VNC Viewer: You'll probably have used VNC viewer at some point, but if not, let me explain. You can use this to take control of a remote PC. Couple this with PuTTY (in my previous list) and you can access pretty much any system you choose

Symbian DivX Player: Does exactly what it says - a full implimentation of the DivX codec for Symbian S60 v3 phones...

Navimote: Free SatNav! It's never going to be a TomTom beater, but it'll get you out of a spot, and it's free...

Locr: Automatically Geotag your photos - if that's your sort of thing, knock yourself out!

Nokia Step Counter: I'm sure a lot of people are still desperately trying to lose weight as part of their New Years resolution to get fit. Well, with the step counter, you can see exactly how fit (or how lazy) you really are...

SymTorrent: Tie an unrestricted data plan (thank you Vodafone!) with a desire to download stuff on the move, and what do you get? SymTorrent - the only Symbian S60 v3 bit torrent client.

I'm currently running a large infrastructure project for a new university in Buckinghamshire. As part of this, I've taken the decision to virtualise the Active Directory, Exchange and SQL Server boxes that'll be used on the site. We have an HP blade centre in the server room with 8 fully loaded blades - dual quad core Xeons and 16GB RAM - together with an MSA1500 SAN, so power and storage won't be an issue. The only decision left to make is which virtualisation path to go down - ESXi (now free), or HyperV on Windows 2008. Over the next week or so, I'll be investigating both solutions, running some benchmarks and generally getting a feel from the guys that'll be administering the network what their thoughts are. Then I'll be sharing them with you, because that's the sort of chap I am...

Should be an interesting project...

As Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft this month, I thought it would be interesting to publish, in full, an email sent by him concerning the Microsoft.com web site...

---- Original Message ----

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

It'll be interesting to see whether stepping away from the day to day running of MS gives him an even greater candour. It appears from this email that he was fully aware of the damage being done to his company - perhaps he'll be able to steer Ballmer and Ozzie a bit better from outside than he has done from within...

The name Mechanical Turk comes from The Turk, an automaton that toured 18th Century Europe and played chess against some of the leading lights of the time. It turned out that the machine was actually human controlled. In a similar vein, the Amazon Mechanical Turk project gives a boost to tasks that computers are not yet suited to.

Computers in general are ideally suited to dealing with discrete pieces of data. There are less suited to answering more philosophical questions. For example, a computer program can easily say what colour a particular pixel is by reading the value from memory. If you ask it to define which of two colours is more pleaseing to the eye, it's totally stumped.

The Amazon Mechanical Turk breaks questions similar to the one above down in to human sized chunks and distributes them amongst hundreds or thousands of people - in essence it becomes a neural net full of neural nets...

Current questions range from searching for data in a picture to capturing screenshots of useful software features - the pay is poor, but there are opportunities for bonuses, and plenty of competitions. Plus, you get to know that in some small part you are helping to make the world a better place!

If you've suffered "Death by Powerpoint", you'll know that there is nothing worse than sitting through a meeting that relies solely on slides. You may then want to look away - enterprising startup 280 Slides have recently launched the beta version of their online Powerpoint killer.

Web software is one of those buzz terms that seems to encompass applications that range from buggy and pointless to real desktop contenders. 280 Slides is definitely in the latter category. Whilst obviously not in the same league as its MS counterpart (at least not yet), if you need to knock a presentation together in a hurry, 280 Slides is in a class of its own.

Expect Sergei and Larry to come knocking any day soon with their big Google wallets - this is a natural addition to their range.

Below are some hidden engineer codes for Nokia phones. Not all of them will work on every phone, and you use them at your own risk! That said, you should be able to find some interesting information about your phone...

*3370# - Activate Reserve Battery

*#4720# - Activate Half Rate Codec - Your phone uses a lower quality sound but you should gain approx 30% more Talk Time

*#0000# - Display software version as below:

1st Line - Software Version,
2nd Line - Software Release Date,
3rd Line - Compression Type

*#9999# - Display software version (where above doesn't work)

*#06# - Display IMEI Number

#pw+1234567890+1# - Provider Lock Status (use the "*" button to obtain the p, w and + symbols)

#pw+1234567890+2# - Network Lock Status

#pw+1234567890+3# - Country Lock Status

#pw+1234567890+4# - SIM Card Lock Status

*#21# - Check the number that "All Calls" are diverted to

*#2640# - Display security code in use

*#43# - Check the "Call Waiting" status of your phone.

*#61# - Check the number that "On No Reply" calls are diverted to

*#62# - Check the number that "Divert If Unreachable" calls are diverted to

*#67# - Check the number that "On Busy Calls" are diverted to

*#73# - Reset phone timers and game scores

*#746025625# - Display SIM Clock status

*#7760# - Manufacturer code

*#7780# - Restore factory settings

*#92702689# - Displays:

1.Serial Number
2.Date Made
3.Purchase Date
4.Date of last repair (0000 for no repairs)
5.Transfer User Data

To exit this last screen, you need to switch your phone off then on again.

So you think you know Sci-Fi? This cool little quiz should separate the men from the boys (and the men from the women apparently, as my other half Sarah scored a poor 13!)

I received 71 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz> How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?

Click on the link above and have a go!

I've been a huge fan of Symbian since I got my Nokia E61 nearly 3 years ago. I've now upgraded to the E90 Communicator, which is possibly the greatest phone ever made! It's a borderline laptop, and comes with some fantastic apps. I can honestly say that I would be lost (well, a lot less organised!) without it...

Like the rest of the computing world, Open Source software is starting to play a bigger part in everyday use in the mobile arena, and most applications rival their commercial counterparts and in many respects surpass them. With this in mind, I've compiled a list of free S60 v3 software:

File Browsers

* FExplorer - File explorer.
* SExplorer - Simple file explorer.
* SysExplorer - Extensible file and system explorer.
* Y-Browser - Another file system browser.

Tools

* AutoLock - Automatic keylocking.
* Calcium - Very slick looking calculator.
* cCalc - Simple freeware calculator.
* cCam - Simple camera capture with no flash or sound.
* cClock - Clock screensaver
* Chords - Application for displaying guitar chords.
* Contact Transfer - Transfer contacts between phones.
* Dictionary - A quick look up dictionary.
* DROS - DOS like shell and BASIC interpreter.
* HourPower - Read aloud the current time, best used via shortcut.
* IfInfo - View current network interface Information.
* LogExport - Export the Call Register data to a CSV file.
* mLock - Quick and simple keybad locking.
* Mobile Weather - Detailed weather reports.
* OggPlay - Multi-formt audio player.
* PowerBoot - Start applications on startup.
* PuTTY - A free SSH client.
* rotateMe - Small app to rotate your screen like when in Gallery.
* S60SpotOn - Use camera flash as torch.
* ScreenSnapS60 - Capture screenshots of your phone.
* Screenshot - Capture screenshots of your phone.
* SymbianBible - Bible reader.
* TextQuick - Scans through your Inbox and shows who your SMS the most
* VNC Viewer - VNC Viewer for Symbian.
* Y-Tasks - Collection of development helper tools.

Games

* Bantumi - Stategy board game.
* Frozen Bubble - Use a cannon to group 3 or more bubbles together.
* MiniBlaster - Game inspired by the old classics Bomberman and DynaBlaster.
* S-Tris 2 - Tetris clone.

P2P Downloads

* PeerBox - Access open P2P networks from your mobile.
* Symella - Gnutella file-sharing clien.
* SymTorrent - A symbian BitTorrent client.

Nokia Open Source Projects

* Mobile Web Server - Apache port to Symbian.
* Python for S60 - A port of Python to the S60 platform.
* S60 Internet Radio - Internet radio streaming.
* Symbian Perl - Perl for Symbian phones.

If you've ever sat on a train and been subjected to a stream of gibberish from someone who thinks that talking loudly in to their phone will make up for the lack of substance in their life, you'll love this

Bluetooth hacking is fairly straight forward - the principle is to smash the stack and inject some arbitrary code. Whether that is disconnecting their call, sending texts from their phone or simply accessing their contacts is up to you...

MAKE SURE YOU GET THE PERMISSION OF THE OTHER PHONE'S OWNER BEFORE YOU USE THIS SOFTWARE!

These files should work on any Java enabled phone.

Magic Bluetooth (.jar)
Super Bluetooth v1.07 (.jar)
Super Bluetooth v1.8 (.jar)

I'm sure there are many people who would enjoy this sort of thing, just as there are many who enjoy being beaten by prostitutes dressed as Nazis (see the NOTW)...

All I will say is that there are some interesting parts that, if presented better, would be quite useful... I'm hereby starting a petition for ITIL Lite - ITIL for people who work, not manage...

If you're taking the training any time soon, liven it up with my all time favourite Bullshit Bingo. Take a lot of cards, because if my experience is anything to go by, each game will last about 5 minutes...