I like to stay up-to-date with my software, always making sure to take advantage of new functionality and security features as soon as they’re available. This applies to Skype just as much as anything else, so a couple of weeks ago when I noticed that Skype had released a new version I downloaded and installed it as I always do.

After installation I loaded the program to take a look and see if I could spot anything new. To my surprise and slight horror, a pretty big window called Skype Home opened alongside Skype itself which I quickly closed, assuming that it was only showing because of the fresh install of the latest version. Just to be sure though I quit the application and loaded it again, and to much greater horror this time Skype Home opened once more.

I had a look around for one of those “do not show at startup” tick-boxes that you sometimes get with stuff like this but couldn’t find one. I opened Skype preferences and had a look in there, hoping to find something similar to the settings in both Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, but to no avail. It was then I opened Firefox and did some searching on Google to find various forums full of people lamenting about a new “feature” that Skype have added without any way to turn it off.

A number of things became apparent while reading these forums, such as the fact that Skype did something similar back in 2010 but backtracked in the face of mass protests from their users – so why they would try exactly the same thing two years later and expect a different reaction, I don’t know. Another potentially helpful fact I learned was that the issue only affected users who use Skype in classic view – those who use it in the new, social network-style view are unaffected as Skype Home is built into that interface. I say potentially helpful because sadly it wasn’t of any help to me as I don’t use that view – because it takes up two or three times more screen space.

The bad news was that Skype really haven’t allowed a way to disable the window and with only vague hints that such a way might be provided in the future I was given a choice: either go back to an older version (5.3.0.120 is the latest unaffected version which you can get from here) or find an acceptable workaround. I contemplated rolling back to the previous version but some of the changes in the change-log refer to fixed bugs, and the thought of re-installing software with known bugs didn’t really appeal to me so I decided to search for a solution.

After trying a few different solutions, the most elegant one I’ve found is ClickOff by a guy called Johannes Hübner from Sweden. This tiny little program continuously searches for other programs with defined window titles and performs default actions on them when they’re found. Apparently it was written with the intention of automatically responding to prompts (hence the word click in the name) but another task it’s ideal for is to close unwanted windows such as Skype Home. What makes it better than some of the custom-written programs out there that are specifically designed to target windows called “Skype Home” is that ClickOff will also work for users who use different languages. It can also be used with any other applications that might sometimes pop up unwanted windows (WLM does sometimes, even though I have specifically told it not to) or of course with prompt dialogs that you always answer in the same way.

Why am I posting this article today? Well yesterday Skype released another updated version of their messenger, and after the torrent of abuse they’ve suffered over the last couple of weeks I expected them to have included a way to disable Skype Home from within the program – but unbelievably they haven’t! So it looks like I – and many others – will continue to need ClickOff for the foreseeable future at least.

Update: It’s taken the Skype team an awfully long time to resolve this issue, but at long last they have. As of version 5.5.59.119 the Skype Home window no longer opens by default!

Tonight we’ve unveiled the Learnalot portal and opened the discussion forum for registrations.

The portal isn’t yet taking subscribers as there’s still some work to do on the resources themselves, but with the portal now completed it made sense to unveil it for three important reasons:

1. It gives people who are interested in what we’re doing (and Google Analytics shows there’s a fair few of you out there!) an opportunity to take a look and to get excited about what’s coming.
2. It allows people to register for the newsletter and be kept up to date with resource progress and more importantly, the portal’s launch.
3. Finally, it allows the search engines to start indexing the site so that when we do launch, potential users will be able to find us.

Registrations on the forums are welcome to all those who are interested in the portal or who wish to ask questions or provide feedback. Naturally, the portal will also serve as a support forum when we launch.

Well, the D-Link 655 router that I ordered a few days ago arrived from PIXmania. First off, the router is a French SKU. The manual, the software CD and the guarantee are all French. The alarm bells rang when I first opened the box and found a UK mains adaptor converter, though my first instinct had been that PIXmania had shipped me an American SKU which was how they make their profit margin. But no, it was French. I don’t think I’ll buy from PIXmania again.

Thankfully the router’s webmin was in English so I wasted no time in setting everything up. Or at least, to a point because I quickly discovered that there was no in-built modem and I’d have to use an external modem to connect to my ISP. That’s not really a problem because the Netgear DGN2000 that I’ve used for two years has been great in every way apart from it only being a 10/100mbit unit which is too slow for the Thecus – but obviously fast enough for internet access. I thought I’d set up the network with the D-Link and then connect that to the Netgear for internet access – should be easy enough, right?

Without an appropriate manual, I was left to Google to troubleshoot when my initial attempt failed. The D-Link seemed to connect to the internet as it was successfully checking for the latest firmware, but nothing that was connected to the D-Link could get out.

Over an hour was spent reading various forums, reviews and articles to try and get the information I required, when I then concluded that the internet is FULL of people who have NO IDEA what they’re talking about. One person would claim that the way forward was to disable DHCP on the D-Link; another to disable it on the Netgear. One person would claim that you put the ISP settings into the D-Link and use the Netgear as a pass-through; the other that you put the settings into the Netgear and let the D-Link piggy-back on it. In short, no-one had a clue.

While searching for answers I also found this thread on the D-Link support forums where someone else was experiencing problems with the 655. I was distinctly unimpressed to see such a haughty attitude on Lycan, the “Technical Engineer Global Moderator” of the forum, as he proved particularly unhelpful to anyone who asked any valid questions about the unit.

In the end I stumbled across a short discussion about Netgear. Some guy was looking for a way to set his router as a modem but couldn’t find the necessary option, and someone posted a link with a “try this” suggestion. The link was http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm, and opening this link myself brought me to a minimalist page with nothing other than router mode: modem/router or modem only. I selected modem only and immediately the machines connected to the D-Link had internet access. For some really stupid reason, this page is only available to you on the navigation pane once you’ve already set the router to modem-only – when in router/modem mode, you’ve got to type in the address which means you need to already know it’s there. Who’s the Einstein that came up with that idea?

As for the other settings that I’m using, the Netgear has a LAN IP address of 192.168.0.1, DHCP and wireless are both disabled and the ISP details are specified. The D-Link has an IP of 192.168.0.10, DHCP is enabled with a range of 192.168.0.50 – 192.168.0.254, the wireless is enabled and the ISP details are also specified (manually). The internet port is connected to one of the Netgear’s LAN ports.

Hopefully this post will prove useful to others who find themselves with zero documentation and an internet-full of useless guesses!

Not happy with the transfer rates I get with my Thecus N4100Pro, I decided to look into what could possibly be the problem. It turns out that with overheads, the maximum transfer rate I’ll get from it is around 8-10mb/sec – if I’m lucky. Since I deal with large files on a regular basis, this has already gotten to the point where it’s beyond doing my head in, so I decided to upgrade my router (which doubles as a switch for 3 devices) to a gigabit model. That way I could expect transfer rates more along the lines of 70mb/sec, apparently*.

* I say apparently because while the maths behind that increase ratio does make sense, the maths also predicts transfer rates of more like 12.5mb/sec on a 100mbit line – so to be getting 8-10mb must mean there’s quite an overhead involved…

Anyway, after looking around I settled on a D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit DIR-655 and promptly searched for some prices on Google Products.

PIXmania was the first name that I’d heard of before (and bought from previously), so although they weren’t quite the cheapest I decided to go with them – the power of brand recognition working a treat. PIXmania had it for £79.90 including VAT, so I went to the site, added it to my basket and went to checkout. Just then Firefox crashed, so when it loaded back up I manually navigated to PIXmania’s site and searched for the router. To my amazement the router was now £96.98 including VAT! That’s a 21% increase in price, with the only difference being that on the first occasion I was referred from Google Products and on the second there was no referral.

I went back to Google Products and did the search again from there. Sure enough, the router came up again for £79.90, so this time I went in and bought the router from there. I checked out, paid via PayPal and now have an email receipt for £79.90.

It would seem that PIXmania is slashing prices on price comparison websites to make themselves more competitive, yet hiking them up again to non-referrals who are unlikely to have compared their prices before making a purchase. The moral of the story here is to always use price comparison websites whenever you’re making a purchase online!

For nearly 30 minutes in the early hours of December 3rd, anyone visiting Microsoft’s search engine was greeted by an error message.

A Microsoft statement said the outage was caused by a “configuration change” made to the site during testing. This, it said, had “unfortunate and unintended consequences” which included making the site unavailable.

Detecting the problem and fixing it took about 30 minutes, he said.

First question – why are people testing changes on a LIVE site? Doesn’t the largest company on earth have a test server somewhere?

Second question – why did it take 30 minutes to check the effect that this change had had on the site? When you change some of your code, don’t you test it immediately?

Final question – Where I work, if Google goes down someone notices pretty much immediately and yet no-one at Microsoft noticed Bing being down for 30 minutes? I guess a possible explanation for this is that they all use Google over there, but even then the developers responsible for this change should have been able to ignore Google for a second and test their changes on Bing before the support calls started coming in!

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.

Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too). Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device using their website.

I use the software to sync files between home and work, and if I want to show someone what I’m currently working on then I can send them a link to that file from within Dropbox too. I can also invite specific people to share files and folders like in Google Docs.

You get 2GB of storage free initially, but there are payable options if you want more space. This limit also increase by 250mb for every successful referral, so if you do sign up then please use the above link!

With the launch of the PSPgo, Sony has also launched a new range of game available only though download – the minis. These titles all cost less than £10 and are designed to be quick bites that run on both the standard PSPs and the PSPgo.

Having upgraded my PSP 3000 to firmware 6.1 today I was eager to take a look at these minis and see if there was anything worth buying, but I ran into a problem in that I couldn’t find any reviews for these games. Google yielded plenty of news and opinions on the new option but nothing in the way of actual game reviews.  I certainly wasn’t going to buy anything from PSN without reading some reviews first, so I was relieved to finally find pspminis.com – a site that has been specifically set up to bring you minis news, previews and reviews! They currently have two reviews on there – for Fieldrunners and Kahoots – and I did end up buying Fieldrunners as a result of reading that article.