It's Leap Day!

That's right. Today is February 29th. The last day of the month of February every four years. or is it every four years? Today is a day that confounds many (and confuses the rest of us). If you were lucky enough to actually be born on a leap day, what day is your birthday next year? Are you 1/4 the age of the rest of us?

So many questions, so little time. But, this might help answer a few of them:

So, I ask you, is this leap day significant to you?

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Today is the day we'll get a new beta version of Windows 8 - dubbed the "Consumer Preview". Although it's not known what will be included in the beta, how to download or if we'll see an actual webcast of the event - we do know that everyone should be able to download a new beta of Windows 8 sometime today.

The EASY way to move your Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac license between computers

So, you have a new Mac with OSX and you're excited to use it. But, you don't have Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 installed on the new computer. You can find the installation disk, but how do you move the license? Believe it or not, it is actually possible to transfer Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac's license from one machine to another - and it's just a matter of copying a few files. So far this process has worked on every computer I have tested it on, please let me know (in the comments) if this works for you too. I'll take you through the dead simple step-by-step process of how to do this.

Total Commander 7.57 Released

If you read my recent blog about THAT Great tool, you know that I think Total Commander is an indispensable utility on Windows.  One of the most amazing things is that Total Commander is constantly being updated. Bugs are fixed and the application is genrally always in ative development. On February 24, version 7.57 was released to to public. Details about what's been updated can be found in the HISTORY.TXT that's included with the installation download. Version 8.0 is in beta and should be out sometime in the near future.

A non-customer tries to unlock an iPhone 4S on Fido

You might be aware, but in Canada, the only two carriers that are authorized to unlock iPhones in Canada are Rogers and Fido. As the story goes, unlocking is $50 and requires a full restore of the phone. The requirements are what were tricky to me, since I was not a Fido customer, did not have a Fido account and was not actively using any services with Fido. Would they unlock the phone? Would I be turned away like so many people are when dealing with these behemoth companies? Let's see.

First Look: Dell Voice

In Canada, we're eagerly awaiting the arrival of Google Voice. While, to some, this wait has become unbearable - some have found ways to use Google Voice outside of the United States, others must wait. In Canada specifically, the wealth of VoIP (commonly called Voice-Over-IP) options on your smartphone are really starting to pile up. Enter Dell Voice, the VoIP service that aims to full the gap that the lack of Google Voice has left in this country. Join me as I take a look at this new service.

Windows 8: A closer look at Metro

When the Interface for Windows 8 was announced, I was a little surprised at first. Was this new phone-looking interface going to work very well with existing Business PCs? Was this new interface going to be removable? What kind of subsystem would Metro be running under? Well, as previews of Windows 8 continued to roll out - it became clear that metro was going to be forced into the next version of Windows and that there may (possibly?) be a way to disable the interface. Join me as a I take a closer look at Metro and the ramifications for IT Departments all over.

OUTLOOK PST files should not be so difficult to work with, still

Oh Microsoft, in February of 2010 you released the (now legendary) piece of documentation called the "Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) File Format". In that you described the Personal Folders File format in glorious detail. Details that only a programmer or a Uber-Geek would love. When this came out I thought that we would usher in a new era of tools and interoperability on all platforms. We would see the end of all this hard-to-reach-data sitting in far flung PST files that most users wouldn't be able to access. See, I've written often about Outlook and PST files. I want to see a day that users could open up PST files on a Windows computer like they might open a text file. Well, sadly, that day is not here yet.

We're looking for help: Bookkeeper

We're looking for a great part time bookkeeping person to handle various functions in our very small consulting firm.

You must be the following:
1. Results Oriented - stay focused on the goal, relentlessly produce results
2. Independent with strong organization skills. You must be capable of working effectively with little supervision.
3. Confident and strong written and verbal english skills with energetic phone manner
4. Resilience - ability to quickly resolve issues in a very fact paced environment

Interested? Read on.

Journal-schism - the dawn of blogalism

"Good night, and good luck." - Edward R. Murrow

That was the catchphrase of a great broadcaster. With that, Murrow became a legend and, I suspect, inspired a generation. Generations of journalists and bloggers are converging on something entirely new. This story is about how journalism has changed, how it is today something different. This is the story about how something I have resisted has come full circle and inhabited a part of my own life in ways I never thought possible. It's also important to say, I'm no expert in journalism - my perspective is a unique one though. I grew up in the radio newsroom and I learned of journalists from the inside. Also, I am part of that "new" technology blogger-ati that cow-tows to no editorialist, that plays fast and loose with the truth, and is shifting what we see in news for better or worse. What we're seeing here is, I think, a seismic shift in how things work.

That generation Murrow inspired likely included none other than my own father, Gene Costain. He spent much of his work-life as a radio newscaster for radio stations such as CKO in Toronto. I wish I had been paying more attention to what was going on around me too, but I generally had a distaste for this environment of reporters. My exposure to these newsrooms was fairly extensive as I would often tag along with him while his did his broadcast. Many of my memories of his times on-air in those small padded booths with microphones involved him reading word-for-word from AP wire papers or text copy that was ever so slightly altered from what the wire said. Today, I'm able to bring my view of past journalism and look at it through the eyes of todays bloggers.

THAT great tool: Total Commander

I use a heck of allot of tools and utilities. I use tools for database access, process viewing, registry searching, debugging, error log parsing, mail connections and even four or five different types of FTP servers. I've even made a tool or two for you. I tend to prefer tools that are as cross-platform as possible and that generally stand the test of time. The better of them are ones that provide the kind of flexibility that they become something entirely new. Those are the tools that I'm interested in, and the ones I want to write about. Very few of the tools I use fit into the category of "That great tool" - one of them, though, is Total Commander.

Insync may get you to ditch DROPBOX for good

Don't get me wrong, Dropbox is great. You get a free 2gb allotment of space, you get a free sync tool that can run on your PC or mac device and there are apps galore for access to those files. The many things you can do with Dropbox are underscored by some of the services that are out there - like Dropbox Automater, a sort of IFTTT for Dropbox. Sure, Dropbox has had some bad press over the last year, but as a service, it's pretty amazing. Thanks to a new tool called Insync, there is an interesting alternative now.

Windows: Revert back to the last login name (and make it easy on users)

This rather obscure request had me thinking of scenarios where it would be useful to change the last user name in Windows. Imagine you're a network admin and you want to do some work on the PC as the domain or local administrator. When you finish and log out (assuming the last user name display is enabled), the login screen will display "administrator" or "domain\administrator", forcing the previous user to type in a user name or use the "Switch User" button. What if, when done working on a computer as an administrator, you could set the username back to the previously logged in name and make things easier on your users? I'll show you a few ways you might do this..

Complacency is for dinosaurs

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” ― Bruce Lee

On the phone the other day, my mom described the ongoing difficulty she had been having with her laptop.  Faced with a computer that would not turn on, she had no idea what was wrong, nor the vaguest idea how to fix it.

Apparently my father took a shot at “repairing” it, albeit without a manual or technical advice of any sort.  Hours later, my mother checked in on him only to find the computer - wires splayed and beeping sounds filling the room – worse off than it was before. Exasperated, she would bring the computer to Rogers for the third time in two weeks, fingers crossed for a lasting solution.

You're wrong, it's not Apple's fault [Path address book scandal]

I do feel bad right now for all those users of Path on the iPhone that had address book details uploaded  to Path's servers stealthy and in the background. Consequently, this has cause Path's current CEO to write a sincere apology blog and ultimately delete user data and update the Path application. As the fallout continues, I notice how much of the echo chamber is calling this a failure of Apple to secure user's address book. Apple can be blamed for many things, but this is not Apple's fault.

When Choice is not a Choice

A few days ago an article was written by Ryan Gavin on Microsoft's official Windows Blog. As I was reading, I started feel somewhat uneasy, as if something was wrong with what I was reading. Someone from Microsoft was writing that choice is a good thing, and that we should choose to check out Internet Explorer 9 (IE9)? Really? Seriously, yes, go take a look for yourself. This is unusual in a number of ways, especially the "choice" of words. I really found myself more interested in what was missing from this article more than what was included.

The fall, and fall of the Blackberry Playbook

Oh, how you have fallen. You were the tablet that was going to challenge the 90%+ market share of the iPad. You were going to link from an existing Blackberry to create a secure, bigger kind of Blackberry. You were going to be the promise of accessing a bazillion applications from two different App Stores all running on your sleek, thin easy-to-multitask package. You the promise of so much, Playbook, what happened to you?

Schedule a task when PC switches from charging to AC power [Windows]

As I was going over some issues others have had - I came across a fascinating question in the Microsoft Answer newsgroups. The user essentially wanted to trigger the execution of a task when the computer goes from being on battery to AC and vice versa. Since the Windows Task Scheduler does not include the ability to set a power source change trigger, you can't use what Microsoft has written for this. I set out to find a way to make this possible.

Op-Ed: Why gender washrooms?

Gender-neutral washroom in a Starbucks

I'm really going to go off topic with this one. The topic of washrooms comes to mind once in a while (especially when I'm using one). For as long as I have been alive, washrooms have been gendered in Canada. By that I mean they have been labelled with either "Men" or "Women". What we all see is a a sign on the door indicating "Men" or "Women" with a small comic graphic indicating the specific gender the should use the washroom. I wanted to look at how odd this idea is, and what kind of issues that arise because of this gendering.

Shit IT Guys Say

I really thought that IT Guys were really being left out of this whole "shit.. says" meme. So, without further delay, I decided to make my own! Check this baby out and let me know what you think!

Looking for the Youtube link? - http://youtu.be/gMOgVyjOHd0 - Share!