Quick and effective fix for Whatsapp voice call intermittent quality problem

There are quite a lot of occasions I experienced intermittent quality problem when making or receiving WhatsApp voice call. The sound from the other party just couldn't transmit well to my phone.

This kind of intermittent situation occurred even when I was connected to 5 GHz WiFi with high speed fibre Internet access, and I was very sure that the network utilization during the call was low without any congestion at all.

After some trial and error attempts to improve the situation, I finally found out the solution to fix this WhatsApp voice call intermittent problem.

You just need to change one setting in WhatsApp, and your WhatsApp voice call will be magically turned from intermittent to very clear.

If you are also experiencing similar problem with WhatsApp voice call, try go to Settings > Data and storage usage > Call settings and enable "Low data usage".

I am not sure what does WhatsApp do behind the scene with this setting turned on, but it does magically fixed my voice call problem. It works both when using WiFi or using mobile data.

Free Android app to scan, read and generate QR codes and barcodes (ad-free)

There are quite a lot of QR code scanner in the Google Play Store nowadays. Some can also read and interpret QR code from a graphics file saved in the phone. There are also a few even capable to generate new QR code for you.

However, not all of them are free. And, most of the free one are not ad-free.

I have found one that really impress me. It is a 3-in-1 QR code scanner, reader and generator app, very simple to use, and most importantly, it is free for use and ad-free. This means it won't bombard you with any annoying ads!

This Android app is called QR & Barcode Scanner, QR Code Reader, QR Generator offered by Digital Seo Web. You can click here to download and install it from Google Play Store.

By using the phone's camera, it is able to scan and interpret most if not all QR codes and also 2D barcode types including text, website link, product, ISBN, contact, email, calendar, location, Wi-Fi, data matrix, EAN, UPC, Code39, Code128, Codabar, ITF, EAN8 and many other formats.

The app has a trigger for you to turn on your phone's flashlight during scanning environment with low light condition.

Upon successful interpreting of the scanned code, the result will be displayed on the screen, and you will be given options to open the web URL (for website link), save contact information to your phone contacts (for business card QR code), access to WiFi (for WiFi credential QR code), send it out as email, send it out as SMS, share it to other apps, or export it to a CSV file which will contain the date, type and interpreted content of the code.

This app has a very clear-cut menu.

You can read the QR code or barcode saved as PNG, JPG or other graphics file by using the Gallery function.

You can generate your own QR code by using the Generate function.

You can look back at the past scanning/reading results by using the History function.

This app is able to generate quite a number of QR code types, including personal profile, business profile, contact number, SMS message, plain text, email, website URL and company profile.

You can save the generated QR code as a JPG file in your phone by tapping on the "download" icon at the top-right corner. You can also share the generated QR code to other apps.

This app seems to be pretty new in Google Play Store, but it is really amazing. I highly recommend it for all Android phone users who are looking for a free, modest and ad-free QR code scanner, reader and generator.

Converting video files to be playable from USB drive in Honda 39102-T9A-T8XX-M1 display audio head unit

The Honda 39102-T9A-T8XX-M1 display audio is the stock head unit of Honda City 2017 Facelift 1.5L E/V variants.

It is able to play 4 types of multimedia files in a USB thumb drive: MP3 music, WMA music, JPEG photo, and MP4 video.

When the car parking handbrake is engaged, the video will display on the screen, otherwise, the video will become a blue screen while the music in the MP4 continue playing. This is a safety feature so that the driver will focus on driving instead of watching video on the screen. If you want to bypass this safety feature, you can search for a compatible "bypass cable" for this head unit and install it.

In order for any video to be playable in this Honda 39102-T9A-T8XX-M1 head unit, you need to convert it into MP4 format with the following custom settings:

• Frame size: 640 x 480
• Adjustment: Original
• Video codec: MPEG4
• Frame rate: 15 fps
• Bitrate type: Auto
• Audio codec: MP3
• Channels: Stereo
• Sample rate: 48000 Hz
• Audio Bitrate: 320 Kbps

Conversion can be done using a free software called Freemake Video Converter.

Although the car audio manual claimed that it is able to play video in H.264 Base Line Profile format, I have not succeed to make it work with any H.264 video.

The car audio manual also claimed that it is able to support video frame rate up to 30 fps, but if you set the fps higher than 15, the video might not be playing smoothly on the screen.

As the car audio manual has stated that it supports VGA size video only, the frame size is best to be 640x480. If you set it higher than that, the video will be totally unplayable with the "not supported resolution type" error.

Luckily, this head unit is capable to play MP3 in pretty high sample rate and bitrate. Its music playing capability is quite OK, particularly with the 8 speakers in the V variant, despite its video playing capability is really primitive.

Send e-Angpow with Presto and get back more cash than the amount you sent

Presto is an innovative homegrown social marketing and e-wallet platform by ACE-market listed PUC Bhd (0007). You can download the app for free in Google Play store and Apple iTune App Store.

In conjunction with the upcoming Chinese New Year 2018, Presto has enabled its users to send electronic red packets (a.k.a. e-Angpow) to their buddies in the app. The good news is, you do not need to top up any money into your Presto account to start sending your red packets.

Click here, and you can receive RM2 from Presto in your account after filling up the online form as shown below. Both new users and existing users are eligible to receive the RM2, provided you are the first 88 users of the day who submitted the online form, from 7 February 2018 until 13 February 2018.

Once you have received the RM2 in your Presto account, you can use it to send out red packet to one of your buddies. Just tap on the banner as shown below at the bottom of the app screen to start sending your red packets.

Alternatively, you can select a friend in your buddies list and there is an option for you to send red packet to the selected person too.

You can send any amount of money in your red packet, but please be noted that you need to send RM2 or more in a red packet in order to be eligible to play the Fortune Blast game.

The secret to get back more cash than the amount you sent is through this Fortune Blast game! If you sent out an RM2 red packet and it is opened by its receiver, you can easily get back at least RM5 from Fortune Blast.

If you are fast enough to blast more than 100 times within 8 seconds, your prize can be doubled to become RM10!

With the money you won from Fortune Blast, you can continue to send out more red packets to the rest of your buddies, and receive more chances to earn back even more money from Fortune Blast.

You can easily earn more than hundred within a very short period of time, even without any need of putting any money into your Presto account to start with. There is just nothing for you to lose, and many for you to gain.

In the end of the day, what can you do with the money in your Presto account? Currently, you can use it to redeem Presto deals. Later on, the money will be resided in your Presto e-wallet, which you can use to make payment at participating shops that accept Presto e-wallet payment method.

Click the link below to share this message to as many of your friends as possible, because you need them to also install Presto app in their phone before you can add them as your buddy and send/receive red packets with them.

Making your Android phone smarter by programming task automation using Automate

Automate is a freemium Android app developed by LlamaLab that enables you to perform task automation in your smartphone.

With it, you can really make your phone much more smarter by running programs constructed using simple flowchart called Flows. All programming in Automate is done graphically by drawing flowcharts (without writing a single line of code) by joining building blocks, whereby each block will perform a single task.

A sample Automate flow looks like this:

Some of the examples that you can program your phone with Automate to do smartly:

• Every morning when you wake up, greet you with a female voice with weather information and major stock markets closing index point. Pick up your calendar event and read out your appointments in the day.
• When you are driving your car, auto enable Bluetooth and auto connect your phone to your car's Bluetooth hands-free function, and auto answer any incoming calls. When you leave your car, auto disable Bluetooth and resume manual phone answering.
• When you are approaching home, auto send a Whatsapp message to your spouse that you are on the way and will arrive soon.
• When you arrive home, auto turn on WiFi function and connect to your home WiFi. When you leave home, auto turn off the WiFi function to save battery.
• Whenever you open Spotify app at home, auto enable Bluetooth and connect to your wireless speaker. When you open Spotify at other places, it won't do this and will play the music using your phone's speaker instead.
• Whenever you enter into your favourite cinema hall, auto mute your phone and set it to vibrate mode. Unmute it when you leave the place.

Automate comes with several hundreds of ready made building blocks. There are basically just 2 types of block:

• Action block which has a single output (example: Enable WiFi)
• Decision block which has 2 outputs, 1 for Yes and 1 for No (example: Is WiFi enabled?)

For decision block, you can set the evaluation to be tested immediately (example: Is WiFi enabled?) or wait for the condition to change (example: When WiFi is enabled or disabled).

The ready made building blocks are grouped in the following categories:

• Apps
• Battery & Power
• Camera & Sound
• Concurrency
• Content
• Date & Time
• File & Storage
• Flow
• General
• Interface
• Location
• Messaging
• Sensor
• Settings
• Telephony

Here is an example of available blocks inside one of the categories above (Camera & Sound).

To use Automate, you can either:

• Just run the sample flows that suit you
• Create your own flows and run them
• Download flows shared by other users in the community
• Download flows from the community, and modify them to suit your need

Automate comes pre-installed with several useful sample flows.

There is also a user community for its users to upload and share their flows with other users. You can upload your flows in the community too.

Community flows are categorized into the following groups:

• Business
• Communication
• Education
• Entertainment
• Finance
• Games
• Health & Fitness
• Home
• Media & Audio
• News & Magazines
• Personalization
• Photography
• Productivity
• Security
• Shopping
• Social
• Sports
• Tools
• Transportation
• Travel & Local
• Tutorials & Examples
• Weather

Below are some of the top rated community flows available for download:

A running instant in a flow is called a fibre. Each flow when executed will have one or more fibres.

The free version of Automate app is fully functional and ads-free, only with restriction of allowing up to 30 running blocks in all the running fibres. This is sufficient for most simple tasks. If you need to run more complex flows, or need to run a lot of flows concurrently, you can pay a small fee to upgrade to the Pro version.

If you configure Automate to run on system startup, all its running flows will resume from their previous running state even after a restart.

With Automate, you can make a lot of wonders in your phone, without writing a single line of code. All you need is constructing your logics with blocks and charting them into flows.

Automatic incoming and outgoing calls recorder for Android phones

Have you ever encountered any situation that you wish to record down your phone conversation for future reference?

It could be a negotiation talk, or a sales order through phone, or any conversation containing message which you need to record down that typically you'll quickly search for paper and pen and asked the other party to repeat it. It could also be a scam call that you want to keep evident, or any other phone calls that you just want to save.

I use Automatic Call Recorder developed by Appliqato Software for this purpose. It is free for use (with ads), and you can also purchase the ads-free Pro version which will also unlock some of the unique functions not available in the free version.

Take note that there are quite a number of "call recorder" apps that can be found in Google Play Store. The one that I mention here is developed by Appliqato Software which has already achieved a few hundred million installation.

The beauty of this app is that once installed with automatic recording turned on by default, it will automatically record all your incoming and outgoing calls on its own without the need of prompting you. You can also temporary turn off this automatic recording function in its Settings.

Recorded calls will appear in its Inbox which you can replay and perform further action, such as save it permanently (will move from Inbox to Saved folder), jot down a title and notes about what is the call about (for your search reference), delete it, share the recorded audio to another app (such as sending to Whatsapp, Telegram, email, cloud drive, another phone through Bluetooth, etc.).

This call recorder can save the recording in either one of AMR, AAC, MP4 or WAV format. The default AMR format is suitable for voice recording, which produce relatively small file size. In case the recording sound volume is too soft, you can make configuration to increase the loudness.

You can configure the app to automatically save a copy of the audio record to your Google Drive or Dropbox, and you can specify for this synchronization to happen only when the phone is connected to WiFi.

Under Storage setting, you can specify how many number of recordings to retain in the Inbox, and the storage location path of your Inbox.

Under Filters setting, you can specify whose phone calls to record, and whose phone calls to skip recording. By default, all calls will be recorded.

In case you find the app failed to record some of the calls, it might be due to battery optimization function of your phone, which you can set to ignore battery optimization for this app.

CCleaner official download was hacked and infected version containing malware released to public - how to fix

CCleaner by Piriform (recently acquired by Avast) is a famous software that comes with both free and paid versions, made available to Windows, Mac and Android users to do housekeeping in their computer or Android smart mobile device to clean up junk files and junk registry entries, in order to optimize the computer to maintain running smoothly. It claims to have achieved over 2 billion of downloads now. There is also a cloud version available.

If your computer has CCleaner installed, you need to be aware that during the period between mid-August to mid-September 2017, the official download site of CCleaner was hacked, and the official CCleaner installer had been replaced with a version containing malware that will compromise your computer. The "contaminated" CCleaner version had been distributed to all the 3rd party download sites as well!

If you installed or updated your CCleaner with the version containing the malware, then your computer is infected.

This is a kind of supply chain attack, will is considered a very effective way to distribute malicious software into target organizations or general public. The attackers are relying on the trust relationship between the supplying source (such as official release source) and the consumer. This trust relationship is then abused to attack organizations and individuals.


Which versions are affected?

• CCleaner v5.33.6162
• CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191

It is said that the affected versions were for 32-bit Windows PCs, and the CCleaner for Android is probably safe. Newer official released versions of CCleaner (version 5.34 and above) are also safe as there will be no malware included (finger-crossed).


What the malware possibly do?

This malware was detected and reported separately by Cisco's Talos Intelligence Group and also the Morphisec's security team.

According to their analysis, this malware will collect information in your computer, including network connection detail, running processes, installed software, anything running with administrator privileges, etc. It will encrypt the information and send back to the hacker's server using HTTPS posting method.

The hacker's server can make use of backdoor created by the malware to send codes to be executed with administrator privileges at the infected computers.


How to fix?

If your Windows computer is installed with CCleaner, you should uninstall it immediately, regardless of the version. After that, if you still want to continue using CCleaner, you can download and reinstall the uninfected latest version (version 5.34 and above) from its official download site.


Reference sources:

• http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2017/09/avast-distributes-malware.html
• http://blog.morphisec.com/morphisec-discovers-ccleaner-backdoor
• http://thehackernews.com/2017/09/ccleaner-hacked-malware.html
• https://www.pcworld.com/article/3225407/security/ccleaner-downloads-infected-malware.html
• https://www.cnet.com/how-to/ccleaner-was-hacked-heres-what-to-do-next/

Norton Family - parental control and monitoring software to enforce Internet house rules with kids

Norton Family is one of the bundled components in Norton Security Premium subscription offered by Symantec. There is also a standalone product called Norton Family Premier selling at cheaper subscription price but without other components in Norton Security bundle.

With an active subscription of Norton Family, you can install it in multiple devices (computers, smartphones and tablets) up to the maximum number as stated in the subscription package, for multiple headcount of kids.

With Norton Family, you can communicate with your kids and set individual house rules for them to use the computer and smart mobile devices, including what and where they are allowed and disallowed to access in the Internet.

Norton Family comes with a set of generic house rules for your kids according to their age group, which you can customize and fine tune further.

The house rules are formed by the following categories of supervision:

• the kind of websites that are allowed and disallowed to visit
• the time periods that are allowed to use the device
• the maximum number of hours allowed for each individual day in the week to use the device
• monitoring of keywords typed in search engines
• content filtering for search engines
• monitoring of social network activities
• monitoring of online video streaming
• monitoring of text messaging activities
• monitoring of mobile apps installation and uninstallation
• monitoring of device location

The default web supervision house rules by age is as below:

The default time supervision house rules by age is as below:

Norton Family will email you weekly and monthly reports about your kids' monitored Internet activities. Whenever there is possible violation of house rules, you will be informed too.

Norton Family is able to help you as parent to safeguard your kids from:

• Getting addicted to computer and smart mobile devices by enforcing reasonable daily time limit.
• Accessing to online information that you don't want them to access, such as 18+ contents.
• Phishing, scamming and cyber-bullying by restricting leakage of personal information and monitoring of social network and messaging activities.
• Installing or uninstalling mobile apps without your notice.

It can also track the device's location for you to know its whereabouts.

This software is no doubt loved by parents and hated by kids.

Freeware to measure the true WiFi speed to your connected computer / smartphone / tablet

Although modern WiFi routers or access points nowadays are able to support gigabits per second of wireless connection speed with multi-bands MU-MIMO technology, the actual network speed obtained by your connected computer / smartphone / tablet is always lower than that maximum possible speed, and is determined by the following factors:

• The location (which includes sub-factors of distance, obstacles and surrounding interference)
• The wireless chipset used and its driver efficacy
• The antenna quality
• The amount of other devices concurrently connected and sharing the same WiFi router or access point, and their network activity

There are many software tools available to help you measure your Internet connection speed, which typically involve uploading and downloading a big file to a designated server in the Internet. However, software tools that are able to measure your WiFi connection speed within your LAN using similar method are still very rare. I will introduce you 2 of them, namely DownTester and LAN Speed Test (Lite).

DownTester by NirSoft is a lightweight freeware that is able to test the download speed but not the upload speed. It performs the download speed testing by using a URL, which you need to put a large file (recommended at least 200 MB) in the computer /smartphone / tablet to be tested running either one of FTP server, HTTP server or Windows network file sharing. The ability to test using FTP or HTTP server also means that DownTester is not only able to test your LAN connection speed, but also your Internet speed when you are testing with a server located in the Internet.

Normally if you are testing the WiFi speed to a Windows laptop, you can test using Windows network file sharing. If the laptop is running Linux, you can test using its FTP, HTTP or Samba service. If it is an Android smartphone or tablet, you can install the File Manager + app which include an FTP server in its "Access from PC" function.

Then, you just need to run DownTester from a Windows laptop or PC which connected to the same LAN with your WiFi network. DownTester even comes with a portable version which can run straight away without needed to have any installation.

The screenshot above shows the DownTester result of a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet, all connected to my WiFi network using 5GHz band from different location. Although the theoretical speed of the Wireless-AC network they are connected to is up to 433Mbps (single band) or 866Mbps (dual band), their actual download speed obtained is much lower.

One thing I noticed is that, if your device is too near to your WiFi router or access point (less than 2 meter), you will get a much lower speed than when you place it further away (yet not too far until the signal is weak).

By using DownTester and test for WiFi connection speed obtained in different locations in your premise, you can find out those locations with higher speed and those with lower speed for better planning (such as where to put your 8K super-high resolution smart TV that can run YouTube and stream video from Internet).

LAN Speed Test (Lite) by Totusoft is another lightweight freeware, and it is able to test both the upload and download speed to a computer connected to your WiFi. There is another paid version called LAN Speed Test which perform almost the same thing, so I think the freeware Lite version is good enough.

LAN Speed Test (Lite) will generate the file for testing, and is able to auto delete the file after testing, so you don't need to prepare for the file. It supports 2 modes of connection: using Windows network file sharing, or connecting to a LAN Speed Test Server running in the target computer. It does not support testing using FTP or HTTP.

If you are testing using the LAN Speed Test Server method, you can perform the testing across the Internet too. However, the LAN Speed Test Server is not free.

LAN Speed Test (Lite) is portable and does not need installation. It has both Windows and Mac version.

• Click here to download DownTester for Windows.
• Click here to download LAN Speed Test (Lite) for Windows.
• Click here to download LAN Speed Test (Lite) for Mac OS X.

Wise Auto Shutdown - Freeware to schedule automatic Windows shutdown / restart / log off / hybernate / sleep

You might be running something in your Windows PC and you want to go for sleep or go outdoor, therefore you need a simple tool to help you shutdown your computer at a scheduled time.

In another case, you might just want to automatically restart your Windows PC or server at midnight on daily basis.

Well, Wise Auto Shutdown is such a lightweight freeware tool that serves for this kind of purpose.

It has a very straightforward user interface for you to schedule for a shutdown / restart /log off / hibernate or sleep action with 4 options of triggering time as shown below:

Once you clicked on the Start Task button, this application will stay on your Windows System Tray waiting for the selected task to be triggered. You can always cancel its action before the task is triggered by opening it and turn it off by clicking on [X] to close the application.

Pretty handy, isn't it?

Converting video files to be playable from USB drive in Sony XAV-W650BT double DIN player

Sony XAV-W650BT is a decent double DIN (Duetch Industri Normen) car head unit with DVD player. It has all the functions you need: radio, USB, AUX, Bluetooth, NFC, DVD/VCD player, steering control support, reverse camera support, etc.

It is able to play 3 types of multimedia files in a USB thumb drive: MP3 music, JPEG photo, and XVID/MP4 video.

Playing MP3 music and viewing JPEG photo is pretty straightforward, but playing video file might need some conversion work done to its compatible format, as it will face difficulty playing video that exceeds its maximum supported video resolution of 720x576. It also requires the video to have compatible codec and frame rate.

The conversion can be performed using a free software called Freemake Video Converter.

You need to convert the video file into MP4 format, with the following custom settings:

• Frame size: 720x576
• Adjustment: Auto
• Video codec: MPEG4
• Frame rate: 30 fps
• Audio codec: AAC
• Bitrate: maximum 4096 kbps

Even if your source file is already in MP4 format, it might not work well with the head unit if the setting is different from the above. Therefore, conversion is still required to ensure it will work well.

Now, you can run your conversion and put your favourite music videos, movies (MV), recorded TV programmes, etc. into a USB thumb drive that can be played in your Sony XAV-W650BT or similar head unit in your car.

MyCelcom Postpaid App to track your Celcom mobile usages

Celcom is now at the final stage of developing their MyCelcom Postpiad App for Android, for their Celcom First postpaid mobile plan users. Apparently, this mobile app is going to launch soon, and already available for free download in Google Play Store.

This is how it looks like:

The app shows your billing amount due, and you can pay your Celcom bill directly in the app. It is also able to show your last 6 months billing history.

With the app, you can instantly check your up to date usage of the current billing month on Internet data (free quota - weekdays, free quota - weekends & top-up quota), phone calls (free quota & pay per use), SMS (free quota & pay per use) and international roaming.

If you used up your free Internet data quota, you can also buy add-on Internet quota in the app (2GB for RM18).

You can get the detail information about your Celcom postpaid plan in the My Plan Details screen as below:

Last but not least, you can also use this app to check for your SIM card PUK number.

Click here to download the MyCelcom Postpaid App for Android.

File Manager + the free, fast, easy to use file explorer with simple GUI and great features

What is the file explorer app you use in your Android smartphone? The stock is usually primitive, and the famous ES Explorer has gone complicated.

My choice is File Manager +, which has a simple, straightforward, easy to use GUI, yet packed with some great features.

There are quite a number of apps in Google Play Store named as File Manager, look for the icon above to locate the right one.

In a simple screen, this app shows you the available and used storage space in your phone's main storage, and external SD card, if any. It also categorizes the files stored in your phone into Images, Music, Videos, Documents, Apps, etc. for easy navigation and access.

 

It can even link to network storages in the cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive), or remotely access via Windows neighbourhood sharing, FTP, FTPS and SFTP access. It also provide an option for you to make your phone become an FTP server, so that its files in internal and external storage can be access from PC or any other FTP clients.

It also has a Storage Analysis function to examine the storage occupying percentage analysis, and list out the large files that have taken up a lot of storage space.

 

The good news is, this app of high usability with neat and clean user interface, is free for download and use, and it doesn't contain any ads too.

GuardKey - your sensitive data protection solution for local storage, portable storage and also cloud storage (ie. Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.)

"A lot of people use Dropbox.

A lot of people put a lot of valuable, sensitive and personal data inside Dropbox.

A lot of people make the mistake of not encrypting their valuable, sensitive and personal data before they put it inside Dropbox.

Which all adds up to a whole heap of trouble if Dropbox suffers a data breach."

-- Quoted from Graham Cluley's article titled "The huge Dropbox password leak that wasn't".

Yes, your data in cloud storage such as Dropbox needs a second layer of protection despite being well encrypted and taken care by Dropbox.

This is because most of the time, the data in your cloud storage can be easily accessed once your password is obtained or hacked.

Worse still, most cloud services such as Dropbox provides the convenience for you to stay logon once you successfully signed in from their apps, be it from a computer or mobile device. This means that whoever obtained physical access to your computer or mobile device with an active logon session to your cloud service, can easily access to your data without even the need to know your password!

Nowadays, most cloud services like Dropbox do provide option for additional security through 2-step verification which requires second verification through SMS, USB key, etc. beside your password. However, novice users find it difficult to configure and activate, and there is limitation in the USB key method, such as, can only be used when accessing the cloud service with Google Chrome browser. In addition, this 2-step verification doesn't solve the open session loophole as described in the above paragraph.

I found a wonderful product called GuardKey which perfectly fills this gap of needs by offering data encryption and concealing solution to not only your cloud storages, but also your local storage (eg. harddisk, NAS storage, SAN storage, etc.) and portable storage (eg. USB drive, SD card, etc.).

GuardKey is a USB dongle with the following components:

• A unique AES-256 encryption/decryption key.
• A Windows software to be installed in your computer to perform seamless data encryption and decryption to your Safebox (an invisible folder in your storage device that everything in it will be protected by GuardKey).
• 8 GB of free empty storage, for you to use the USB dongle as normal USB drive.

This metallic USB key has a solid and durable look and feel.

There is always a trade-off between security and convenience. The higher the security measure, the more inconvenience for the user it become, and vice-versa. The beauty of GuardKey is it provides a wide range of flexibility level to the user to determine between high security and high convenience.

If user opts for high security, the Safebox can only be opened with the USB dongle and a password. In a more convenient level, it only needs the USB dongle without the need of entering password. Plug in your GuardKey dongle, you have access to your Safebox; pull out your GuardKey dongle, your Safebox will be hidden, and even if found, all the data inside it is encrypted with AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard with 256 bits cryptographic key length) encryption, which is a military grade encryption method that recommended by NSA for US government to protect Top Secret grade of information.

Alternatively, you can also make it possible to unlock the Safebox without using the USB dongle, by using the GuardKey Viewer mobile app. The mobile device running GuardKey Viewer needs to be paired with the GuardKey application running in the computer before it can be used as Safebox mobile unlocker.

There are 2 levels of mobile unlock security: by using a six digit one-time-password (OTP) which changes every minute, or by using a combination of random sequence of images together with the six digit OTP.

GuardKey supports the creation and usage of Safebox in local disk (including portable storage) and also in Cloud storage.

Supported cloud storages including Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, ASUS WebStorage, Box, SugarSync, and other cloud storages that sync with local disk, which the user needs to inform GuardKey about the location of the sync folder.

GuardKey supports one Safebox for each of the storage drive. The screenshot below shows I've created one Safebox for local drive D, and another for Dropbox.

The data inside these Safeboxes are encrypted and not accessible until they are unlocked by GuardKey. A virtual drive will be mounted with the Safeboxes now accessible as folders in the mounted drive. Once they are relocked, they will disappear from the virtual drive, and if all the Safeboxes are relocked, the GuardKey virtual drive will also be unmounted and disappear.

By using GuardKey, you can therefore ensure that all your AES-256 protected data in Safebox will remain be unreadable and inaccessible, even though your computer is stolen, seized or hacked. By encrypting your files and folders in cloud storage with GuardKey, you can also protect them from leaking and exposing through hacking or unauthorized access to your cloud storage account.

The same GuardKey USB dongle can be used in multiple computers to access the encrypted data in your cloud storage from different computer, so that you can access to your files from any one of the computers installed with GuardKey by using your dongle. In addition, you can also access your Safeboxes in cloud storages from within your smartphone by using the GuardKey Viewer mobile app.

GuardKey is a well thought product. In case you lost your USB dongle and you have not enabled mobile unlock option, you are still able to unlock your Safebox and rescue the data inside by using the backup AES-256 key residing in your local disk, which requires your password for its usage.

If you are concerned about this "backdoor" measure for emergency data retrieval, you can store your AES-256 key in another USB disk and lock it in a secured physical safe, then delete and wipe out the backup key in your local disk residing in data folder of GuardKey installed path.

Although the metallic GuardKey dongle is solid and looks durable, you might have the question of what if it is faulty and no longer usable. Without the key, how are you going to access to your valuable data protected by GuardKey? This situation has also been thought about, and there is a mechanism within the GuardKey software to allow you to duplicate the dongle to another USB disk.

As a conclusion, GuardKey is found to be very flexible between security and convenience, which you can adjust according to your need. In high security mode, I believe it is fit for commercial and industrial use. While in high convenience mode such as unlocking on the fly with USB dongle without the need of password, it can still protect your data, provided that your USB dongle does not fall into the hand of other people who at the same time also has your computer with them.



Installed YouTube for Android TV 1.3.8 in Huawei EC6108V8 STB of UniFi HyppTV

The Huawei EC6108V8 set top box (STB) of TM UniFi HyppTV comes pre-installed with YouTube app that is not functioning, even though you've successfully make use of WiFi to connect the STB to the Internet.

Anyhow, I've installed YouTube for Android TV version 1.3.8 that can functioning well in the Huawei EC6108V8 STB.

You probably can't find this app in the pre-installed Google Play Store running in the Huawei EC6108V8 STB of UniFi HyppTV. You need to make use of the pre-installed web browser in the STB and visit to the URL below to download and install the YouTube for Android TV app:

• http://www.apkmirror.com/wp-content/themes/APKMirror/download.php?id=51391

Note that the pre-installed YouTube is a system app and you can't easily uninstall it. After installing YouTube for Android TV version 1.3.8, you will have 2 different YouTube app in the My Applications screen of the STB. Luckily they have different icon, so you can easily differentiate between them.

You might probably also be interested to read about:

• Upgraded my UniFi HyppTV set top box (STB) from Huawei EC2108E to Huawei EC6108V8

Solved unable to sign in Norton Identity Safe problem

I use Norton Internet Security as the security solution for my home computers, and use the Norton Identity Safe that comes with it to store my web accesses identity information.

Few days ago, when I tried to open my vault in my web browser as usual, I found out that I can't login to Norton Identity Safe.

The symptom is like this:

When I tried to open the vault, I saw this "Get started" pop-up window.

Fine. Click on the "Sign in" button, I was required to provide my email address and password as registered with Symantec to continue.

I keyed in the email address and password, and the window showed it was connecting to the server. The next screen, instead of logged in, it went back to the "Get started" screen again.

I used the same email address and password to login to Norton website, I was able to login without any problem. This means that my email and password combination to login to Norton is correct.

After numerous trial and error, finally I discovered the solution!

Here is the trick: you need to logout from Norton Internet Security before you can successfully login to Norton Identity Safe.

To logout Norton Internet Security, open the application, then click on your email address shown in "Sign in as" corner, and click OK.

After that, go back to the web browser to open the vault.

This time, after entered my email address and password, I finally saw this familiar window:

Key in my vault password, and the vault is opened.

By the way, once successful login to Norton Identity Safe, you will automatically logged in to Norton Internet Security as well, even though you have logout just now.

If your Mozilla Thunderbird email client can no longer get email from mail server, try this fix

One day, I found that there was no new email coming in to my Mozilla Thunderbird email client for quite a long time, but I could still receive new emails from the same server with my smartphone.

I looked into the Error Console of Thunderbird by going to Tools > Error Console (you can also press the hotkeys Ctrl-Shift-J to go to the same place) and found this error message:

A search in the Internet informed that Mozilla Thunderbird version 38.1.0 and above will block the connections to any mail server using weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman (DH) keys by default, therefore it can no longer retrieve new emails from the affected server.

Bear in mind that by default, Thunderbird is set to automatically update itself from time to time, so your version will eventually be updated to version 38.1.0 and above.

Blocking the weak Diffie-Hellman key exchange is in fact a security measure against Logjam attack against the TLS protocol. You can click here to read more about this Logjam attack.

Affected email servers including older version of Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Click here for more detail.

While waiting for the mail server administrator to fix the problem at the server side, I applied the Disable DHE 0.1.2 Add-on by Mozilla to my Thunderbird, and it can now continue to receive new emails from the server.

To apply this add-on to your Thunderbird email client, click on the link above to go to its download webpage.

Then, click on the "Download Anyway" link and save the file disable_dhe-0.1.2-fx.xpi in your computer.

After that, go to Tools > Add-ons in Thunderbird, pull down the menu button on the left of "search all add-ons" and select "Install Add-on From File..." to install this disable_dhe-0.1.2-fx.xpi into your Thunderbird.

Restart Thunderbird and check if this fix works for you as well.

Recuva - freeware to recover deleted photo / video / music / document / email from SD card / hard disk / USB thumb drive / iPod

If you want to recover or undelete your deleted or lost files (photo, video, music, document, email, etc.), you can try a Windows freeware called Recuva by Piriform.

Recuva works on any rewriteable storage media you have, including internal and external harddisk, SD card, USB thumb drive, and even iPod. It is possible to recover from damaged or formatted disks too.

Beside that, it is also able to try to recover your deleted emails from MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird.

It can even try to recover unsaved MS Word document after a MS Word crash.

Using Recuva is pretty easy and straightforward. You just need to specify the location of your lost file...

... and then the file type...

... then Recuva will start to do the searching.

It will then list out the recoverable files for you to choose and restore them in a new storage location of your choice.

Beside the free Recuva, there are also paid version including Recuva Profession and Recuva Business Edition which include advanced features and professional technical support from Piriform.