andyswarbs

Beating Google for researching family members

2010-12-03T16:01:00.000Z

Most people seem to think that if you search Google for someone's name then Google will automatically do its best for you. Actually I say Google, but these comments go equally well for other search engines, and that includes specialist search engines focusing on people, such as pipl.com, yasni.co.uk, 192.com or whatever.

Essentially to find ancestors you need to be creative and you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the kind of person you are researching and how that plays with search engines. The best people to research about are people who, in some way are famous, or infamous! Also ancestors you know some details about, and here we come to a key point - what you will hopefully unearth are unique keywords.

Let me look at unique keywords a bit more closely. For instance one of my ancestors has a middle name "corderoy". This is great for research via Google and in context of the full name gets some good hits and some useful web pages and documents. This person also lived in a house which at the time was called "chetnole", and that again helped find some useful web pages. These keywords are ideal to help your web research. Use them to find images, or search the web in general or in special search engines.

Also try to understand about how deep web research works. What I mean by this is that Google, and other search engines do not index all web pages. Also the ones they do index do not index them in ways that may seem logical. For instance I recently searched for one phrase without quotation marks and lo and behold Google correctly highlighted and found one page with that exact phrase. However after putting that same phrase in quotation marks Google reported, totally incorrectly that no pages existed.

Sometimes Google works better as a search engine that the specialist search engine actually provided by a particular website, and sometimes the opposite is true. You need to work with both to drill down deeply. So Google is good for giving you a clue that there may be some answers on a website. Then drill down into the website for more info. Once inside remember to retry Google with the kind of keywords that work for that website.

Now let me finally turn to searching for people's names you need to try different forms. Suppose someone's name is Alpha Beta Gamma then try searching the following forms:

AB Gamma
Gamma, AB
Alpha B Gamma
Beta Gamma
Mr Gamma
Mrs Gamma
Mrs AB Gamma (remember that married women often were referred to by their partner's first names!)
Mr AB Gamma

There may be other forms as well. These should be mixed with words such as home, death, born, married, family, mother, father and so forth. Also when you know dates try adding these to the search, especially years.

Trying out Nokia / Ovi Files

2009-06-11T13:26:00.002+01:00

I am exploring more services for my phone as I come across them. One seems to be Nokia/Ovi Files. This is a rebranded Avvenu service allowing an online presence shared across computers for files on your own computer. At $10 per month (after the 3-month trial ends) I don't see it getting many subscribers. These days users need to see a lot of value for money and 3-months is not enough, imo. We will see, however. Perhaps this file sharing service has something to offer that I am not seeing... But when compared with GoogleDocs, with DropBox, with photo sharing specialists such as Flickr this business model seems more than a touch outdated.

Test post from mobile to blog

2009-06-11T05:03:00.002+01:00

This post originates from my cell phone.

Adaptxt improves predictive text on mobile phones

2009-06-10T18:35:00.004+01:00

Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

Are you frustrated with word prediction on your Nokia? Have you ever entered a long word and thought, why doesn't prediction have an auto-complete function! I mean if you enter antidisestablishmentarianism or supercalifragisiticexpialidoshus (and please excuse any spelling mistakes!!!) in your phone then they are not likely to be mixed up with any other words are they?

Adaptxt, available as a beta product and also available from the Nokia Ovi store, makes some sensible improvements to cell phone predictive text entry. As you type it lets you know what the most likely complete word would be, given the letters you have entered so far. Simply press the right button to accept the word, or down arrow to choose from other words. This can greatly speed up typing.

A further feature helps you by predicting not just the current word but also the most likely phrase. This means that you can click further right button keys to accept further words. Of course when the phrase is wrong (which is too often for my liking) you can start entering the correct word and simply use word prediction.

Anyway it is early days for this add-on. First impressions are of a feature that, if I can tame it will become possibly become one of my favourite apps.

Why does Facebook force me to lie?

2009-06-10T17:58:00.003+01:00

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook tries to be too clever for its own good. Right now I have tried - several times - to update my home location. Facebook refuses point blank to accept the truth of where I live. Instead it insists that I lie and put in a more generic location, viz Oxford, UK. The truth is that I live in a village just outside Oxford, but will Facebook allow that name? No it will not.

What makes Facebook worse is that is does not let me know that it has ignored my changes - it just continues on its merry way and overwrites them with its own version of where I live.

Come on facebook - stop being so snotty and allow the people to put in true home towns.

Change the menu on your Nokia 6210 Navigator now!

2009-06-10T16:28:00.003+01:00

Image by Koluso via Flickr

Changing the menu on Nokia 6210 Navigator is crucial for the power user.

The power user explores new applications and finds ones that work for them. For myself, I probably have around 30 applications loaded onto my phone - and that's on top of ones that are built into the phone.

The problem is that when you have that many apps you will necessarily end up navigating the deep menu system on a daily basis just to start your app that you need to run at that moment.

No longer is that necessary.

Your first step is to clear out the first level of the menu system of all the crud items that you do not need on a daily basis. For example after several months do you ever want to change your settings? No, then create a folder (aka sub-menu), perhaps called OtherItems and move then move Settings to that folder. After that move any other items that you do not use regularly, again to the same folder. For instance my provider is Vodafone and they shove this pricey app at you to find businesses local to you. Well I will use that app once in a blue moon, given that it costs me more money to use it. So off it goes and is moved to OtherItems.

Now that your top-level menu is cleared out your next task is to populate it with your favourite apps. These are buried two levels deep in "Applications, My Own". So move your favourite apps right to the top level, otherwise known as root.

So what we have now is a useful set of apps at your top level, the final bit is for you to know each application's menu number. And this is the sweet bit.

If your application is listed as menu item no 3, to activate it simple press your menu button and the press 3. Yes, will activate it. Snappy, easy & reliably.

Now all your favourite apps are readily available in two key clicks.

Of course you can move your apps around in the root folder so that their numbers are useful to you. Finally if you end up with more than 9 apps you will have to use 3 keyclicks by keying to get the 3rd application.

Do you need a computer at all?

2009-06-05T21:29:00.003+01:00

Image via CrunchBase

With increasing sophistication of mobile phone the question has to be asked, do you need a full blown computer anymore?

From your phone you can -

send and receive email
use almost all websites
create and edit word or excel styled office documents
socialise, eg facebook, myspace, twitter effectively
listen to music, watch video
take photos and video and share it across with friends.

Okay it is not necessarily quite so easy. But especially if you get a phone with a full keyboard, a touch-screen, satellite navigation and so forth then depending on your needs you might consider simply forgetting full-blown computers ever existed!

AOL-TimeWarner strangled itself to death

2009-05-30T01:27:00.003+01:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Reading the BBC coverage on the AOL-TimeWarner demise would lead one to believe that the merger failed because of shrinking dial-up income. Now while that part has a ring of truth, it is only part of the problem, and indeed a small part.

What really happened is that AOL strangled its user-base to death. It imposed on its users an outmoded model of "we are your entire world and you jolly better well say thank you to us for allowing you to use our service". That philosophy underwrote everything AOL stood for, and noteworthy it is entirely at odds with successful companies such as Google.

That philosophy was embodied in its dial-up fat client which took over the desktop, literally and was widely known to take an expert to dispose of. "How to get yourself hated" by one and all, without exception was the arrogant morals that AOL-TimeWarner stood for. I know of not one person - not one person - who had anything good to say about the AOL desktop client.

In the world pre-broadband there was some justification for taking such a high stance. And certainly that was true in the days of bulletin boards. But in the new world of open-Internet AOL-TimeWarner simple had no business model and the cloak of death suits them well.

Let us hope that a new AOL totally separated from TimeWarner can start from the beginning and create new idiom. The old one has not served them well.

Podcasting to your phone

2009-05-24T01:54:00.004+01:00

Image by Dan Patterson via Flickr

If your are like me (and I guess that probably means not very many of you!) then you want to listen to podcasts on your phone. Listening to podcasts on a phone, ipod, iphone or whatever means being able to catch up to your favourite shows in your own time at your own pace.

The downsides for any mobile device user are that downloads tend to be large. This means that podcast downloads can take a long time. It also means, depending on your connection plan that it may cost you. Oh, and it will also drain your battery flat!

If you have a computer connected to the web (and who doesn't have one?) then there is a sensible solution. The strategy is to download podcasts to your computer, and then get these transferred to your phone - all automatically. This also is probably when your mobile device is charging up!

The tool I use to download podcasts is Juice, which is a free tool downloadable from Sourceforge. This tool can automatically download, to a folder of your choice, any podcasts of your choice - as and when they appear on the web.

The remaining challenge is then to get the podcasts onto your phone etc. Well my phone is a Nokia and that has PcSuite which has an automatic synchronisation tool from any folder on your computer to the phone.

So there you go, suddenly whenever you charge your phone and connect it to your computer you will all latest podcasts transferred automatically to your mobile device.

Now all I want to do is to repeat this for videos!

A minor success

2009-05-22T01:23:00.000+01:00

Image via CrunchBase

Okay, in the overall scheme of life synchronising calendars may not seem a big thing. But to me and any/many geeks it may be compared, albeit metaphorically to life and death.

The problem is that you have a computer - which has your calendar on it with all its appointments. Also, if you are like me you have a calendar in GoogleMail, which also has set of diary entries. Also, if you are like me you have a mobile phone which also has a calendar on it - and of course various events scheduled for the future, hopefully. So you have all three - and some of you may have more!

Now getting any two of these to sync is relatively easy. Vista, for example has a calendar application which accords with the ical standard, and so syncing that with Google's calendar is not so difficult. That said, as I remember it is a one-way sync - that is the Vista calendar can see Google appointments but you cannot add to Google from your computer. Hmm.

There are similar challenges awiating the unwary if talking from your phone to Google's calendar. However given most mobile phones are pretty new there are apps for many phones that will do the job, even if you have to sync manually.

So the main challenges are:
- syncing in all directions,
- automation of syncing,
- attention to detail, including time-zone and daylight issues, oh and
- ease of use.

The solution that works for you probably depends on your phone model, your computer. Fortunately Google in this case is a constant.

My hardware setup is a laptop running Vista and a Nokia 6210 Navigator. Because this is a Nokia phone therefore Nokia PcSuite can take all the strain of syncing Windows Calendar with the phone's calendar, and of course taking backups of contacts.

Now I have previously tried to get my head around using funmobil and outlook (not that I want to use Outlook) to sync via the computer. But that was too difficult and laborious for me.

What now works with this phone, since it is an S60 phone (running Symbian) is the new Google Sync feature using Nokia Mail for Exchange. The install and setup instructions are covered elsewhere, so I won't repeat them here.

What I will say is that I had initial authentication problems - probably a typo on my part. However once it is up and running it just works. Not only that it works in the background, automatically and completes the triangle.

So now my desktop Calendar, my phone Contacts and Calendar and my Google Mail Contacts and Calendar all stay in sync.

Wonderful and highly recommended.

Making Vista Perform

2009-05-09T00:41:00.000+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

It is always surprising to me how many people put up with poor performance and assume there is little or nothing they can do about it. In writing this post I don't, at least initially, intend to repeat the detail of many of the tweaks around the web. There are some excellent treatises on the subject. What I want to do instead is look at the strategies you can adopt, and then hopefully point to some of the resources for you to chase down the detail.

For any computer the slowest component is... your disk. Actually since the web is so much of life your Internet connection is also very slow. So optimising disk performance and Internet should be your top focus. What follows has this notion in mind throughout...

To begin with have you got enough memory? These days memory is cheap. So if you are buying a computer get one with as much memory as possible. For most people they should the CPU rating: traditionally the only real value in CPU rating is in selling computer magazines! Memory is so much more important. 4gig ram is a great target to aim for these days, and totally realistic for many people's purses. If your computer can take more ram then buy more, it really will pay dividends.

Then you simply must run Windows Update. This could easily update some drivers that could be buggy. Yes, Windows Update is not just about security or functionality - it can also be about performance.

Next you should consider if you can remove programs that are not needed. For instance some programs like Real Player, Java runtime, Quicktime, Jacrobat reader install things into your startup. These are of no benefit to you. So looking at your startup programs is a must. My preferred tool for this is the Sysinternals' AutoRuns, since it gets into places that other startup managers tend to avoid.

Along the same subject removing some services is also generally a good thing, but care is needed. Fortunately there are some excellent resoources that can help you pinpoint what can be removed.

Strangely the disk system is not set up optimally, and there are tweaks using device manager to enable DMA and features like writeback caching.

Ensuring you have a fixed swapfile of a suitable size is also recommended. And at this point one can move onto defragmenting the disk. The ultimate defrag tool, imo, is PerfectDisk - especially for Vista.

Ensuring you have a decent AntiVirus service running is a prerequisite. Not all are the same though. Some will slow down your computer. I currently use Avast and feel it behaves well.

Many people like the frills such as Vista's Aero, Sidebar and screen effects. If however you switch these off your computer will run noticably faster. The same is also true of the System Restore and Indexed Searches function.

By the time you have done the above your computer should run pretty well. However life does not stop there.

For me, and I guess you, the browser is where you spend most of your computer time? So using a decent browser and making sure it runs fast is very important. At the top of my list are Opera, which is extremely fast without any changes, and Firefox, which with a few tweaks (eg pipelining) can absolutely fly.

Now if your are talking browsing the web, then obviously optimising your Internet connection is paramount. This could mean tweaking your MTU., but checking what needs changing can be done at DslReports.

I think it is needless to say that changing any of the above could actually cause you problems, unless you do your research and test each change. For instance switching off the System Restore feature is not for the faint hearted, since you are actually removing a safety net in case of critical failure.

If you follow the above guidelines, then you will keep your computer running today like it did when you first bought it, if not a lot better. Not a bad aim really.

How to get a nokia phone to dial up the internet on a computer running Vista

2009-05-08T00:42:00.000+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

Okay so I signed up for an unlimited internet price plan. Wierd that all the price plans talk about "minutes" and lots "text" messages, when all I want is lots of internet, totally unlimited. I mean with some excellent VOIP services, why would I want talk (m)any minutes? Anyway I eventually plumped for my current provider which just happens to be Vodafone and reduced my monthly plan by £10 and that's me happy, or that's what I thought.

Now I have used my cellphone to access the web before, mostly using the opera mini browser which is an excellent app, and arguably the most important one for any mobile / cell phone. However now I was trying to use the phone as a modem for a dial-up connection from my laptop - running Vista.

I am hesitant to mention the phone model, because it is irrelavant to this post. But just so you know where I am coming from, it is a Nokia 6120 Classic. Because it is a Nokia I obviously needed PcSuite.

Although Nokia's PcSuite is a supreme example of bloatedware it actually does the job. What I want is basic functionality, what is supplied is Nokia ego on steroids. I mean, for example, why does Nokia bundle a music and picture manager program which obfuscates? All we need is instructions on file cut, copy & paste. But let's ignore that rant since the basic functionality largely works, and works well.

So in goes the latest Nokia PcSuite. Then I hook the phone up via USB cable (my laptop does not have Bluetooth) when requested, and from that moment PcSuite works. So right now my Nokia talks to my computer, and vice-versa.

However Vista does not dial up the web to create that illusive Internet connection. Neither does it dial the web using the Nokia OneTouch program, nor does it do it via dial-up networking. It looks like it is going to dial - and then just stops.

Some sculduggery is obviously called for.

After much web research seeing lots and lots of people with similar problems I come across RaRepair. RaRepair is very hard to find a download. Yes there are lots of references but finding the download place is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But it does exist - rarepair.zip.

Anyway all that I read about RaRepair seems to indicate it is aimed at Windows XP. Will it run on Vista? Will it solve my dial-up problem on Vista? Will it mess around with my Vista apart from that?

Only one way to find out.

Actually RaRepair is quite a sweet program. The zip file contains an exe which simply runs with no install. Once run it tellls you to reboot. Actually I cannot remember if it asked for a second reboot! Anyway rerunning the program reverses RaRepair (in principle) and that again requires a reboot. Initially RaRepair prompted me to reboot properly, later I just rebooted manually since I did not trust RaRepar's lack of further prompt for rebooting. No complaints though, RaRepair is not production stuff.

The question is did it have any effect?

Well of course it did. Vista is not that different from XP. Like with a lot of problem solving it was not the entire solution, but my guess is that my dial-up networking would not be working without it. But that is only a hunch.

One thing RaRepair does is install the RasSync device, albeit with a dodgy setup 'cos it will neither run nor uninstall, nor disable. Isn't life fun. So I seem to be stuck with that permanently, however if that is the only downside I can live with it!

Anyway more fixes required. My guess is that what needed to really happen for Dial-Up Networking to work is that the RasMan service needed to start (automatically). Whether RaRepair helped me get RasMan service running or whether I could have done that anyway, who knows. I am trying to wrack my brains, and I think - again - that I had to remove a dependency in order to get it to start.

Once RasMan service is running suddenly my Dialup connection starts dialing. Yes, it all works.

I use the Nokia OneTouch program to begin with, and in some senses it seems prefered option. Nokia OneTouch is an important place to start with getting DUN working since it has the correct access point, authentication etc settings. So do use OneTouch to begin with.

But life with Vista is never straightforward. What is wierd is that Vista seems intent on creating different copies of the same DUN entry, each one suffixed by #2, #3 and so forth. Well after going up to #12 this was getting stupid.

Also what is even more wierd is that neither Nokia OneTouch, nor simple DUN can keep up with these new entries. Even wierder is that sometimes Vista happily restarts back at the first entry.

Are you yawning? Pay attention.

Many people on the web may be suffering with these multiple entries and not realise that these are causing DUN to not work. What is happening is that when you try to reconnect DUN and OneTouch go for the last entry you used which might be, for examply #3. Well if Vista has decided in its wisdom to clone the DUN entry and make #4 the live one - and more importantly only one, then you, OneTouch and whatever program calls DUN (eg Internet Explorer Connection Options) needs to know about this change.

So I have got used to just watching for DUN not working and then I check what the latest number is and try that.

Vista has a wierd feature in DUN management to "merge" or "delete" these multiple cloned copies. I started using this but then thought what is the point and got bored with deleting and merging. I mean all I want is for these clones never to exist!

One thing I find amazing about connecting to the web over mobile phone is that you can still make and accept normal calls and SMS text messages. When you do this your web connection is temporarily suspended, and as soon as the call is finished your connection resumes.

Vista Wireless Notworking

2009-05-07T00:50:00.000+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

(What follows is aimed at those people for whom Vista Wireless Networking might seem better named Vista Wireless Notworking. It is particularly aimed at people who are tearing their hair out at the roots in total frustration. If that's you - read on...)

Okay, so there I was until last weekend and my wifi on Vista was working pretty great. At home it had been stable, and when roaming I was able to connect pretty reliably to any hotspot that was available, given authorisation. I have roamed at local pubs, airports, workplaces and other people's homes. All with few problems.

And then last weekend I needed to access via Cellular/mobile phone since I would not be near wifi. This was a challenge and a half, and one that took me a couple of days to sort out. But that is not the purpose of this posting.

No, the purpose of this post is the cataclysm that I returned to on trying to reconnect to my wireless setup when back at home. Basically I couldn't.

Yes, I could see various wireless networks as being available, including my own. But do what I might try Vista simply gave up the ghost on attempting to connect as if my WiFi wasn't working. Bear in mind my laptop is relatively new. Bear in mind that around 3 months ago I had reinstalled Vista (for other reasons). Also bear in mind I consider myself fluent in Windows networking. So to meet this brick wall as a horrible shock.

Two days later I was still pulling my hair out, reading a variety of posts, including this thread on Puffbox and this thread on EveryJoe and this thread on Cnet forums and this thread on ChicagoTech and many more across the web, all to no avail.

Some of these talk of other computers connecting fine, typically Windows XP (implying that most things are ok - and that Vista has its own problem). I have various Linux and XP boxes and these were indeed connecting fine. So, like many others my Vista was its own problem.

After trying lots and lots of ideas, in the end it seemed the ONLY final solution offered by my research was to reinstall Vista. That is not a step I wanted to take.

The less severe step of uninstalling and reinstalling service pack 1 is indicated on many forums and blogs. I could not reinstall SP1, believe me I tried. But because I keep my disk clean I had intentionally deleted my pre-SP1 files, so that process was not open to me.

In fact I had only reinstalled Vista 3 months ago, I guess. My computer is relatively new. The idea of reinstalling was not an option I wanted.

Through this trauma I had been through some interesting stuff. I had entered the command "neth winsock reset" and rebooted more times than is good for my sanity. In a similar vein I had deleted the Winsock and Winsock2 registry keys, and rebooted.

I had even removed wifi driver and reinstalled until it got to the point of not installing properly! So I was in a fine mess.

I had also played around with registry values DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag and the like as documented at this Microsoft kb page.

More severe and underlying problems were indicated by various "automatic" start services that not only seemed to be not running but also could not be started. This includes a critical service (imo) for debugging, the event log and probably of more pertinence to my problem, wlansvc.

Wlanscv the one that enables Windows to detect and report on wifi devices such as adsl wireless routers etc. Trying to start this service balked at some dependent service not running and some obscure, and totally meaningless error message. You know, the kind of c**p message that says, "I know a secret and I am keeping it to myself, so there!"

Actually when checking all the dependencies they were all running! The plot thickens.

The services it depends on are Extensible Authentication Protocol, Native WiFi Filter, NDIS Usemode I/O Protocol and Remote Procedure (RPC). Anyway, I simply reduced this to three by removing the dependency on NDIS Usemode I/O Protocol, rebooted and the service started up perfectly.

Not only did it startup, it also worked! So lo, and behold there was my wifi detecting various routers and other wireless devices again.

At this point I was back to my original problem. I had recovered my networking by some sculduggery, and certainly without reinstalling SP1. But I still was not connecting.

So I was a bit further in the sense that I feel I understand some of how to get wifi playing ball. I just did not know how to score THE goal that wins the game.

Now I had already applied the reghack to stop Vista from being too clever for its own good regarding DHCP with registry value DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag etc. (Where Vista tries to optimise for new and clever routers and at the same time failing on the vast bulk of old fashioned routers out there in the real world.)

In fact having destroyed and somehow rebuilt my basic wifi setup I had to reapply that hack. Just in case. However that did not help me. Neither did it hinder.

So what next?

Well I read a post that another too-clever trick is around Windows Scaling for wifi connections. To disable this I switched off auto-tuning also with the netsh command. Reboot and there still was no connection. Yes, I could still see my router, but no connection.

My final salvation was this.

I read a post on another subject. It seems that to connect to any router or other device Vista needs a "wireless profile". Now under many, perhaps most circumstances Vista creates this wireless profile automatically. But in my instance, and my guess for a lot of other frustrated Vista users, and ex-Vista users it did not create this profile automatically.

As it turns out, no wireless profile means no connection.

To create a wireless profile go to control panel, and then network and sharing center. Now on the left menu you should see "Manage Wireless Connections", so click on this. In the following dialog box at the left side click on the ADD button to add a profile and complete this suitable for your router or wifi connection, including for example whether and what type of wifi security you have in place. Oh, and you might want to click the "connect automatically" checkbox.

Once this profile was complete my wifi started connecting perfectly as if there had never been a problem. It really did.

In one sense I cannot believe the final solution was so simple. In another sense I knew my setup was correct in many ways. After all it had been working fine.

Now I am not saying my steps are going to solve all your problems. But give them a go and let me know if they help.

One final point. Probably the "cause" of the problem was changing my setup to be able to use dial-up to the over mobile phone. This setup had been problematic. But it should not have disturbed my wifi connection.