In versions prior to Outlook 2010, finding the message options button to view the email’s Internet headers was a relatively straight forward task. In Outlook 2010, however the message options button is no longer on the ribbon. Here’s how to put it on the ribbon so you can once again analyze those message Internet Headers on individual emails or on the main Outlook ribbon:

To view Message Options (Internet Headers) on the current highlighted message in Outlook:

[step 1] Right click the Outlook Ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon…

[step 2] Create a new custom ribbon group.

[step 3] In the Choose Commands From column select All Commands and in the Customize the Ribbon column select your new ribbon group. Add the command Message Options… to the new ribbon group.

[step 4] Click OK.

That’s it.

So I finally got to upgrade to the iPhone 4S. All’s great with the new phone, but I’d like my recent call list, texts, and settings from my old phone thank you very much. Here’s how:

[the problem]

You want to somehow transfer settings, texts, recent call lists, etc. from an old iPhone to a new one.

[the solution]

[step 1] Grab your old phone, a computer with the latest iTunes and a charge cable.

[step 2] Sync your old iPhone with iTunes (it should automatically perform a backup during the sync operation).

[step 3] Once the Sync operation is complete, eject your old iPhone and disconnect it from the cable.

[step 4] Connect the new iPhone to iTunes. If this is the first time you’ve connected the new iPhone you’ll receive a prompt asking if you want to restore a backup. Select the restore option and click Continue.

NOTE: If this is not the first time you’ve connected the phone to iTunes, you can still restore the phone from a backup by selecting the Restore from backup option on the Info page of the new connected iPhone.

The restore process will copy settings, texts, recent call lists contacts apps from your old iPhone backup to your new iPhone.

That’s it.

So I got this beautiful Sony TV and hooked it up to my work computer via HDMI. It’s great for watching movies and SageTV Client from my computer and every once in a while I even use it as an extended desktop. I also have a set of speakers on my desk that I use whenever I’m working and the TV is turned off. Whenever I enable the Sony as an extended monitor, it automatically sets the AMD HDMI Output audio device as my default audio device, however when I turn the TV off it doesn’t set my speakers back as my default audio output device. This is a problem because the TV is turned off a lot of the time and if the default audio device is still the TV, I won’t be hearing any voice mails while working. To fix this in the past, I’d have to go to mmsys.cpl and set my speakers back as my default audio output device. I finally sat down and tweaked an AutoHotkey script to do this for me. The script simply toggles between both Audio Output devices with a hotkey, so I can easily switch back and forth.

Here’s how:

[the problem]

When I extend my monitor to include the Sony TV, the AMD HDMI Output device is set as default.

But I want to switch back to the Speakers Output device without having to go to mmsys.cpl.

[the solution]

[step 1] Get AutoHotkey (if you don’t already have it). It’s free.

[step 2] Create a new text file anywhere you like and name it audio.ahk (make sure to change the extension from txt to ahk).

[step 3] Paste the following text into that file. Then Save and Close the file.

—————start copy below this line——————-

; This script will toggle your default Windows Audio Output device if you have 2 enabled audio devices.
; For more audio devices, contact me at http://davidvielmetter.com/contact/
; This script maps to Win+A hot key combo once activated!
#a::
Run, mmsys.cpl
WinWait,Sound
ControlSend,SysListView321,{Up 2}
ControlGet, isEnabled, Enabled,,&Set Default
if(!isEnabled)
{
  ControlSend,SysListView321,{Down}
}
ControlClick,&Set Default
ControlClick,OK
return

—————stop copy above this line——————-

[step 4] Double Click the file or right-click it and and select Run Script. NOTE: The A icon that should appear in your notification area. This indicates the script is running and awaiting your key presses.

[step 5] Type Win+a (the Windows key and the a key at the same time) to toggle between your default output audio devices.

That’s it.

My MacBook Pro has been running out of hard disk space for some time. I’m down to less than 1GB of free space on both my Macintosh HD and the Boot Camp Windows 7 partition. So I hopped on NewEgg and got a WD Black 500GB notebook hard drive and 8GB’s of RAM for $150. Installing the RAM was a piece of cake, but moving the data over to the new drive proved much more tricky. Here’s how I finally got my 250GB dual boot drive cloned over to the new 500GB drive.

[the problem]

You have a Boot Camp partition on your mac hard disk so you can’t just do a straight clone of the entire drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper (those programs don’t clone the Windows partition). Since you also have a larger drive, you don’t just want to do a sector by sector clone leaving you with a new drive that has the same partitions as the old drive.

[the solution]

This solution will allow you to copy your partitions from your current dual boot Mac setup with Boot Camp to a larger drive but re-size the partitions at the same time. I went from a 250GB drive partitioned into 200GB Mac and 50GB Windows to a 500GB drive with 380GB Mac and 120GB Windows partitions.

[step 1] Attach the new drive to your MacBook using a SATA t0 USB adapter or a USB hard drive enclosure.

[step 2] Format the new drive using a single partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system.

[step 3] Download Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper (I used Super Duper) and clone your existing Mac hard drive to the new USB Drive.

[step 4] Install the new drive into the computer and boot it. It should boot up the same way your Mac booted up with the old drive but you won’t see your Boot Camp partition.

[step 4] Run the BootCamp Assistant and create a Windows partition with the desired size on the new primary drive. At the end of the wizard select Quit & Install Later.

[step 5] Attach the old drive via a USB enclosure or SATA to USB adapter. Check to make sure you can access the old Boot Camp Windows partition.

[step 6] Download & install WinClone 2.3.3 and create an image of the USB attached Boot Camp Windows partition. You can save the image on a network drive if you need additional space.

[step 7] Restore the WinClone image to the Boot Camp partition you created in [step 4].

If you’re running Notepad++ on Windows 7 x64 like me, you’ll notice that after a clean install of v6.1.1 you can no longer use HTML Tidy. This plugin is very useful if you spend lots of time looking at or cleaning up other people’s HTML code. I don’t know where I’d be without HTML Tidy. Anyhow…there’s a fix. It involves downloading an older zipped version of Notepad++ (v5.9), extracting a folder from the zip file and copying it to your Notepad++ program files directory. Here’s how to do it:

[the problem]

After installing Notepad++ v6.1 via the installer on Windows 7 x64 and then adding the TextFX plugin through the plugin manager, you get this when trying to use HTML Tidy:

A menu option that says something about reloading the libtidy.dll but does not actually do anything.

[the solution]

[step 1] Close Notepad++ and in Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins.

[step 2] Download version 5.9.0 of Notepad++ as a zip file.

[step 3] Open the zip file in another Explorer window and drag the Config folder in \npp.5.9.bin.zip\unicode\plugins\ to the explorer window you opened in [step 1] (C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins). In other words, extract the Config folder in the zip file to your installations plugins folder.

[step 4] Re-open Notepad++ and voila!

Dear Google, I understand that your primary focus for development of mobile Apps is the android platform, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to slack on building apps for other platforms. Especially if it involves your second endeavor into Social Media. Shouldn’t the focus here be to make your social network as accessible and functional as possible on all platforms? I use the iPhone and I’ve been patiently waiting for the Google+ iPhone App to get better with time. It hasn’t happened and I am officially sad about it.

You’d think with all the cash Google has, they’d stop neglecting products so quickly after the initial launch. It’s not like Facebook is sitting back and taking it easy. Nope, they’re improving things and fixing bugs…with one small difference – they already have a mobile app that works pretty well.

Before I continue on this rant though, let me spend a bit of time talking about the features of the Google+ app for the iPhone. I mean it does generally do what it should: For instance, it lets you post location based updates with optional pictures or video to your circles from your phone. It lets you see the updates of people in your circles, what’s hot or even people near by – that’s kind of unique. It lets you look through posted photos of your friends or self with relative ease. It lets you chat with friends and update your profile. These are all good general features to have and they work relatively well.

Here are the features that don’t work well and that get me po’d. First on my list is the notification system. When I get a notification number on the App and open it to see the notification, I often find that I’ve been signed out and need to sign back in before I do anything. Once signed in, I’m taken to the home screen not the place I was at before. Finally, when I do look at the notifications screen it says that there are no new notifications for me. Only when I go into the actual notifications and pull down to refresh am I able to view the notification that is waiting there for me.

Next is automatic picture uploading and notifications that pictures I have taken on my mobile device are available for sharing. I don’t want Google+ to start quietly uploading images from my picture library. If I want to post a picture from my library, there’s already functionality for that. Auto-uploading my last taken image to Google so it is ready for quick posting is just creepy and not useful.

Loading. Getting to the home screen is tedious on 3G. I understand that this App is mostly a front end to the web, but maybe that means developers should store some more stuff locally. The time it takes for this app to load is excruciating. I want to be able to see what’s going on now…not have to stare at a white screen with a Google logo.

Finally the home screen icons. I understand that there are five main things to do…but why organize them like this:

Maybe make the buttons just a tad smaller and put the post and notifications icon on the home screen? Why hide it in the top corner? This makes no sense to me.

So there you have it. My review of the Google+ app for the iPhone. In short, it could be a lot better.

If you’ve ever had to figure out what version of Excel a particular executable is (i.e. pre-SP1 or not), you know how long it can take to find all that information. To make things easier, here’s a table of all the version numbers I found. I’m posting it here as well because it’s priceless when you’re trying to look this information up.

Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft Office 2003

Microsoft Office 2002

Here’s how to find the version number within Microsoft Word on all versions of Office:

Word 2010
Click File->Help then look to the right part of the screen.

Word 2007
Click the Office Button->Word Options->Resources, then look for the About section.

Word 2003
Click Help->About and everything you need is in the dialog that pops up.

Flashback is a new trojan virus that automatically infects Mac OS X when users visit certain websites. It is one of the first signs that hackers and creators of malware are starting to pay attention to the growing market share of Mac users. Most (myself included) don’t even bother getting an anti-virus program because infections on a Mac have historically been pretty rare. Vulnerabilities in OS X and especially Safari, however, have been around long enough for hackers to start to taking note of a new niche market with a user base relatively unaccustomed to the concept of malware.

That’s why it’s a good idea to understand how some of these malware programs actually work. It’ll help you to be more vigilant about protecting yourself, your data and your identity.

Most malware is designed to generate monetary profit for someone. Whether it’s some script kiddie in nigeria or a group of hackers, the objective behind most malware falls into one of these categories:

• Data theft
• Blackmail
• Click Traffic
• BotNET node

Stolen data most often leads to identity fraud and/or blackmail. Browser traffic re-direction generate clicks on websites that pay hackers. Some infected systems become BOTS (like controllable zombie computers) that hackers can use to send SPAM or perform DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

The best way to protect yourself from any of the above is to take a few precautions. Here are some computing activities to generally avoid (even on a Mac):

1. Don’t blindly click links in emails, especially ones from a financial institution. Do your online banking by logging directly onto the bank’s secure website.
2. Refrain from searching for dangerous terms (lyrics, free music, game cheats, ringtones…check out the entire list). Many of the results are likely pages that could infect your computer.
3. Don’t download or search for pirated videos, games or software. Search results and downloaded files often contain malicious code.
4. Steer clear of “free utilities” that will optimize or speed up your computer. If your computer has issues you can’t fix yourself, take it to a trusted professional.
5. Try not to use free unencrypted wifi networks…especially for secure Internet transactions.

1. Change your passwords once in a while and don’t use one password for everything.
2. Get an anti-virus program. It doesn’t need to be expensive, there are low and no cost options that will do the job.
3. Install security updates when they become available. An up-to-date operating system is a one of the best ways to mitigate risk.

If you feel that your computer may have been infected or compromised, there’s a free check tool Liferhacker found here. The Flashback virus will not execute it’s payload if it finds any of the following programs installed on your Mac…so it’s a good idea to get one of these on your Mac either way:

Hope it helps.