How to keep MS Outlook meeting invitations inside Inbox after responding to them?

This is a frequently asked question (FAQ) that many people using Microsoft Outlook as their email client found their meeting invitations automatically deleted and moved from Inbox to Deleted Items folder once they've clicked on the button to accept or decline the meeting invitation.

The accepted meetings will appear inside your Calendar.

I believe many people prefer to keep the original meeting invitation emails inside their Inbox instead of deleting them, because the invitation email might contain important information about the meeting, such as the meeting agenda, attached documents, etc.

In fact, deleting responded meeting invitations from Inbox is not a bug, but rather a strange default behaviour of MS Outlook.

To change that default setting to retain your meeting invitation emails inside Inbox, go to File > Options, the Outlook Options dialog box as below will popup.

Select Mail on the left menu, scroll down to the Send messages section, and uncheck the option of "Delete meeting requests and notifications from Inbox after responding".

Click the OK button and you are done.

Caltex RM5 cashback with CaltexGO pump-and-go mobile app

As you might have been aware, Caltex Malaysia has recently introduced the CaltexGO pump-and-go mobile app, available in Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Apparently, it is the same CaltexGO mobile app already in used in Caltex Singapore and Caltex Thailand for the same purpose of enabling contactless and cashless petrol refueling at their petrol station.

This is an enhancement to the existing Caltax tap, pump and go system, which you need to slot in your JOURNEY card to collect BPoints, then tap your credit card or debit card at the petrol pump terminal to refuel your vehicle.

Now, with the CaltexGO mobile app, you can bind your JOURNEY card and your credit/debit card with your user account, and you can refuel your vehicle at Caltex petrol station even without bringing those cards along with you.

CaltexGO will auto-detect the Caltex petrol station you are located at with your mobile phone GPS location detection service. You just need to enter your petrol pump terminal number into the app, then lift the petrol pump and start refueling. When you put back the pump to the terminal, your bill will be instantly generated, and you just tap a confirm button to pay for it. Your JOURNEY card loyalty points will be automatically credited too.

Currently CaltexGO in Malaysia only support VISA or Mastercard credit card or debit card. Hopefully e-wallets will be included too in the future.

As a welcome offer to encourage usage of CaltexGO mobile app, Caltex Malaysia is currently giving out RM5 cashback for petrol refueling of RM30 and above, until 31st December 2021.

Your RM5 cashback will be automatically used during your next petrol refueling of RM30 and above at Caltex station using CaltexGO. You will see it as "promotion discount" in your bill, as shown above. Your bills are paperless and stored in your app, so you can always track back your historical petrol refueling transactions in Caltex station.

This means that you will not immediately get the RM5 cashback during your first time using CaltexGO to pump petrol of RM30 and above. The next time and all subsequent times you do the same, you will get the RM5 cashback automatically, until the end of promotion period on 31st December 2021.

RM5 is equivalent to 16.67% of RM30, which is a pretty good offer, isn't it?

Fixed Google Play services keeps stopping problem in Android device

Recently, my Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 tablet suddenly hit the infamous "Google Play services keeps stopping" problem.

The following window will pop up almost every few seconds, even after you have chosen to close app or send feedback.

Clearing cache of Google Play services did not solve the problem.

The Google Play services was unable to be forced stop nor disabled.

Unable to uninstall updates to Google Play services too.

Restarting the tablet had no effect to the problem.

Force stop the Google Services Framework, clearing its cache and even clearing its data did not help.

It seems that factory reset the tablet will be the last resort.

Luckily, I managed to fix it before going to the extreme of factory reset option.

What I did was to manually download and install the Google Play services.

You can download the APK file of Google Play services from APKMirror website.

Choose the latest version, which currently is 21.06.13.

You need to download the APK file that matches with the CPU architecture of your Android device. In the case of Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 (2016 edition), its architecture is arm64-v8a.

The APK file also needs to match with the Android OS version currently running on your device. In my case, it is Android 8.1.

After downloaded and installed the Google Play services APK file, my problem magically solved.

How to register for COVID-19 vaccination using MySejahtera mobile app

You can now register for COVID-19 vaccination in Malaysia using MySejahtera mobile app.

Before you start, make sure you have already updated the MySejahtera app in your phone to the latest version, which should be Version 1.0.29 (dated 24 Feb 2021) or above.

After opening the MySejahtera app, tap on the Close button at the top right corner to enter its main screen.

Then, tap on COVID-19 Vaccination for the registration.

On the next screen, you should be able to see "Vaccine for <your name>". Tap on it.

On the next screen, remember to tap on CLICK HERE to fill up the form. Do not tap on the Close button without filling up the form.

Fill in the questionnaire, and your registration will complete when you are able to see the Thank You screen as below.

Now, you just need to wait for your vaccination appointment message for the next course of action.

You might want to repeat the same process above for your family members registered in your MySejahtera app. Just select their name and fill up the questionnaire for them to complete their vaccination registration.

Mirror displaying handphone screen on monitor and vice versa with WiFi connection using LetsView

If you are using an iPhone or Android phone, and you want to duplicate and show your handphone's screen on your computer monitor, laptop screen, or even smart TV screen, together with audio forwarding, you can easily do that with a free software called LetsView.

The beauty of LetsView is that it can also do the other way round, to duplicate your computer screen onto your handphone. This is pretty useful to make use of your handphone or tablet as a presentation control device, which you can control your computer screen (which can be in turn projected out to a large projector screen) by touching your handphone screen. You can perform drawing and highlighting with LetsView too.

LetsView can also perform computer to computer screen mirroring.

All you need is:

• Download and install LetsView, free of charge, in both the screen mirroring source and destination devices. Supported systems including Windows, Android, Mac OS, iOS, and TV.
• Connect both the devices into the same local network. The network connection can be using WiFi or LAN cable. It can work across VPN tunnel too.
• Run LetsView in both devices.

Running LetsView app in smartphone is pretty straightforward. When the app is able to detect another device in the same local network running LetsView, you will eventually step into the following screen.

Phone Screen Mirroring means to cast your phone screen, together with phone audio, to a computer screen.

Computer Screen Mirroring means to cast your computer screen to the phone.

The screenshot below is captured from my computer monitor, showing the LetsView software displaying my phone screen on it.

When your phone screen is placed in landscape mode, the mirrored one on computer screen will also be displayed in landscape mode.

In your LetsView computer software, you also have the option for Phone Screen Mirroring and Computer Screen Mirroring. If you choose Computer Screen Mirroring, your computer screen, as well as your computer audio, will be mirrored to another computer running LetsView. The receiver will need to key in the PIN code as shown in LetsView of the source computer, for security purpose.

Before the computer screen starts to mirror to the receiver, a confirmation dialog will popup on the screen of the source computer, and you'll need to Allow it to complete the process.

The source computer can choose to either mirror the entire screen to the receiver, or just to mirror the screen of an application currently running on it.

Here is how the screen of the source computer will be shown in LetsView of the receiver computer.

LetsView is pretty useful when you want to work with your computer, while at the same time need to have a glance to your phone's screen from time to time. By showing the phone's screen on your monitor, it is very convenient to see what is on your phone's screen even without touching your phone.

This is also useful if you want to show both your computer screen and your phone screen to your audience in a presentation or live streaming session.

On the other hand, by mirroring your computer screen to your phone or tablet, you can transform your phone/tablet into a pretty powerful presenter device to remote control your computer screen. You can even write or draw on your phone's screen, and make it appears on the larger screen, by using LetsView whiteboard and drawing utility function.

The difference between TikTok and DouYin

DouYin (斗音) is a short-video sharing social media introduced by ByteDance in China in 2016. In mid-2017, ByteDance launched DouYin's international counterparts called TikTok.

Although both DouYin and TikTok are sharing the same app icon that looks like below, they are in fact completely separate app, with respective user base and content.

Initially, both of them looks similar in functionality. Just that, DouYin operates and serves in Mainland China, and TikTok operates and serves the rest of the world outside Mainland China.

You can find TikTok app in Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Amazon App Store,  Huawei App Gallery, etc. but you can find DouYin app in those mobile apps marketplace.

To download and install DouYin, you can visit to DouYin official website and click on the respective download button there for iOS or Android.

DouYin is opened to users from all around the world, which you can register an account and verify your identity using a mobile number in your own country.

Over the times, DouYin and TikTok have been developing separately, and now also have quite a lot of differences in looks-and-feels as well as functionality.

The main difference between TikTok and DouYin is still their separated user base, which results in totally different content uploaded by the separated community.

The user interface and content in DouYin is in Chinese. You can find thousands of official account of Chinese celebrities there. Chinese singers are also using it as one of their channels to release and promote their songs.

There are several leaderboards in DouYin's search function, as shown below.

On the other hand, the user interface in TikTok is English, and the content can be multilingual. There is no leaderboards in TikTok's search function yet. In fact, you can find a list of trending hashtags there.

There is no issue for you to install both TikTok and DouYin in your phone, and register as user in both of the app separately. You just need to treat them as different apps sitting together in your phone.

Use Hekasoft to backup, migrate, optimize and maintain your profiles and emails in web browsers, email clients, Skype, uTorrent, and more...

I used to make use of a freeware called MozBackup to backup my user profile in Firefox and Thunderbird. The backup file can then be copied and restored in another computer, which is an easy and perfect migration, especially to all my emails stored in my Thunderbird profile.

Unfortunately, MozBackup has no longer been maintained since 2012. It stopped at version 1.5.2 Beta 1.

Luckily, I've found another freeware called Hekasoft Backup & Restore, which you can download here.

Hekasoft can do everything that MozBackup did for backup, restore and migration of user profiles and emails. In fact, Hekasoft supports much more software and equipped with more powerful functions.

It supports a vast variety of Chrome based (Chromium) browsers, Firefox based (Gecko) browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Lunascape, and more.

In terms of email clients, it supports Thunderbird, Postbox, eM Client, Incredimail, etc.

It also supports FileZilla, qBitTorrent, uTorrent, Skype, and some other software.

Beside the normal backup and restore of the user profiles of the same software (such as from Thunderbird to Thunderbird), either in the same computer or restoration in another computer, Hekasoft can also perform migration, optimization, plugin management, bookmark URL maintenance, and profile switching.

The different of "migration" from "backup & restore" is that, when we backup & restore, it is performed within the same software (eg. from Google Chrome to Google Chrome), while migration is to duplicate the profile settings and contents from one software to another (eg. from Google Chrome to Vivaldi).

The "optimize" function in Hekasoft is used to clean up the caches, crash reports, telemetry, dump files, etc. of the selected software, such as Thunderbird.

The "dead link checker" will dive into the bookmark URLs of Internet Explorer, report on problematic URL links, and enable deletion to those dead links.

The "plugin scanner" is dealing with the plugins, add-ons and extensions of web browsers.

The profile switcher enable easy switching between different default user profile of the software, such as Thunderbird. You can also create new profile, clone profile, and delete profile with it.

I strongly recommend Hekasoft to be your powerful tool to perform backup, restore, migration and maintenance to your web browser, email client, file downloader, Skype, etc.

Pay TNB electricity bill and other bills online with e-Wallet (Boost, GrabPay, TnG eWallet) using POS Malaysia App

There used to be several online channels that you are able to pay TNB electricity bill online by using your e-Wallet money. Unfortunately, most of those online channels no longer accept TNB electricity bill payment since a few months ago.

Besides, it is also very hard to find an online channel that can pay for Indah Water sewerage treatment bill using your e-Wallet money.

Luckily, this has been made possible now with POS Malaysia App, which you can find in Google Play Store and Apple App Store. It supports bill payment using Boost, GrabPay, TnG eWallet and also FPX bank transfer.

You don't even need to create a user account to make bill payments in POS Malaysia App. Just tap on Bill Payment and follow the steps to make your bill payment.

Currently available bill payments through the app including:

• TNB electricity bill
• Water bill in various states
• Indah Water
• Astro
• Maxis
• Celcom
• Time Internet

You will need to provide information about your biller's Account No. and payment amount before reaching the payment page. Option is given for you to save the biller's Account No. in the app, so that you don't need to key-in the long chunk of number the next time you want to pay to the same account.

How to instantly make the background of photo & video transparent

A company called Kaleido AI GmbH in Vienna, Austria has successfully made use of artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology to effectively remove the background from the main object(s) in any photo and even video, awesomely making the background transparent, without the hassle of using any greenscreen.

In most cases, the conversion can be instantly completed within a second, and the result is impressively promising!

The product/service that makes photo background transparent is Remove.bg. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux as a software, very useful to perform bulk images conversion, which you can download from this webpage: https://www.remove.bg/windows-mac-linux

It also has an Android app which you can click here to download and install it from Google Play Store.

Alternatively, you can also upload your photo to their website, just by a simple drag-and-drop action, to perform online conversion. The URL is: https://www.remove.bg/

Remove.bg provides API for integration, and its plugins are available for Photoshop, Zapier, Integromat, Figma, WooCommerce, Drupal, Sketch, and even Visual Studio Code.

Remove.bg sells credits for image conversion, 1 credit for 1 image conversion. If you don't need high resolution converted image, the converted preview image up to 0.25 megapixels is free of charge.

Below are some examples to give you an idea about what can be expected from Remove.bg background removal service.

Original photo:

Background removed:

Original photo:

Background removed:

Original photo:

Background removed:

Kaleido AI GmbH's A.I. technology for background removal is not only applicable to images, but also can be used for videos as well.

Currently, only online conversion is available for videos. The service name is called UnScreen, and its URL is: https://www.unscreen.com/

Below is a sample video provided in UnScreen website to see it in action.

FileRun - self-hosted file sharing and content collaboration solution for personal, family or enterprise

I was looking for a multimedia content sharing solution to perform some sort of e-library function in a hosted server.

I would like to upload documents, e-books, presentation slides, audio files, video files, and the like to the system. Those content then can be accessible by particular persons and/or group of persons that I assigned permission with. They should be able to open the content directly in web browser in their desktop, tablet or mobile phone. For editable content such as text files, MS Office documents, LibreOffice documents, etc., they should be able to edit the file directly in the web browser, if I give them the "edit" permission.

First thing I thought of was Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or similar cloud drive available in the Internet. However, those services will have stringent quota limitation, less flexible for me to control users and access rights, and does not have certain feature that I need.

Then, I looked into ownCloud, Nextcloud, and the like. They are a bit too complicated for both the users and administrator. They contain excessive features and functions that I don't need. Worse still, I found that they have little bugs here and there which I couldn't resolve nor found workable solution in the Internet.

Finally, I settled down with FileRun which run in LAMP environment. It is simple, easy to use, and has a nice user interface.

It even has special handling for photos and audio/music by making use of the metadata embedded in those multimedia files. I hope that in the future version, this can be extended to video files too.

Installation of FileRun to an existing LAMP platform is pretty easy too. There are 2 files to download:

• Click here to download the latest version of FileRun.
• Click here to download its installation script called unzip.php.

After download, rename the FileRun zip file to just FileRun.zip without version number in its filename.

Upload both FileRun.zip and unzip.php to a web-accessible folder in your web server.

Use your web browser to access to unzip.php in your web server, and follow the step-by-step instruction to complete your installation.

You can even install FileRun in Synology DiskStation and RackStation NAS. Click here for the instruction to install FileRun on Synology network attached storage.

With FileRun, you can manage and organize your files, tag them for easier searching, bookmark certain files into your collections and/or starred folder.

You can share your folders and files to other users and groups in FileRun, and determine whether they can perform upload, download, make changes, share links, read comments, or add comments.

You can also create weblinks to share files or folders to be accessible by other FileRun users or external users without any FileRun account in your system.

You can put an expiration date for your weblink, limit its download, set a password before the linked file can be accessed, require user login before the linked file can be accessed, etc.

I find FileRun very suitable for simple e-library system for file sharing and content collaboration in self-hosted server. You can even access your files directly from Windows Explorer via WebDAV. It even has a Mozilla Thunderbird FileLink addon to enable you to send large file in your email.

Generating PHP codes for mobile-friendly web database applications with AppGini rapid development tool

AppGini by Bigprof Software is a rapid web application development tool for the PHP and MySQL web service stack.

It is very easy to use, and very handy to generate up-and-running mobile-friendly web database applications instantly at one mouse click, without the need of writing any programming code.

With AppGini, it is possible for you to save hundreds of man-hours spent in prototyping, programming, design and testing your web application.

AppGini is a Windows application. As such, it is best suit with Laragon as the WAMP development platform to receive the PHP codes generated by Appgini, so that you can immediately test out the generated web application within the same computer.

If you are using Linux or Mac OS, you can also install AppGini in your computer through PlayOnLinux or PlayOnMac.

Below are 2 of the screens in the generated web application, with sample data, using AppGini's default template. You can modify the looks and feels of the screen by choosing another theme of template and layout options.

 

 

The PHP codes generated by AppGini are pretty clean and neat.

In 1 or 2 man-days, by using AppGini, you should be able to produce a fully functional Northwind Orders system with ACL (access control) mechanism from zero. Imagine how many man-days you need to produce the same amount of PHP codes as shown below, by manual coding.

Northwind Orders system is used by Bigprof to demo the work produced by AppGini. You can access to its live demo system here, and can even download its generated source codes here. Beside Northwind, there are more open source web applications generated by AppGini which you can download here.

You don't even need to know about PHP programming in order to create web application using AppGini. Anyhow, you need to have basic knowledge on software development and concept of relational database to master the use of AppGini quickly.

Therefore, I found AppGini an ideal tool for educational purpose to teach and learn about web database CRUD programming concept, and also relational database concept, including the data structure, normalization, joining of tables, keys & constraints, etc.

Of course, AppGini is also ideal for software developer to quickly come out with something, then to further customize on the generated codes. This approach can really save a lot of time and effort.

AppGini is a trialware. You can click here to download AppGini free trial edition, which has no time limit of use, but has limitation on some key functions, including unable to save your AppGini project for future use.

If you like it, you can order its full version at the price of US$79.90 per user. I found that this price is one of the cheapest among its competitor products such as Scriptcase, PHPMaker, CodeCharge Studio, Dadabik, etc.

Using Android phone's camera as webcam for PC and Mac with Iruin

Not long ago, I wrote about DroidCam which can turn the camera on your Android smartphone into webcam for your Windows or Linux computer, to be used in Skype, Zoom, and other applications that utilize a webcam.

The main limitation of DroidCam is that, right now, it does not work with Apple's product. You cannot use it to capture and stream video from iPhone or iPad, nor use it as webcam in iMac or MacBook.

Not to worry, because there are alternatives to DroidCam that can also work with Apple's product, such as Iruin.

Similar to DroidCam, in order to make use of the camera of your smartphone as webcam for your computer with Iruin, you will need to install the Iruin webcam app in your phone, and then install Iruin webcam software in your computer.

• Click here to install Iruin from Google Play Store
• Click here to install Iruin from Apple App Store

and then

• Click here to download Iruin for Windows
• Click here to download Iruin for Mac
• Click here to download Iruin for Ubuntu

Iruin is very easy and straightforward to use. It has a very clear-cut Settings page too.

It is simple, yet powerful. It's free version can support high resolution and even 4k video (3840 x 2160). I found its video brighter, clearer and finer than DroidCam too.

To use Iruin as your webcam, just select "Iruin Webcam" as your video camera source. Below is an example of how to set it in Zoom.

You might probably also be interested to read about:

• Using Android phone's camera as webcam for computer with DroidCam

List of smart watches, bands, weighting scales and wearable devices that can be linked with Huawei Health

Huawei Health is an integrated mobile application for health management, physical activity journaling, professional exercise coaching and wearable device management. It is available for free download in Google Play Store, Apple App Store and also Huawei App Gallery.

 

Although Huawei Health can work as a standalone mobile app in the smart phone, its power is only unleashed when it is wirelessly paired with smart watch, smart band, weighting scale and/or other wearable devices with Bluetooth.

Huawei Health has a pedometer which can intelligently takes your step counts collected from the handphone and also from all the connected devices, and display the composite result.

It can display the total distance travelled by your body from combined activities of walking, running, climbing and other. It can also display the amount of calories burned from such activities. It can even display the height climbed by your body from the composite data recorded through the barometer in your smartphone and connected wearable devices.

It also provides dashboard for heart rate records, SpO2 blood oxygen saturation measurement, sleep quality analysis, stress level analysis, weight measurement, exercise records, and even menstrual cycle tracking for women (by using data from another mobile app called Huawei Cycle Calendar).

Huawei Health is also a wearable device management center for paired devices. You can use it to upload and change watch faces, upload and manage music in the wearable, configure device settings, and even perform firmware update to the wearable.

Currently, the list of officially supported devices that can work with Huawei Health are as below. Devices not in the list are not yet fully tested by Huawei for their compatibility with Huawei Health, which you can still try your luck to find out if their can successfully paired with Huawei Health without much problem.

Huawei Health supported smart watches:

• Huawei Watch GT 2 (both 46mm and 42mm)
• Huawei Watch GT 2e
• Huawei Watch GT (both 46mm and 42mm)
• Huawei Watch 2
• Huawei Porsche Design Watch
• Huawei Fit
• Honor MagicWatch 2
• Honor Watch Magic/Dream

Huawei Health supported smart bands:

• Huawei Band 4 / 4 Pro
• Huawei Band 4e
• Huawei Band 3 / 3 Pro
• Huawei Bend 3e
• Huawei Band 2 / 2 Pro
• Huawei TalkBand B5 / B5 Lite
• Huawei TalkBand B3
• Huawei Color Band A2
• Honor Band 5i
• Honor Band 5 / 5 Sport
• Honor Band 4 / 4 Running Edition
• Honor Band 3

Huawei Health supported weighting scales:

• Huawei Body Fat Scale
• Honor Scale 2
• Honor Smart Scale
• PICOOC S1 Pro Body Fat Scale

Huawei Health supported heart rate monitors:

• Jabra Sport Pulse Wireless Headphones
• Suunto Smart Belt Heart Rate Strap
• Polar H7 Heart Rate Chest Strap

Using Android phone's camera as webcam for computer with DroidCam

You need a webcam in order to do video conferencing, or to do vlogging, or to perform online talks, ...

You might have a desktop computer with a monitor that without a camera (which is usually the case), or you need a better camera than the one on your laptop (which usually has a low resolution), or you need a replacement for your malfunctioned laptop camera, or for whatever reason that you need a webcam for your computer, wait a minute and read this before you go and purchase a physical webcam, because you can turn your Android phone into one.

DroidCam is a solution to let you make use of the camera on your Android phone to become the webcam of your computer running on either Windows or Linux operating system.

It has a pretty low hardware requirement, so you can easily turn your old Android phone with a functioning camera into your webcam. Of course, it is even better when you run it on Android phone with better specs.

All you need to do is download and install DroidCam Wireless Webcam by Dev47Apps from Google Play Store, and then download and install DroidCam client into your computer.

• Download webpage of DroidCam for Windows
• Download webpage of DroidCam for Linux

Beside video, DroidCam is also able to optionally stream audio from the microphone of your phone to your computer.

DroidCam can connect and stream to your computer either through WiFi, USB or HTTPS connection. WiFi is the preferred one, as it is the easiest to setup and use.

When you run the DroidCam app in your phone, you should be able to see its connection information, including the internal IP address of your handphone, and the DroidCam server port.

By default, DroidCam is using the back camera of your phone (which usually has a better spec than the front camera). You can switch it to the front camera in DroidCam setting.

If you run the DroidCam Client in your computer with the IP address and port number as shown on the DroidCam app in your phone, and click the Start button, you should be able to see the video captured by your phone's camera in DroidCam Client.

For example, before clicking the Start button in DroidCam Client, there is no webcam video shown in Skype. It will show a blue or green background.

After clicking the Start button, Skype will immediately captures the webcam video.

Note that Skype install through Microsoft Store is not working with DroidCam. If you encounter this problem, just uninstall Skype and install the Skype desktop version from the URL given below. It should work then:

• https://www.skype.com/en/get-skype/

On your DroidCam screen in your phone, you can also find 2 HTTPS links.

The first link is accessible from your web browser such as Google Chrome, and it will open up the DroidCam web client.

The second link is accessible with video streaming client, such as VLC Media Player. The setting for VLC Media Player is as below:

DroidCam has a feature to allow you to protect your HTTPS access with username and/or password.

DroidCam is free for use, with in-app ads support. You can also buy DroidCamX Wireless Webcam Pro in Google Play Store to remove the ads and to get more features.

You might probably also be interested to read about:

• Using Android phone's camera as webcam for PC and Mac with Iruin