Mainichi Daily News as always been a popular on-line news resource for the English speaking community within and from abroad. With MDN’s now in effect changes, cutting off their ties with MSN as recently posted on Blognation Japan, their RSS feeds have now also changes.

So this is the TechMonkey reminding viewers, that if you are subscribed to MDN feeds, and want to continue receiving the feeds, click the screenshot above, and you’ll see the list of available RSS feeds, adding them to your preferred RSS reader is about as simple as a couple of clicks. I myself prefer and recommend Google Reader.

As originally reported in English, the changes MDN have made, the article can be read at Blognation Japan

I have six invites to Pownce, got my invite from Tris, and a big thank you for that, now I shall “share the love”. So before I go any further about the invites, I shall briefly introduce what Pownce is all about!

Pownce, a creation of Kevin Rose, and those of us who recall Kevin Rose, will remember seeing Kevin as the co-host of TechTV’s The Screen Savers. More recently notably is his fame for his social-bookmarking site Digg!

Now Kevin brings us Pownce, currently in Alpha, and only available by invite only! Pownce is theoretically Twitter on roids. Not only can you post comments, read others, follow others comments, but you can send events, links and files! (I’m sure Twitter is going to be getting some add-ons to accommodate these features soon now)

If you’re looking for full functionality of Pownce, all it takes is $20US a year, and you’ll be able to send files up to 100mb (10mb limit on the free account) and ads will be removed.

So far Pownce is neat, and with themes and tailored to all walks of life: Guy, Girl, Dude, Chicky-poo, Bloke, Bird, Lady, Gentleman, Male, Female, Transgender or none of the above! - When I got to that part of the registration, I had a good laugh!

I’m still working on the use of Pownce, but so far, it’s a nice change from Twitter!

Now for the invites, six people can leave a comment, and their e-mail addresses, and those first six people will get their invite from me!

Now I’m off to Surrey/Cloverdale for a little bit of Canada Day enjoyment. (Free outdoor concert and fireworks event, sounds like fun eh!)

Happy Canada Day everyone!

-TheTechMonkey

You can expect more posts like this from me, I’m quite fond of animals, and cute pics like this Gotta love getting e-mails from family members!

I was using Anothr.com in November/December of 2006, which was a cool concept at the time, and still is as we can tell with the new emerging alternatives & competing web apps. Anothr.com, currently still in Beta is a Taiwanese-based web application which allows the user to receive RSS feeds via Skype. No sign-up required, and use is quite simple!

Now for the new ZapTXT Beta, this is so far something I would have to give a two thumbs up! ZapTXT is a member-based, web-based application which does merely the exact same thing as Anothr.com, but with more features, capabilities, customization (Search, Tags, and will reach a larger user base with virtually all IM clients supported,(including Skype recently added to the lineup) as well as supported Cellular providers, not just USA based (yup, that’s right us Canadians can use the SMS features too). With ZapTXT you can “monitor RSS-enabled websites in real time: newspapers, blogs, classifieds, jobs, movie listings and millions of Web sites that support RSS”! RSS feeds include not only current feeds you read, and enter manually, but there is also a vast number of pre-defined feeds to choose from.

Supported IM’s: gabber, gtalk, MSN, AIM, Gizmo, LJ Talk, Skype and Yahoo.

Currently supported cellular providers: AT&T, Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, Virgin Mobile, Alltel, CellularOne, OmniPoint, Quest, Bell Mobility (Canada), Fido (Canada), Rogers (Canada), Skytell, Telus/Clearnet (Canada), Edge Wireless, SunCom, Aliant (Canada), Motropcs, & Cincinnati Bel.

This one is likely to blow Anothr.com out of the water, unless Anothr.com is planning a comparable release that we are unaware of at this point. Anothr.com, a great service and I do recommend them for quick and easy subscriptions to your Skype Client. For those that are not on Skype, or even if you are, and have just been waiting for the means to get RSS to your preferred client, ZapTXT seems a promising answer!

I haven’t forgotten about yet another relatively new service, Twitter.com. Same concept of monitoring feeds in your IM, E-mail and SMS, but with a slight twist, with it’s follow me feature! Twitter.com, once signed up gives you a widget for your blog that viewers can subscribe to and get up-to-the-second information as to what you are doing at any given moment, from leaving the house for work, catching the next plane, to the more intriguing, who’s discovered something hot, be that in technology, news or anything that fancies you & your followers (viewers).

All cool technologies, and all of these applications are worth trying out.

Thanks for reading!
TheTechMonkey

I no longer use this piece of software, however I feel it appropriate that I post this anyways, as I had been quite happy and impressed with this product over the last year and a half! Only recently (about 2 months ago) did I make the permanent switch to Google Reader!

I had always had it set in stone that I prefer everything to come into one location, one piece of software, and on my local machine preferably. Outlook and Attensa for Outlook made this possible! The problem I encountered that drew me away from the application was the fact that I was subscribed to a large number of RSS feeds, that meant long download times! Now I just log in to Google Reader, and there are all of my feeds.

Click here to sign up for the Free Attensa Premium Support for 1 Year

Despite that I’ve converted myself to the web-based Google Reader, Attensa for Outlook add-inis thus far a great add-on to Outlook for your RSS, ATOM and other feeds! Current beta version is v2.5 and stable release is v2.1 both available for free downloads here!

Woman falls onto subway tracks after bumping into passenger while sending email — A woman fell onto the tracks at a subway station here after she bumped into another commuter while using her mobile phone, but the driver of an incoming train managed to stop some 20 meters before her, police said. The 25-year-old woman from Kawanishi was at Honmachi Station on the Midosuji subway line in Osaka’s Chuo-ku, when the accident took place at about 8:30 a.m. on Monday. She fell off the platform after bumping into a man. A station worker immediately jumped down to the tracks and rescued her. A train was approaching, but it managed to stop about 20 meters in front of the commuter. The woman reportedly suffered minor injuries in the fall. Four trains were delayed over the incident, inconveniencing about 4,500 passengers, Osaka Municipal Government officials said. (Mainichi) Click here for the original Japanese story

(via mainichi-msn.co.jp

Note: DriverMax only works on Windows Vista and Windows XP (all service packs).

DriverMax is a new program which allows you to easily reinstall all your Windows drivers. No more searching for rare drivers on discs or on the web or inserting one installation CD after the other. Simply export all your current drivers (or just the ones that work ok) to a folder or a compressed file. After reinstalling Windows you will have everything in one place!

Most of the situations when Windows is running slower are caused by faulty driver installations. Windows stores all versions of older drivers just in case you want to go back; sometimes it messes up older versions with more recent ones. The Export Wizard will only export the drivers you select by copying the needed files to a folder or a compressed ZIP file.

After reinstalling Windows all drivers will be back in place in less than 5 minutes - sparing you of searching, inserting disc after disk and losing precious time. The Import Drivers wizard allows you to install all the drivers that you exported earlier. The entire operation might take up to 5-10 minutes.

Just one single computer restart will be required after all drivers are reinstalled!

DriverMax 2.0 is Free, just register with your name and e-mail address to recieve your activation code:
http://www.innovative-sol.com/register/dmx.htm

The Tech Monkey Comments:

I have installed the application, ran the backup all went perfect, quick and my drivers landed perfectly into a 17mb zip file. As for re-installing, that is something I am probably not going to do, as when I do need to restore my system, I will do so with a ghost image I created. I’ll cover Ghost imaging and hard drive cloning in future posts! I believe DriveMax is a great product, and it may be possible that I will in fact re-install from this backup I’ve created, should I encounter issues/incompatibilities with future driver upgrades. It will be interesting to see how smooth the re-install of the drivers goes. Anyone tried yet?

This is a Tech Monkey Highly Recommended piece of software!

Until I do a re-install of the drivers with this product, be that on my own equipment, colleagues’ or customers computer, I can’t give DriverMax 2.0 a full five stars I’m afraid.

Those advance users out there may be interested in the scaled down installer which eliminates the Yahoo Toolbar, contains no menu’s and you have a choice of multi-lingual or English Only!
Advisory: Only Experienced/Advanced Users should consider these smaller builds

CCleaner Download Builds

This is a Tech Monkey Highly Recommended piece of software!

WOW a 5/5 Rating!!!! — Doesn’t get any better than that!

Some of you may be wondering what these images are all about.  So here’s going to be a brief intro to QR-Codes, what they are, where they can be found, how to read them, and also how to create your own.

QR-Codes are a 2-Dimensional barcode, meaning the information is read from left to right, but also bottom-to-top, unlike the traditional barcodes, which only has information stored from left to right.

QR-Codes was designed by Denso Wave way back in 1994.  These QR-Codes are everywhere.  In magazines, coupons, flyers, on merchandise packages, in restaurants on menu’s, membership cards, business cards, and of course on blogs and websites. 

QR-Codes are scanned and read with barcode scanning capable cellular phones in Japan.  Nowadays, this technology is being used worldwide, though not quite a standard yet globally.

What kind of information is stored in these QR-Codes?  Virtually all kinds of information.  Consumers here in Japan scan these QR-Codes to read into their Internet capable cellular phones ,websites, e-mail addresses, and contact information.   This saves the end user a bunch of keystrokes that don’t need to be manually entered on the cellular keypad.   Just scan it, copy and paste it into the cellular web browser. 

It won’t be long now I’m sure until these QR-Codes become a standard, as they are and have been so in Japan for a number of years now. 

For further information I welcome you to read up further information about QR-Codes directly from the company here in Japan who developed this technology: Denso Wave.  Here you learn more about the QR-Codes, features and specifications. 

You want a QR-Code for your blog/website?  Thought you’d never ask!  It used to be that you were required to install software in order to create the QR-Codes.  However technology is forever becoming more and more widely available to use.  We can now produce QR-Codes on-line. 

QR-Code Generator: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

]]> http://www.thetechmonkey.net/2007/01/30/microsoft-windows-vista-in-stores-in-japan/feed/ http://www.thetechmonkey.net/2007/01/24/hello-world/ http://www.thetechmonkey.net/2007/01/24/hello-world/#comments Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:53:30 +0000 The Tech Monkey Welcome to TheTechMonkey.net!

Lots to do here yet, fine tuning this template, setting up categories, trying and testing out plugins (widgets) and last but not least, posting interesting and useful information all about computers, internet, technology and so forth.

Stay tuned for the next post!