Customize the speech of Garmin or TomTom GPS (both TTS and non-TTS)

Boring about hearing "recalculating" from your Garmin GPS and wanted to listen to something else, such as "oops, you don't follow my way"?

TurboCCC has come out with some interesting software tools for Garmin GPS users to easily customize the speech of their unit by hacking/modifying into the *.VPM voice files inside the /Garmin/Voice folder.

The tool to be used on Text-to-speech (TTS) voice file is called TTSVoiceEditor, and it can do the following:

• Change speech phrases like "recalculating" to something more enjoyable
• Control voice volume (level)
• Change voice rate (speed)
• Change the voice screen name
• Import/Export speech phrases from/to text files

Click here for more information and download of TTSVoiceEditor.

And to deal with non-TTS file, another tool called NonTTSVoiceEditor is used. It can:

• Split a Garmin VPM file into a serie of WAV files
• Split a TomTom CHK file into a serie of OGG files (Vorbis audio files)
• Preview and play WAV voice samples and phrases
• Merge them back into a VPM file

Click here for more information and download of NonTTSVoiceEditor.

Beside that, there is also a tool for you to replace some sound effects in Garmin GPS, such as during the picture click, the camera in sight dong-dong, the speed alert, etc. This tool will hack into the /Garmin/GUPDATE.GCD file in the GPS. It is called GUpdateMod.

Click here for more information and download of GUpdateMod.

TurboCCC has also produced some other tools such as the Extra_POI_Editor, TTS_Speech_Doctor, TomTom TTS, etc.

Beta release of Microsoft Security Essentials free antivirus

Within the next couple of hours, Microsoft will release the first beta version of their Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE, codename Morro) to selected regions.

MSE is an anti-malware software aimed to provide protection against viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans for certain Windows operating systems.

Here are some of the fact findings:

• The core developer team of MSE is in Israel.
  
• This beta release will be made available on 23 June 2009 to the first 75,000 downloads from Brazil, Israel and the United States.
• It is treated as the successor of Windows Live OneCare, which is a subscription based security solution from Microsoft which has been phased out since end of 2008. Retail sales of Windows Live OneCare will be discontinued by end of June 2009.
  
• Its antivirus framework is the same with Windows Live OneCare.
• Subsequent beta release(s) will include China. Its final release to the whole world will be by end of 2009.
• It will be made available free of charge and downloadable from Microsoft website.
• It can be installed in 32-bits and 64-bits version of Windows XP (SP2 and above), Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
• Its installation will need to pass through the Microsoft's anti-piracy Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation process.
• It is designed to be lightweight and use little system resources.
• It is reported to take up about 50MB of RAM when running.
  
• It is able to provide real-time protection with heuristic feature.
• It has a user interface similar like Windows Defender. If Windows Defender is found when installing MSE, MSE will replace itself to Windows Defender.
  
• It relies on Windows Automatic Update feature to update its malware signature database.

And here is a comparison table to compare the features among various security solutions produced by Microsoft.

Database synchronization/replication with SymmetricDS

SymmetricDS is an open source, feature rich, web-enabled, database independent, data synchronization/replication software. It is written in Java 5 and released under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 3.

It uses web and database technologies to replicate tables between relational databases in near real time. The software was designed to scale for a large number of databases, work across low-bandwidth connections, and withstand periods of network outage. By using database triggers, SymmetricDS guarantees that data changes are captured and atomicity is preserved.

Supported databases including:

• MySQL version 5.0.2 and above

• Oracle version 8.1.7 and above

• PostgreSQL version 8.2.5 and above

• Sql Server 2005

• HSQLDB 1.8

• H2 1.1

• Apache Derby 10.3.2.1 and above

• IBM DB2 9.5

• Firebird 2.0 and above

SymmetricDS allows for 2-tier and even n-tier synchronization, which can be configured to push data (trickle-back) or pull data (trickle-poll) at an interval, as illustrated below:



The software is installed either standalone, as a web application in a Java application server or can be embedded into another Java application.

SymmetricDS will be useful for data synchronization between a central database and multiple remote databases. This kind of requirement is often in:

• HQ and branches
  
• General office and retail outlets
• Police HQ and stations
  
• Ministry of education and schools
• Ministry of health and hospitals & clinics
• etc.

Click here for more information about SymmetricDS.

Mind Mapping with XMind

Originated as the brainchild of Tony Buzan (a famous psychology author and educational consultant), Mind Mapping has been used by many people as a great and interesting method to visualize and organize their thinkings, ideas, decisions, planning, problem solving, etc.

Mind Mapping can also be used for group of people during discussions, brain storming, note taking, etc.



XMind is an easy to learn and easy to use general purpose mind mapping application. Its diagram objects can be easily switched for mind maps, fishbone diagrams, tree diagrams, org-charts, logic charts, and even spreadsheets.

Being developed in Java, it is cross-platform and can be run in Windows, Linux and Mac OS. For Ubuntu and Debian Linux users, XMind is also well packaged as DEB distribution file for easy installation. There is also a portable version which doesn't require installation to use.

XMind has user interface in different languages, including English, Chinese (simplified & traditional), Japanese, German, etc.

Starting from its Version 3, XMind which was once proprietary and selling at US$299 has gone open source since 14 November 2008. This is really a good news for mind mapping fans. This mind mapping application now comes in 2 flavours - the free XMind and subscription based XMind Pro.

Click here to read about how XMind can be used by different people, such as meeting organizers, project managers, teachers, department members, students, team managers, architects, designers, etc.

In order to download XMind or XMind Pro from their website, you are required to create a free user ID in their website. With this user ID, you can collaborate with other XMind users in the community, share your maps with others, etc. There is a huge collection of sample maps available in their website.

Filtering spam mails with Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird has similar spam filtering features with its brother SeaMonkey Mail. If you are using it as your email client, you can configure it to automatically move all detected spam mails to a Junk folder and mark them as read. You can also have the spam mails in the Junk folder to be automatically deleted after some times.

By activating this spam filtering feature, majority of the spam mails will be seamlessly removed from your Inbox. Sometimes, a few spam mails are still remain undetected, and you just need to manually mark them as "junk" to get the system to move them to the Junk folder, marks them as read, and lets the Bayesian engine to learn that marked mail as spam.

The Junk folder is very useful in retaining the detected and quarantined spam mails for a certain period, so that in case there is any false detection (which so far never happen to me), you can still retrieve the mail back by moving it from the Junk folder back to your Inbox.

If your mail account folder in Mozilla Thunderbird does not have the Junk folder yet, you can manually create it by right clicking on the mail account, select New Folder... and name the new folder to be created as Junk. The Junk folder is essential for the settings described below to work properly.

Here is the configuration to setup and activate the spam mail filtering function in Mozilla Thunderbird. Note that you need to configure for both the global and account specific settings.

Global junk mail settings:

1. Pull down the Edit menu and select Preferences.
2. Click on the Privacy option and go to the Junk tab.
3. Set it so that when you mark a mail as junk, the system will move it to the Junk folder and mark it as read.



Account specific junk mail settings:

1. Right click on the mail account folder and select Properties...
2. Select Junk Settings
3. Enable the adaptive junk mail controls, move the junk mails to your Junk folder and automatically delete them after some times.
4. If you have more than one email account in your Mozilla Thunderbird, you might need to repeat the same settings for all your email accounts.



Once it is setup, you will soon notice how amazing this spam filtering feature is in helping you to filter out the spam emails from now onwards.

Filtering spam mails with SeaMonkey Mail

If you are using SeaMonkey as your email client, you can configure it to automatically move all detected spam mails to a Junk folder and mark them as read. You can also have the spam mails in the Junk folder to be automatically deleted after some times.

SeaMonkey has a very effective Bayesian spam mail detection feature which can detect most of the spam mails, and has been working very well for me. By activating this spam filtering feature, majority of the spam mails will be seamlessly removed from my Inbox. Sometimes, a few spam mails are still remain undetected, and I just need to manually mark them as "junk" to get the system to move them to the Junk folder, marks them as read, and lets the Bayesian engine to learn that marked mail as spam.

The Junk folder is very useful in retaining the detected and quarantined spam mails for a certain period, so that in case there is any false detection (which so far never happen to me), you can still retrieve the mail back by moving it from the Junk folder back to your Inbox.

If your mail account folder in SeaMonkey does not have the Junk folder yet, you can manually create it by right clicking on the mail account, select New Folder... and name the new folder to be created as Junk. The Junk folder is essential for the settings described below to work properly.

Here is the configuration to setup and activate the spam mail filtering function in SeaMonkey's Mail. Note that you need to configure for both the global and account specific settings.

Global junk mail settings:

1. Pull down the Edit menu and select Preferences...
2. Expand the Mail & Newgroups option and select Junk Mail.
3. Set it so that when you mark a mail as junk, the system will move it to the Junk folder and mark it as read.



Account specific junk mail settings:

1. Right click on the mail account folder and select Properties...
2. Select Junk Settings
3. Enable the adaptive junk mail controls, move the junk mails to your Junk folder and automatically delete them after some times.
4. If you have more than one email account in your SeaMonkey's Mail, you might need to repeat the same settings for all your email accounts.

Once it is setup, you will soon notice how amazing this spam filtering feature is in helping you to filter out the spam emails from now onwards.

OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 released

While waiting for the next version of OpenOffice.org 3.1 (scheduled to release by end of March 2009), OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 is now finalized and on general release.

If you are using Ubuntu Linux 8.10 and installed OpenOffice.org 3 with the method as described in my earlier article in this blog, your OpenOffice.org should already automatically updated to release candidate of version 3.0.1 quite some time ago, and also automatically updated to general release version of 3.0.1 recently.

Version 3.0.1 is a bug fix release before the upcoming version 3.1. It fixes quite a lot of bugs found in version 3.0. Beside that, there is also new feature for Writer to handle grammar checking. This built-in grammar checking feature in Writer has been long awaited and finally made available now.

Using Thunderbird as preferred email client in Ubuntu

If you didn't change the preferred email client in Ubuntu after installation, it will default to Evolution.

Evolution is a great email application, but some people like to use Mozilla Thunderbird instead.

If you prefer to use Mozilla Thunderbird as your email client, just go to System > Preferences > Preferred Applications and select Thunderbird as your Mail Reader.



After that, you can also switch off the Evolution Alarm Notifier in System > Preferences > Sessions > Startup Programs.

If Thunderbird is not yet installed in your Ubuntu, you need to install it with Synaptic Package Manager first.

Installing OpenOffice.org 3 in Ubuntu 8.10

OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 is bundled in Ubuntu Linux 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and will be installed together with the system when the later is installed into the harddisk.

You can upgrade your OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 in Ubuntu 8.10 to OpenOffice.org 3.0 by using the relevant Canonical Personal Package Archives (PPA) repository source in LaunchPad server.

To do so, open the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu 8.10, pull down the Settings menu and select Repositories. Click on the Third-Party Software tab, after that click on the +Add... button. Key in the following APT line:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

Then, click the +Add Source button. You will need to Reload the package information to update Synaptic Package Manager about the change.

Once this is done, you will be able to upgrade OpenOffice.org to 3.0 with the Update Manager.

If you want to revert back to OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 later, just uninstall OpenOffice.org 3.0 and its components, remove the above line from the Third-Party Software repository source, and reinstall OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 from the main source.

Use WinSCP to securely transfer files between local and remote computer

I have been using WinSCP to securely transfer files between my Windows PC and remote Linux servers for years, and is still using this handy tools until today.

Based on the implementation of the SSH protocol from PuTTY and FTP protocol from FileZilla, WinSCP is developed by Martin Prikryl back from 2000 and was probably the first ever GUI file transfer client for SSH. This awards winning open source application is licensed under GPL with the project migration to SourceForge.net repository in 2003. The project is now hosted in TeamForge since 2005 while still made available in SourceForge.net at the same time.

With WinSCP, you can connect to and transfer files with an SSH (Secure Shell) server running SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) or SCP (Secure Copy Protocol) service. It can also connect to a normal FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server for unencrypted file transfer.



The main differences between SFTP and SCP are:

• File transfer with SCP is generally faster than SFTP.
• SFTP supports resume of incomplete file transfer while SCP doesn't.
• SFTP supports file transfer bigger than 4GB while SCP supports file transfer up to 4GB only.
• Recursive operations with directories (deletion, permissions change, etc.) is faster in SCP than SFTP.

Some interesting features of WinSCP includes:

• Translated into multilingual.
• Integration with Windows Explorer for drag&drop, URL detection, shortcut icons, etc.
• Supports for scripting and command line interface.
• Local and remote file manipulation such as create, copy, duplicate, move, delete, rename, compress, etc.
• Compare local and remote directories.
• Directory synchronization between local and remote folder.
• Remote editing of text files with integrated text editor.
• Portable version that doesn't need any installation is available.

WinSCP is also available as a plugin for file manager applications such as FAR and Altap Salamander.

Click here to go to the download page of WinSCP.

Burn audio CD from MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, APE, VQF, MP4 files with GoGo MP3 To CD Burner

You might have a compilation of your most favourite MP3 files ripped from various pieces of audio CD. It would be nice to burn your favourite compilation of MP3 music back into audio CD so that you could play them with CD player and/or car audio player that unfortunately doesn't support reading of MP3 CD.

I've found a freeware called GoGo MP3 To CD Burner which can perform this task. All you need to do is select and add the supported audio files into its list for up to a total of 80 minutes play time, then click the Burn CD button to create your own audio CD.

The only set back of this handy utility is that it doesn't support non-alphanumeric filenames, which include the CJK (Chinese-Japan-Korean) characters. If you intend to add those files into your list, you have to rename their filename to English first.

Click here to download GoGo MP3 To CD Burner. Its file size is just about 1MB, and it is free to use. Supported platforms are Windows 98 and above.

Mobile phone screen capturing with the free TOSC utility

My reader asked about how I captured the screen of my mobile phone and paste them in my blog here.

I installed a small open source utility developed by Pal Szasz called The Open Screen Capture (TOSC) into my Sony Ericsson P1i, and that is the tool I used to capture the screen.

TOSC is an open source and free screen capture utility for mobile device running on Symbian UIQ3. Example of such smartphones are Sony Ericsson P1i, P990i, W960i, G700, G900, etc.

TOSC is very simple and easy to use. You just need to set the timer for the screen capture to happen, which can be 0 second (immediately), 10 seconds or 30 seconds. Then, get ready with the screen you want to capture before the timer timeout, and TOSC will capture the screen and save it as PNG file in the root directory of your M2 memory card.

When TOSC is running, you can see a green icon on top of the screen, which will show the timer countdown when a screen capture is initiated. Don't worry, the green icon won't be captured by TOSC.

You can click here to download the SIS installation file for TOSC version 0.3.

PuTTY for mobile devices

PuTTY is an open source SSH client distributed under the MIT licence, originally written for Windows platform. Many system engineers use it as a handy tool to remotely connect to their Linux/Unix machines with the secured SSH protocol to administer the system from their desktop.

Nowadays, PuTTY has also been ported to run on mobile devices such as PDAs and smart mobile phones, so that you can access to your servers for emergency troubleshooting, restarting a service, rebooting the server, and so on. Of course, you need to have Internet access from your mobile device to your server, either using GPRS, 3G, Wifi, etc.

Here are some of the ported PuTTY for various mobile devices:

• PuTTY for Symbian UIQ3 - http://coredump.fi/putty/
  
• PuTTY for Symbian OS - http://s2putty.sourceforge.net/
• PuTTY for Windows Mobile 2003 - http://www.pocketputty.net/
• pssh for Palm OS 5 - http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh/
• pTerm for iPhone - http://www.instantcocoa.com/products/pTerm/

And you can see the PuTTY for Symbian UIQ3 in action in my Sony Ericsson P1i here.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now on general release

Finally, the long awaited OpenOffice.org 3.0 is on general release now. Strong demand of this state-of-art open source office application suite made them to temporary changed their website into a simple download page only to overcome the traffic.

Pre-compiled installation package is available for download for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Intel-based Mac OS X in various languages.

Right from the opening screen, OpenOffice.org 3 has a fresh new look, with a new start screen, new splash screen, new icons, and a host of usability improvements.

The Writer word processor has a cool new slider control for zooming, allows multi-page display while editing, has powerful new multilingual support, and boasts improved notes capabilities. As well as conventional office documents, Writer can now edit wiki documents for the web.

The Calc spreadsheet has been given another increase in capacity - now up to 1024 columns per sheet. It also has a powerful new equation solver, and a great new collaboration feature for multiple users.

Draw can now cope with poster-size graphics (up to 3sq metres), and Impress supports multiple monitors for presentations. Chart now produces much more clean looking graphics by default, and has a range of additional features requested by power users.

The popular built-in PDF export facility has been further enhanced with PDF/A support and a range of new user-selectable options.

OpenOffice.org 3 is now also available for the first time as a full Mac OS X application, bringing the power of the world's leading open-source office suite to a whole new group of users. And it's even easier than ever to persuade MS-Office users to upgrade to OpenOffice.org, with new support for MS-Access 2007 'accdb' files, improved support for VBA macros, and a new ability to read MS-Office Open XML files (MS Office 2007 and Office 2008 documents)

OpenOffice.org's support for extensions is really coming of age with OpenOffice.org 3. A rapidly expanding number of additional features are available from different developers to add great features such as an Impress presenter console, support for business analytics, PDF import, and a whole new way of supporting additional languages.

Click here to read their official press release.

Editing the Sony Ericsson handphone theme with Themes Creator

I find that the themes (yes, more than one...) downloaded from the Sony Ericsson website for my P1i mobile phone have a logical bug with the listing checkbox. Once the theme is applied, the unchecked items will all shown as checked, and the checked items shown as unchecked.

After some troubleshooting and confirmed that the problem is with the theme, I found the way to fix it by editing the "checked" and "unchecked" icon to the order, and here is the way.

First of all, you need to download the theme file in .utz format into your computer. Make a copy of the file and change its extension to .zip. For example, download Shards.utz, make a copy named as Shards.zip.

Then, unzip the file Shards.zip with PeaZip or 7-Zip or any other file unarchiver tool.

Use a graphics editor to edit the file named as ListboxCheckbox.png in your unzip folder. Here is how it looks like before and after the editing.

Before:

After:
(you may right click to download this edited file)

You can now use the Sony Ericsson Themes Creator to open the file Shards.utz. To fix the problem, go to "List View" tab, and click on "Check boxes". Then, click on the Import button to import your edited ListboxCheckbox.png.




You can then see from the preview display that the checkbox is showing correctly by now.

Save the theme file Shards.utz and transfer it to your phone. You have to ensure that Shards is not in use as the current theme in your phone. Delete the existing Shards theme, and install this edited one. Woolah! You are done.

Improve Windows Systray clock with the free LClock

LClock is a very lightweight Windows 2000/XP Systray clock replacement that consumes very minimal memory and system resources, ideal to make the clock in the Systray looks much better and with additional features such as nice calendar display with a single mouse click.

This free program is developed by Ying Han, originated from the idea of Thrawn's .NET systray clock program. It is a modified (stripped down) version of Kazuto Sato's TClock Light.

It not only displays the time in Systray in a configurable and much nicer way, and also will pop up a nice calendar with a just single mouse click on it. It also features a simple alarm system configurable by clicking on the calendar. The calendar reminders show up in a pop-up window when triggered and can be scheduled to be repeated at different intervals.

With LClock, you can have a much better clock and calendar application in your Windows 2000/XP.

The latest version of LClock is 1.62b released by September 2004.

Click here for more information about LClock.

UltraVNC 1.0.5 released

Glad to know that the long awaited UltraVNC 1.0.5 is finally released, 2 years from the last stable version of 1.0.2.

When I was managing the MIS department of my ex-company, where my technical support team needs to support multiple retail outlets in remote locations, UltraVNC is an excellent tool the team uses for remote support and troubleshooting from HQ without needed to travel for onsite support. It saves a lot of time, money and effort, and helps to solve the problem for the user within a short period of time after the issue was raised.

UltraVNC is a powerful client-server remote control software derived from the famous Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software. With UltraVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote computer as if you are sitting in front of it, and control it with your local mouse and keyboard via the computer network.

There are 3 remote control technologies popular in the market of remote control software:

• Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) designed by Citrix Systems is proprietary. Practical products conforming to ICA are Citrix’s WinFrame and Citrix Presentation Server, which usage is charged by license.
• Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) designed by Microsoft is used in Terminal Services or Remote Desktop.
• Virtual Network Computing (VNC) designed by AT&T is released as open source and is platform independent. There are clients and servers for almost all GUI operating systems including Windows, Linux/BSD/Unix (X-Window), Mac OS, and also for Java. There are even clients that run in web browsers. Most free remote control software are based on this technology.

UltraVNC includes a number of advanced features, making it unique among the various flavors of VNC variants, including:

• Special graphics mirror driver to facilitate ultrafast remote controlling experience.
• Multiple authentication methods, including integration with Microsoft Windows Logon
• Data Stream Encryption Plugin to securely encrypt all data sent between the UltraVNC server and viewer.
• Possibility to send Ctrl-Alt-Del to the remote server, useful to logoff user, shutdown or restart remotely
• Text chat window for user between the server and client to communicate directly.
• Drag-and-drop style remote file transfer between client and server.
• Auto reconnection support
• Multiple monitors support
• Repeater to use UltraVNC viewer behind a NAT router.
• NAT to NAT connector for connections between UltraVNC viewer and server behind NAT routers without any router modification.
• UltraVNC SC (SingleClick), a customizable mini UltraVNC server that doesn't need any installation for on-the-fly usage.

UltraVNC is free and open sourced, released under the GNU General Public License.

Click here for more information and download of UltraVNC.

PeaZip the powerful free and open source file archiver

Similar to 7-Zip which I introduced in the blog earlier, PeaZip is another free and open source file archiver licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). It is developed in FreePascal.

PeaZip can deploy fast compression in ZIP and TAR.GZ formats, or very efficient speed / high compression ratio tradeoff in 7Z, BZ or ARC formats, or even highest levels of compression using PAQ family algorithms. It can handle many archive and compression formats both from Windows and Unix worlds, ranging from mainstream TAR and ZIP formats to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ, including:

• Full support: 7Z, 7Z-sfx, ARC/WRC, BZ2/TBZ2, GZ/TGZ, PAQ/LPAQ, PEA, QUAD/BALZ, split, TAR, UPX, ZIP;
• Open, browse, extract, test: ACE, ARJ, CAB, CHM, COMPOUND (MSI, DOC, XLS, PPT), CPIO, ISO, Java (JAR, EAR, WAR), Linux (DEB, PET/PUP, RPM, SLP), LHA/LZH, LZMA, NSIS, OOo, PAK/PK3/PK4, RAR, SMZIP, U3P, WIM, XPI, Z/TZ.
  

It also supports features such as robust file copy, split/join files, quick or secure file deletion, byte to byte file compare, checksum/hash files, system benchmark, generate random passwords and keyfiles.

The same features and look and feel is available to all Windows version and also on Linux. It is also available in standalone portable apps format which does not require installation to use.

PeaZip is focused on security and supports multiple encrypted archive formats:

• 7Z, with AES256 encryption;
• ARC, with AES256, Blowfish, Twofish256 and Serpent256 encryption;
• PEA, with AES256 authenticated encryption (EAX mode);
• ZIP with WinZip's AE encryption based on AES256.
  

PeaZip is powerful. You can click here to download and try it out.

GPartEd the open source harddisk partition editor

The storage capacity of today's harddisk is normally huge, and we usually subdivided it into one or more storage partitions.

GPartEd (Gnome Partition Editor) is an industrial-strength open source application for manipulating the harddisk partitions, which includes creating, destroying, resizing, moving, checking and copying them and the filesystems on them.

When and why we need to use GPartEd?

• When we plan to install another operating system in the computer for dual-booting, and need to allocate free partition space for the new operating system.
• When one of the partition space is almost fully utilized, while other still have plenty of space, and we need to reorganize the disk usage by repartitioning.
• When we want to copy data residing on harddisks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging).
• When we want to remove a Linux partition in a dual-boot computer, and make that partition available to Windows. Note that the Windows Disk Management Tool doesn't recognise Linux partition, so you need to use 3rd party tools like GPartEd for this purpose.
  

Please be aware that if any problem occurs to the harddisk partition tables, data might be lost and difficult to recover (and sometimes non-recoverable). Honestly, if you don't understand what I'm talking about in this post, and you are unsure what a "partition" is actually mean, then this tools is not for you to play around with.

It is prudent and advisable to always make a backup of your harddisk with Clonezilla that I've introduced earlier before you make any changes to the partitions.

GPartEd is available in LiveCD format (boot from CDROM) and also LiveUSB format (boot from USB thumb drive). It can also be run from network on PXE server. You do not need to install anything into your harddisk in order to use it.

Click here to look for documentations of GPartEd.

OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 is out

While the new OpenOffice.org 3.0 with new features and lots of improvement is still in beta testing, the stable version of OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 is now released.

OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 includes a security fix, minor enhancements, and bug fixes to all its core components. The 2.4 version branch of OpenOffice.org fixed a number of security vulnerabilities and all OpenOffice.org users using version 2.3 or below should upgrade to 2.4.1 to fix up the addressed security issues.

Click here for the detailed Release Notes of OpenOffice.org 2.4.1.

Click here to go to the download page of OpenOffice.org 2.4.1.