Technology Gets Old... Fast

I think I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Price of a Blackberry Pearl Two Years Ago (January 2008) (Also, note that the item is "out of stock")

Price of a Blackberry Pearl Today (March 2010)

The difference (when the customer buys a plan of $35 dollars or more, locked into Rogers for 3 years): (249.99 - 9.99) / 9.99 * 100% = 2 402.4024% or 24x

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Windows speech recognition macros

If you've used commercial speech recognition software you probably realize that one feature missing in windows speech recognition is the ability to have macros.  However, windows actually does provide a tool which you can use to create your own custom macros.

These macros can be text macros, command macros and several other types of advanced macros.

Setting these macros up is very simple, one you have Installed speech recognition that is.  All you need to do is download (and install of course) the window speech recognition macro tool and start using it.

For instance, you can create a text macro like so (You’ll have to open up the  macros tool from the start menu):

You can also create a macro that will open up the most recent file that you worked on and open it up in the word editor of your choice. 

 

That's it!

I must say it is a pretty handy tool if you are bogged down with a lot of work

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RogersHelp.com is a suspicious website

Interestingly enough, I was browsing the Internet today and came across an interesting phenomenon related to my Internet Service provider. Turns out, Norton actually blocks Rogers' forum websites and shows the big red X beside any Rogers website in Google search results.

Sometimes, it even warns you when you click on the search results telling you that the website may be malicious.  Maybe it's because the forum has a lot of bad advice. I guess it serves Rogers right for blocking bit torrent traffic, even if it is downloading an open source project like Ubuntu.

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Go Canada Go! Watching Olympics Online

I must say, after seeing Canada beat Norway 8 - 0 (and the No way Norway posters held up by spectators who paid $1500 CDN for a round robin game), hockey definately seems to be Canada's sport.

 I for one am proud to have the maple leaf on my desktop :D

Oh, and how do you watch the 2010 winter olympics online you ask?

CTVolympics.ca seems to be the best bet for Canadians and people from other countries I'm hoping. Their player does use Silverlight
though, but I've tried it with Moonlight (Silverlight's open source cousin) and it seems to work alright. NBColympics.com and Vancouver2010.com also have videos, but they don't seem to be streaming things live.

 

Wait... 5 - 0 in the first period? Something doesn't seem right. The score must be wrong or something!

Back to my thoughts on hockey:

Interestingly enough, I was taking the hockey quiz on vancouver2010.com and came across a question that asked about Canada's previous records. And turns out that there are some highly unbelievable numbers. Take a look yourself:

 

33 - 0 !! That's just insane.

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Download Alarm Beep Clock (ABC)

Alarm Beep Clock (or ABC if you like acronyms) is my take at a really really simple quick and easy alarm clock for windows. It's so simple that it's only 15 lines of code! No kidding! It's free to download and free to modify any way you wish, and comes with full source code (completely commented of course).

The idea behind ABC is that if you ever need a simple alarm clock or a timer, just use ABC. ABC works great if you only use Alarms (on your computer) once in a while, and need a little secondary alarm to help you out on those days before the test or to remind you to remove the pizza from the oven before it becomes "well done".

All you do is open up ABC.exe, adjust your speakers, type in the hours you'd like ABC to wake you after, and press ENTER. That's it. No complex dialogues or installation or other stuff. Just make sure that you don't accidently close ABC's console window.

Download AlarmBeepClock executable with Source (8.0 Kb .zip)

It's a simple clock that you could have created yourself; but it works, for me at least.

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Using Speech Recognition in Windows 7

If there’s one area where Windows is way ahead of every other operating system in the world, it has to be Speech Recognition. There is no other operating system that I can think of right now that has the inbuilt capability to browser websites (yeah, Windows can recognize the text in images too…) through speech recognition without having to download anything. Sure, it’s buggy, but I’m sure that voice will soon become the preferred method of interfacing with the computer along with touch.

But enough of the history and theory, here’s how you too can start using Speech Recognition to give commands and dictate to your PC.

Setting up Speech Recognition in Windows 7 – Step by step

1. Plug-in your microphone (or don’t worry about it if you have a fairly good inbuilt microphone). Your mileage may vary with Bluetooth microphones (most of the time, windows will refuse to accept a wireless Bluetooth microphone, because it just isn’t ready for that yet).
2. Click Start
3. Search for “speech recognition” and click on Windows Speech Recognition
4. If this is your first time using Speech Recognition (it likely is, since you’re reading this), a Microphone Setup Wizard will pop-up, asking you to do some stuff
5. Follow the instructions, and after your microphone is set up, Windows will walk you through the set-up process (where I’ll see how you speak and tell you how to speak to your computer). Warning: This might take 15 mins – 30 mins (depending on how good you are at reading and saying stuff out loud). But if you’re new to this, don’t worry, Windows will walk you though.
6. Try to pay attention during the tutorial, it’ll tell you everything you need to use Window’s Inbuilt Features
7. After you’re done the tutorial, just click the microphone on the Windows Speech Recognition Bar, and watch the Microphone button glow blue. Now you’re ready to speak… to your computer!

That’s all there is to it. A few words of caution though:

• Dictating to your computer might sound easy, but you’re computer certainly isn’t a human, and chances are that it will only understand you most of the time, missing difficult to interpret words.
• Be careful when you are talking to someone else and your microphone is turned on.
I find that composing your dictation in a program such as Wordpad or Microsoft Word is better than composing in a program like outlook or in a web browser.  You can compose things in Wordpad and then just copy and paste them wherever you want.
• Make sure you use the correct command instead of typing things on your own, windows learn from it and become better (hopefully).

And that's all there is to it! Have fun. If enough people want it, I might post an article on Speech Recognition tips later on.

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How to increase the number of recent files for each Application in Start Menu

One of the new features I like in Windows 7 is being able to find the most recently used files for an application right through the Start menu. No longer do I have to open up several files I worked on recently by opening a new Windows Explorer window every time. Not only does this save time by cutting out steps, it also means that I don’t actually need to remember where I stored the file (unless if I have to transfer it to my USB or email it).
If you haven’t used this handy feature yet, try it!

Open your start menu, and hover over the arrow beside, say Microsoft Excel, and a list of files you’ve recently used will pop-up under the recent section. Neat huh?

Note: If the applications you use most recently have not already been placed (or pinned) to your start menu, simply right click on the application in the start menu and select: pin to start menu.

But the sad thing is, that if you work on a lot of files at the same time, Windows is not smart enough to show you more than a certain number of files by default (even though your start menu might have plenty of space to show it). It’ll only show a few entries. Luckily though, there is a way to tweak this.

1. Right click on Taskbar
2. Click Properties
3. Choose the Start Menu tab
4. Click Customize
5. Under the Start Menu size box, you can increase the number of recent files and number of recent items to display in jump lists to whatever you want

And that’s all there is to it. Enjoy finding your files with ease, especially if you have a messy desktop like me.

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