the pictures for clarity :-)

Automatic Switch Lamp Holder

Several weeks ago I installed 2 (two) automatic switch lamp holders for the two lamp fittings at the front of my house. They cost me around Rp 25,000 a piece and are made in china (again?). I cannot find the brand on its casing but I know it is quite a good product which I usually get from my local supplier.

Why did I install this kind of stuff? Well, first of all, I like to try new interesting product which may benefit you especially concerning energy saving or the kinds :-) Furthermore, this automatic switch will switch on your bulb automatically if there is no sufficient ambient light, ie: at dusk or night, and it will swicth off your bulb automatically if there is enough ambient light, ie: at dawn or daylight. The photosensor is an LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) or photoresistor with a kind of lense in front of it. The resistance value of LDR decreases with increasing incident light intensity.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia about LDR made from cadmium sulfide cells:

"Cadmium sulfide (CdS) cells rely on the material's ability to vary its resistance according to the amount of light striking the cell. The more light that strikes the cell, the lower the resistance. Although not accurate, even a simple CdS cell can have a wide range of resistance from less than 100 Ω in bright light to in excess of 10 MΩ in darkness. Many commercially available CdS cells have a peak sensitivity in the region of 500nm - 600nm (green light). The cells are also capable of reacting to a broad range of frequencies, including infrared (IR), visible light, and ultraviolet (UV). They are often found on street lights as automatic on/off switches. They were once even used in heat-seeking missiles to sense for targets. Standard cadmium based LDRs have a frequency response that varies according to light level, but typical fall times range from 15ms to 25ms and typical rise times range from 50ms to 70ms, so they may be unsuitable for data links and picture scanning. Silicon based photodiodes and phototransistors are orders of magnitude faster. Probably the best known LDR is the ORP12. Smaller cheaper devices are more popular today."

You can leave your house whole day and night, and the automatic switch will take care of your home lightings, when to turn it on or off. The installation is very very simple. It is put between normal lamp fitting and the bulb. For detail, please see the pictures. Screw in the automatic switch on to the fitting till it is fixed. Then screw in the bulb on to the automatic switch lamp fitting. You may change the positon of the clip-on photosensor in order to adjust its sensitivity. In my case, I adjust the photosensor lense to face straight to the front of the house in order to get the exposed dayight from the sun. It can accept power till 60W as stated in the casing but I suggest half of the power rating will be much safer (due to made in china?),  ie: 30W. Anyway, any energy saving lamps I use are less than 25W so that it is no problem at all.

So far, it seems the automatic switch works well. And furthermore, it just costs me around USD2.5 for a wonderful switch. I hope it will stand quite a long time before the sensitivity becomes worse. Let's see...

Solar Lantern Lamp

I got 2 units of solar lantern lamp from a friend to test.They are made in China. One of the lantern is modified so that it has a charging indicator (green led) and low power indicator (red led). I also put a simple charge controller inside it and a brand new Panasonic 6V 4.5AH Sealed Lead Acid Battery. The other lantern is kept original.

I want to compare which one has better performance. Both have been put into test since the beginning of June 2008 and are still working just fine. I charge them whole day from dawn till dusk (effectively from 6:30 till 17:30). Both can light brightly whole night long... (Actually it is not as bright as 18W energy saving fluorescent lamp because one lantern has only 20 bright LEDs powered by less than 2 Wp solar panel, but It is OK for a night lamp though). I am very satisfied by those two and till now it seems there is no different in their performance.By the way, they save my electricity expense because 2 night regular lamps have been replaced by these two amazing simple lantern. But the aesthetic look of those two are not good :-)

You can see the picture of the solar panel and the lantern hanging by cable at the ceiling. It is very simple so that I think I will save some money to buy a bigger solar panel about 200 Wp and then install charge controller plus battery bank with several solar-powered lamps inside the house!! It is good but the price is even better too :-) So guys, wish me luck with the panel then...

By the way, if you are in the US, you may find the selected energy saving products at http://energysaving.shopmarking.com/ powered by Zlio

Free Avast Anti virus 4 Home Edition

After having a little problem with AVG 8  free edition, I thought it was a good chance for me to try a new free antivirus from ALWIL Software based in Prague, Czech Republic. As a matter of fact, I was very happy with AVG 8 until it displayed a warning box telling me that "avgscanx.exe" had a problem during full scan. The scanning itself was stopped or interrupted and not completed. I could not find why this happened whenever a full scan was executed.

The brand new replacement was Avast Antivirus 4 Home Edition which is free for non commercial and home use only. The package already includes anti-spyware protection and anti-rootkit detection as explained in its home website at http://www.avast.com/. But you have to register and get a licence key in order to use it for one year period. After one year, it will expire and you have to re-register again.

The product has On-Access Scanner with 7 "providers" as follows:

1. Instant Messaging: "While chat itself would not impose any serious security risks in terms of viruses, today's IM applications are far from being just chatting tools: most of them support more or less sophisticated file sharing methods - which may quite easily lead to virus infections, if not properly monitored."
2. Internet Mail: It is supposed to scan all incoming and outcoming e-mail when I use Outlook Express as explain in their website, ie: "it is a generic scanner working on the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4/NNTP protocol level. It is capable of protecting any existing e-mail client that uses these protocols". But it seems that I cannot get my Outlook Express working well. You can see from Comodo Firewall Active Connection List depicted below that there are 4 open ports for these feature, ie: 12025 (SMTP), 12110 (POP3), 12119 and 12143. I use Gmail and Yahoo Mail which use SSL with port 465 (SMTP) and 995 (POP3) to connect to their servers. I try to use 12025 and 12110 for connection between Outlook Express and Avast but it fails. So that is the end. I cannot find alternatives. Maybe someone on the net can tell me :-)
3. Network Shield: "This module provides protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyses all network traffic and scans it for malicious contents. It can be viewed as a lightweight firewall (or more precisely, an IDS - Intrusion Detection System)."
4. P2P Shield: "The P2P protection module doesn't need much explanation - on today's P2P networks (such as Kazaa) there are thousands of infected files, and an effective protection is a must."
5. Standard Shield: "File system protection ensures that no virus will be started on the computer. It offers a wide range of settings, such as the possibility to specify that files will be scanned during copying, or that the scanning will include files with given set of extensions only."
6. Web Shield: "Web Shield is a unique feature of avast! that enables it to monitor and filter all HTTP traffic coming from the Web sites on the Internet. Since an increasing number of viruses (and other malware, such as adware, spyware and dialers) are being distributed via the World Wide Web, the need for an effective countermeasures has also increased. The Web Shield acts as a transparent HTTP proxy and is compatible with all major web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozilla and Opera." It is good to have this feature but if you set its sensitivity to "high", the performance of web browser will be low. It shows the pages slowly. Therefore I set it to "normal" in order to show web pages faster. All HTTP connections at port 80 are intercepted and scanned by Avast. I still set the proxy setting in Firefox to "No Proxy"and the interception stil works.
7. (Microsoft) Outlook / Exchange: I turn it off. It only works for Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express) and Microsoft Exchange only.

Conclusion: I like all the features available in Avast with some setting adjustment but unfortunately its e-mail scanner cannot work with SSL for Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Therefore I rely completely on Gmail and Yahoo virus scanner to do that (if only the Gmail or Yahoo virus scanner is also active for their POP mail?). Because avast e-mail scanner is useless for me, I would turn it off later.

That's it for now. Please let me know your comments or suggestion to share with us... Thanks!

Free File Explorer for Symbian S60 Phone

I was trying to find file explorer for Nokia N70 with Symbian series 60 V2 - second ed. feature pack 3 (Symbian OS v8.1) , which would have similar functions to windows explorer in Windows XP. Although N70 came with its default File Manager, I found it less detailed and informative when exploring the files or directories within the phone. Therefore I searched for alternatives to the default and found two at that time, ie: FExplorer and Y-Browser.

Here is an excerpt from Y-Browser download link above about the application:

Y-Browser is a free file manager application designed for S60 3rd edition Symbian smartphones. All testing is done with Nokia S60 devices only, but it should work as well with other manufacturers S60 smartphones.
Currently Y-Browser only supports 3rd edition S60 mobile phones. No plans to support for earlier edition S60 or UIQ mobile phones are planned

I tried to install it to the phone but after using it for a while, I found a little bit problem with it so that I change to FExplorer. I guessed it might be caused by the different version of S60? I felt disappointed that I could not use Y-Browser which had rich and powerful features. Here is the S60 version list:

• S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 - Symbian OS v9.2
• S60 3rd Edition - Symbian OS v9.1
• S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 3 - Symbian OS v8.1
• S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 2 - Symbian OS v8.0a
• S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 1 - Symbian OS v7.0s Enhanced
• S60 2nd Edition - Symbian OS v7.0s
• S60 1st Edition - Symbian OS v6.1

Anyway, my disappointment had been cured after installing FExplorer though it did not have features as rich as Y-Browser's. But it was still powerful for us to sneak around into the phone. I thank Dominique Hugo, the creator of this application, because it helps me to delete unnecessary files or to move files around without the need of PC or notebook. But you must be cautious because you can mess up with system files and make the phone locked without notice :-) I think it is one of the best free applications for S60 out there...

Digital Free Currency: Electronic Money

I bet you have heard about electronic money or e-currency or digital money. There are many kinds of electronic money in this world. The ones that I address this time are those being used in cyber world. People usually use them as means of payment and income from many HYIP (High Yield Investment Program) "companies". Yes, electronic money or you may call it virtual money is very popular among the HYIPers. I suggest you had better stay away from these so-called "companies", avoid losing your money. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

A High-Yield Investment Program (HYIP) is a type of scam. At one time, it was used to refer to an investment program which may have offered a high return on investment. The term "HYIP" was abused by the operators of scams to camouflage their scams as legitimate investments. Due to this overuse by the operators, HYIP has become synonymous with scam or Ponzi scheme. The usage of the term has evolved to refer to a kind of Ponzi scheme that recruits "investors" through the Internet.

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns ("profits") to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business. It is named after Charles Ponzi.

There are about more than 7 types of electronic money out there which may be legitimate or illegitimate as listed below:

1. e-gold
2. e-Bullion
3. e-dinar
4. Pecunix
5. Liberty Reserve
6. WebMoney Transfer
7. PayPal

Item number 1 to 6 are very famous among the HYIPers or small traders in "forex market". I used e-gold and Liberty Reserve for dealing with Marketiva which is claimed to be "a financial services corporation specialized in providing traders with high quality online trading services" as stated in their website. Recently there are also warnings about Marketiva as a long scam so that I think I will not involve again in such a loose free digital money again (or I go broke due to forex market :-)

What is e-gold? Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

e-gold is a digital gold currency operated by Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. under e-gold Ltd., and is a system which allows the instant transfer of gold ownership between users. e-gold Ltd. is incorporated in Nevis, Lesser Antilles but the operations were conducted from Florida. In 2007 the proprietors of the e-gold service were indicted by the US Department of Justice on four counts of violating money laundering regulations

But then I left e-gold because there was problem with e-gold and I have found a likely-legitimate one ie: WebMoney Transfer. Be careful with e-Bullion because I heard they are also facing problem now?

IMHO, I rather choose WebMoney Transfer, or more trusted PayPay which is owned now by eBay and located in the US. WebMoney Transfer seems to be a real and well managed company though it is located in Russia and it offers a good security client interface, ie: WebMoney Keeper Classic and Keeper Light. I choose Keeper Light because it do not require installation onto your computer. What is WebMoney? Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

WebMoney is an electronic money and online payment system (transactions are conducted through WebMoney Transfer). WM Transfer Ltd, the owner and administrator of WebMoney Transfer Online Payment System, was founded in 1998 and is a legal corporate entity of Belize, Central America. Originally targeted mainly at Russian clients, it is now used world-wide. The company claims to have more than 4.5 million users.

WebMoney seems a little bit loose in its requirements than PayPal. But if I want a safer and surely legitimate one, I will choose PayPal for all transactions. Also you can use PayPal easily for eBay transactions.

Before you can use e-money, you have to change money from standard currency to digital currency. To do this, you must meet digital currency exchange by transferring your standard money to them and then they will deposit an amount of equivalent to e-money. Here are the list of these exchangers:

1. OmniPay
2. GoldfingerCoin.com
3. AsianaGold
4. eForexGold
5. AutoCambist
6. GoldMediator
7. tacoAuthorized
8. GreatAchiever
9. TukarDuid

I used 2 of them, ie: eForexGold and TukarDuid. The process is quite long for eForexGold because it is out of Indonesia. So that I change the service to TukarDuid which is very fast due to simple and easy communication in the same region.

Recently I came across this site while surfing. The site is selling goods or services which one of the payment terms can be done in e-money. More over the shop is claimed to be located in Indonesia so that it is easier for us who live there to deal with the store. I haven't done any transactions with them yet because I have no more e-money and plan not to deal with such things again :-) So guys, be cautious with the world of capitalism and your own desires!

Save Electricity, Save Your Money

Oil price goes high up to the sky :-( The bad impact is on the price of electricity. What is your move to tackle this if you want to decrease or at least to prevent the charges from rocketing. One way is to find an alternative energy source such as solar or wind energy. But for average people, we still use the electricity from state-owned company because alternative energy charges us higher cost of investment though in the long run the cost-benefit of it is much lower...

If you are still utilizing electricity from a supplying company, a simple way to save it is that you may replace your normal ballast of fluorescent lamp (which is a bulky and heavy one) with an electronic ballast. For a 40W fluorescent lamp (CFL), the normal ballast itself will consume approximately 40W so that the total power used in this case is about 2 times of the power of fluorescent lamp alone. 50% of the power is wasted as heat in the ballast! What a waste! Therefore if you are using electronic ballast, you will save about 50% of energy. You will also save the earth in the end.

Recently I have tested 2 brand of electronic ballasts which I purchase from a local store. Actually the storekeeper gave me 3 alternatives of brands with their selling price in Indonesian Rupiah as follows:

1. Philips around Rp 60,000
2. Elite (made in China) approx Rp 15,000
3. Oulex (the printed mark says made in Germany but I think it is made in China also) approx Rp 20,000

I do not select Philips because it is more expensive than the others but I indeed know that the quality should be much better. I may try it later.

The result is as follows:

1. The quality of Elite is lower than Oulex. Its retainer / supporting rings which screwed to the ceiling for clamping and holding the lamp tube, are made from plastic. Whereas the rings from Oulex are made from metal. The casing of Elite is also made from cheap plastic.
2. The brightness of the lamp if you use Oulex is much better than Elite. I guess the capacity of Oulex is greater than Elite due to the bigger size of unit. Elite unit seems to be made without proper design consideration. Just make for sell.
3. I haven't got any time to open or investigate the circuitry but I got a good impression on Oulex. The product looks more professional and has good & durable casing. My suggestion: leave Elite and purchase Oulex if you find it in the market

These product may only be available in Indonesia only....

NEW! For those who live in the US, you may visit my other site which displays and sells various energy saving items powered by Zlio at this site: http://energysaving.shopmarking.com/

OK guys, let's save the electricity!

System Crash: Clean Install

What would you do if your Windows XP system locks up? The problem I had is explained in my "YouSayToo" blog. In my case around a week ago, after trying to find the best solution and saving back up of my data from my notebook Lenovo 3000 Y400 Type 9454-25A to a DVD, I determined to reinstall the whole system from zero (clean install) with the provided original Windows XP Home Edition SP2 and the drivers from Lenovo. I also intend to use its marvelous "One-Key Recovery" to save me from disaster later on. But I do not hope it will happen again :-) The smooth steps in brief are as follows:

1. Clean install windows by erasing all the existing partition on the hard drive of the notebook may have and assigning it as one big partition on whole hard drive as C:\ . Installing window is quite straightforward. You must make the notebook boot up from your system CD. Just follow the procedure including formatting the partition, filling in some entries and then installing and setting up the system which can be done without your attention or interfering.
2. After finishing the installation and setup by the robotic acts, you may give your personal touch on some parts of the system. In my case, I disable some services that are not necessary and may make your system less secure, set the environment and look-feel according to my preference plus set the system for best performance option such as disabling CD autorun etc in my case.
3. Then I install all the drivers for this kind of Lenovo in the right order and right choices as stated in its manual as follows: Chipset Driver 945GM, Graphic Card Discrete NVidia, Sound Card UAA driver firstly and then Audio setup, Foxconn Bluetooth 2.0 Plus EDR/Broadcom 2045 Bluetooth 2.0 USB Device (after enabling it firstly and you must install it by running D:\WinXP\Bluetooth\Setup.exe from driver CD otherwise all the bluetooth drivers are not installed correctly - it means that you cannot install it by just inserting the CD when the device found icon appears or when windows asks you to give the driver after autodetecting), Agere Systems HDA Modem, Energy Cut, LAN Card Realtek RTL8139/810x, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Net driver using "Intel (NET w3x32) net / Intel (w29n51) net" (also after turning it on - running from driver CD D:\WinXP\Wireless Lan\INTEL\DPInst.exe), Touchpad driver for Discrete Graphic Card, Card Reader RICOH R5C832/843 Flash Media Driver, and the last Easy Button Driver (discrete) for custom buttons on laptop. The process is long and time consumed because you have to restart for each installation. NEWLY REVISED!
4. Now you can shutdown the complete and clean system. Then turning the notebook ON with "One-Key Recovery" button at exactly the left side of the power button. It will bring you to a custom screen with only 4 choices: make a backup partition image, restoring the whole partition to the last backup, clearing / deleting the saved backup, or exits the screen and brings you to normal boot-up. Please make a backup image so that you can use it if there is a disaster. You can have a clean install system again complete with already all its drivers in just a few minutes without going through step 1-3
5. My clean system can now be updated to service pack 3 (SP3) and other further updates such as drivers updates for LAN etc. I have to update the system to SP3 because I need WPA2-PSK for relatively securer wireless connection to a wireless router, in this case Linksys WRT54G. I am a bit disappointed with Linksys WRT54G Version 7 because its firewall setting is not clear or strange and not the same as mentioned in the manual (there is no inbound traffic policy). The configuration is a quite tiresome (a fail product?). You had better choose Netgear WGR614 than Linksys WRT54G.
6. The system needs protection from the beginning. Install a good firewall and anti virus plus anti spyware in order. In my case, I install "Comodo Firewall Pro with Defense+". You may not install the Defense+ so that you use Comodo firewall feature only because the Defense+ is a little bit chatty, many interruptions especially during learning phase. If it is so, you should not select Defense+ at the beginning of setup. I set the firewall mode of network defense to 'safe mode" and proactive defense+ to "clean pc mode". If you want to use this "clean pc mode", you must be sure that your clean install of system is free of malware from the beginning. Setting and tuning it up, then install "AVG 8 Anti Virus + Anti Spyware plus E-Mail Scanner". Setting up e-mail scanner in AVG 8 is a little bit tricky. If you do not set the rules in firewalls and the pop3/smtp server in AVG correctly, the e-mail scanner won't work. AVG acts as a proxy between e-mail clients such as Outlook Express (which I use due to its simplicity) and the pop3/smtp server at gmail or yahoo mail in my case for instance. I will post the procedure if anyone needs it. NEW! I have post the procedure of AVG8 personal e-mail scanner configuration in this blog...
7. After running both firewall and anti-* smoothly, scanning your entire hard drive and tuning your windows system, you may continue to install other useful software or freeware as I have mentioned in my updated previous post. Firstly I install CCleaner, Mozilla Firefox and Addons including McAfee Siteadvisor, Adobe Reader, OpenOffice and HijackThis. Configure them one by one up to your preference and judgement
8. Last step is reinstalling my file backups to "My Documents" only so that the files will not be shattered around causing them difficult to find. At this time, you may also install the drivers for external devices that will be attached to the system such as printer, scanner, or Nokia PC Suite etc. You may also install these driver at step 3 above, so that these can be updated too if the new ones available at windowsupdate. Then running HijackThis and looking for funny or suspicious signs. I hope not to see those in future time though :-)

That's it for now. Just a brief one. Later I will post the setting of Comodo Firewall Pro with Defense+ and personal e-mail scanner of AVG 8. Any comments or even critics, please welcome dude!

Free Mobile Chat & Call Client

Do you like mobile chatting and free calls? Actually there is no free in this world :-) At least you must pay for your GPRS connection. But the rate is much cheaper than ordinary call because it is a data connection which charges each kB of data you send or receive. In Indonesia, it cost you only Rp 1 / kB if using Indosat Mentari GPRS connection, very cheap indeed! I have not used their 3.5G yet because the connection is not good at my place and I think it will cost you more. Or you can enjoy free surfing, free VoIP call and instant messaging if using Axis during promotion at this moment. I have tested 4 client applications for mobile chatting and free calls on my mobile phone ie: Nokia N70 (originally bought as N70-1 type RM-84, product code nr. 0530339, software v5.0638.3.0.1) with Symbian OS v8.1 (Symbian series 60 V2 - second ed. feature pack 3). I have upgraded its firmware to v5.0705.3.0.1 dated 30-01-07 from Nokia website. The mobile client applications can connect you to your friend using instant messaging or VOIP call. It is no charge for VoIP calls between same clients but the charge rates is also cheap if you want to use it for calling ordinary mobile number / fixed phone number around the globe. These applications are as follows:

1. Fring
2. YehBA*
3. mig33
4. eBuddy  NEW! 
5. Coogee which is prematurely dead because I cannot find its website anymore

I have tested all those 4 applications in N70 and find that Fring is the best till now. I have problems or difficulties using YehBA* and mig33. Fring is free (no charge at all as you will not find with agile messenger etc) and the setting is very simple. The VoIP connection is also simple and the quality of the voice is good. I can make calls to a friend in Sydney using Microsoft hotmail / live account only! It means that you and your friends should have accounts at the same provider such as hotmail or yahoo. But so far I just test it with Microsoft hotmail or live account. Just visit Fring website, and click download tab. The site will tell you to follow 3 simple steps. You can also see whether you cell phone is listed among supported ones at fring site. You download the application straightaway from your mobile after Fring sends you a message with a download link to your cell phone. After installing it, please do not forget to register as stated in step 3. New! Fring can accept MSN Messenger, ICQ, SIP (such as Gizmo etc), Skype, Google Talk ID for VOIP communication, and Yahoo or AIM ID for chatting only. Of course, you have to get one at least one account of those IDs to use it with Fring. But according to my experience, it is better just to set Fring only for MSN or Google Talk only (one use only). It is much lighter and faster than to use all IDs in Fring. There is a bit problem with Yahoo because it's too slow or heavy but still you can use Yahoo only for chatting (text based). Therefore, I use MSN only...

NEW! First of all, your phone must be able to connect to internet directly or indirectly, it means that it should have at least GPRS capability for direct connection to internet, or Wi-Fi connectivity which will indirectly relay internet connection to your mobile. If one of the feature is available, you can go to the Fring website, choose download tab, then follow the 3 easy steps there. Choose the brand of your mobile and the device type, which in my case is Nokia brand and N70 device type. Select your country, enter your phone number (with country prefix if required), and fill in your e-mail address, then click join button. Wait till you get an SMS from Fring to your mobile. In your mobile, open the SMS and click on the link referenced by the SMS. Don't forget to activate the internet connection prior to clicking the link in the SMS. It will download the program directly from Fring to your phone through your mobile internet connection. Just follow the instruction then...

Don't forget to read the minimum requirements on the download page. If your mobile is not listed in the selection or the requirements is not met, you'd better not to continue the installation procedure. When installing the program to your phone from Fring website through internet connection, the phone will pop up some messages for information or warning such as certificate, security etc. Just follow them, because you know that you download a valid program from a valid site. If you need other person who knows better about mobile phone, it will be safer to do so because it can lock the phone if it is not done appropriately. Anyway, it is simple indeed and I have no difficulty to follow the steps as instructed at the website. Then you can have free voip call to other part of the world...

One more thing... Before installing and activating the Fring, you got to have one account whether from Windows Live (or hotmail), Gmail, Skype, etc. Use one account only so that it won't bog down your phone. I suggest hotmail because I have proved it my own. Fill in your hotmail account onto Fring's e-mail address entry as described previously. Register also that account to Fring when setting the application after downloading and installing into the phone.

That's is for now and enjoy the application... Feedback is welcomed always

Wireless Router for Home Networking

Do you want to make your own hotspot? Many hotspot areas using Wi-Fi appear recently in public places to offer people easy access to the Internet. New laptops and desktop PCs are equipped with Wi-Fi so that they can connect to each others or to the Internet. Even now some cell phones are also embedded with Wi-Fi. These cell phones can connect to other devices using its Wi-Fi interface besides already available bluetooth interface and USB connection. I haven't tested any cell phone with Wi-Fi yet but I wish I could buy Nokia N95 or Nokia E90 which has complete features than other cell phones including Wi-Fi connection. You may go to this website http://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3 for comparison, selection or browsing cell phones with Wi-Fi. If you own a laptop or PC with Wi-Fi connection, it is very convenient to provide it with Internet access via Wi-Fi especially at home or SOHO. Ethernet cable for LAN connection may be used for better security but I prefer Wi-Fi due to simplicity and convenience.

For installing my own hotspot, I propose 2 different units of affordable wireless router for home networking with price range around Rp 500,000 from 2 different brands ie: Netgear WGR614 and Linksys WRT54G. Both have strength and weakness as I mention below:

1. I guess the signal quality of Linksys WRT54G is better than Netgear WGR614 because Linksys has 2 antennas to handle fading caused by multipath propagation, especially for house with many wall partitions
2. The setup interface in Netgear is far better than Linksys due to simplicity, intuitiveness, and manageability. For instance, it is a bit difficult to setup firewall inside Linksys, whereas in Netgear you can open or block any ports very easily. You can also make restrictions and select other setting much simpler in Netgear without complicated ways

For ease of use, you may choose Netgear but for location with many wall partitions I think Linksys is better. At present, I install Linksys WRT54G as my home hotspot controller. The unit runs smoothly after tuning it up for around 1 month. It is not easy... Some links that may be helpful to those who want to setup their own wireless router at home:

1. Appropriate channels for use on a wireless network
2. Advanced Wireless Security for the Masses
3. 10 tips for improving your wireless network

NEW! In order to use WPA2-PSK for better security, you have to update Windows XP to Service Pack 3. Without it, you can only use WEP which is not as secure as WPA2.

I will show you my settings if I have more spare time to write the articles in later postings. For now on, good luck with your tweaking!

Cheap Mobile Tariff in Indonesia

For you guys who live in Indonesia especially Jakarta and Java Island, which mobile service providers do you choose? Nowadays, It seems that average people use more than 1 provider, not for luxury but to save some money, due to expensive mobile service charges, especially at this time when the petrol price goes high up. It also depends on the activities you have using those services. I use mobile services (I prefer prepaid service than the postpaid one due to nature of mobile service "business" here so that I can change to other operator if it fails to keep the same service level) so that it will be easier for someone or clients to contact me. It is also convenient to bring along cell phones with you in case you need to contact someone or your clients in the middle of nowhere :-) I do not use it for long-range dating or surfing the Internet. I use it for voice telecommunication, frequently to different operators.

UPDATED! Mentari is not cheap anymore...

Tujuan		Tarif (Rupiah)
		23.00 - 04.59	05.00 - 16.59	17.00 - 22.59
Panggilan
Lokal	Semua Operator	5/detik	10/detik	20/detik
SLJJ	Semua Operator	5/detik	20/detik
SMS
Semua Operator		99
Int'l		500

I have been testing the service of different kinds of providers. In the first years of testing, there were not many choices. I had swung from one provider to the others till I fixed to one provider, Indosat Mentari prepaid GSM. It becomes better now due to the lowest cost (I guess for the time being - policies are frequently changed - promo time only?) to call any other operators, anywhere in Indonesia. It only charges you Rp 5 each time unit in second so that the cost is Rp 300 a minute. The other strong side: the quality of the signal is good wherever you use it around Indonesia. But the weak side is that you can only use this scheme from 23:00 till 17:00 for local calls and from 23:00 till 11:00 for long-distance calls. NEW! The rule has been changed recently :-) the cheap rate for long-distance calls are valid only from 23:00 till 05:00 which is practically useless for me because I or the one who will be called, cannot be awake till very late at night just to use that cheap call anyway. Rule changing is part of the marketing gimmick of many similar mobile service provider here...

To cover this weakness, you may add another new provider: "3" Three from Hutchison. "3" charges the second lowest cost for calling any other operators anytime, ie: Rp 399 each time unit in minute. At the beginning, the scheme is valid for either local or long-distance call but recently I notice that it is only valid for local calls as described in "3" website. NEW! The rule has been changed for long-distance call. They charge Rp 1000 each time unit in minute. One apparent weakness of this operator is the coverage of their service. There are blank spots inside shopping malls and at some areas. For the time being, their service can only be enjoyed in Java and Bali.

How about CDMA - fixed wireless providers? For me, the term "fixed wireless" is an oxymoron. Basically there is no much different in technology usage in both CDMA and GSM, ie: for telecommunication in voice or data. I guess the price policies make this happened. Or other politics? :-) At this time, Telkom Flexi Trendy prepaid CDMA is my choice due to its lower rates for calling locally to fixed phones, ie: Rp 250 each time unit in minute. Unfortunately the quality of the signal is not good at my place and there are many dropped calls during conversation if the handset is moved inside a building. You may consider to swing to Esia prepaid CDMA because the rate for local calls to fixed phone (PSTN - Public Service Telephone Network) is the same as Flexi Trendy. I heard from my friend that their wifone local call charge is cheaper than Telkom but you may not want to use it because wifone is not as convenient as common cell phone handsets. You may use it at home / office as substitute for fixed phone line from Telkom. I never heard whether the wifone can be used for fax though. NEW! But according to my experience, it is sometimes hard to contact an Esia phone number from other operators. Also it seems that the charging time unit is faster than normal so that I feel that my deposit value drains quickly compared to Flexi if you call a fixed phone...

For me, I will not use some providers because I have tested them 2 or 3 times and their scheme keeps on changing weirdly which may misguide you if you do not study their terms carefully. I do not know why they keep on doing that, because I think their policies may drive the old and new customers away. The other bad weakness is that their call center doesn't handle the complaints properly.

NEW! There is a good news about a new fixed wireless product, ie: "hepi" which is owned by Mobile 8. This operator also runs a CDMA mobile service "Fren" that has the same tariff scheme as the GSM operators have. I cannot find the tariff scheme for "hepi" yet from their website but the advertising says that the charge for calling to fixed phone is only Rp 200 which is cheaper than Flexi or Esia. I guess the tariff may be altered later according to the company's policy as usual :-)

There is also another CDMA operator running a similar scheme to "Fren" which can be considered as having "cheap" tariff with simple scheme because it doesn't differentiate between local and non-local call. Below you can see this "Smart" Telecom tariff:

That's it for now. Any comments, please welcome...