How to Create a Bibliography (List Of References) in Microsoft Word 2007
http://www.ehow.com/video_5538140_create-bibliography-microsoft-word.html

How to Create Numbering Headings (1. Heading 1, 1.1 Heading 2, etc.) in Microsoft Word 2007
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/numbering-headings-in-word-2007-multilevel-lists0.html

Read more at http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/15/business/google.php

I visited their website, which says that the software, PhoneFile PRO, helps to recover SMS from the SIM card that have been marked as deleted. Whilst this might be able to recover a very recently deleted message, it possibly cannot recover older messages, simply because the SIM cards dont usually have that much capacity to store that many SMS (deleted or undeleted).

For more details, visit http://www.pipistrel.com/phonefile/1special.shtml.

Typical SMS cost approximately USD 0.10. I checked a few countries for comparison purposes (see table below),

As you can see, anyone can send SMS cheaper than the rates above. For example someone owning a Starhub Prepaid SIM card in Singapore can send 5 global SMS @ SGD 0.1500 and get 10 free global SMS, thus being able to send a global SMS for as low as SGD 0.0750!

In Indonesia, its even cheaper. Depending on the operator, it can be as low as 99 Indonesian Rupiah (USD 0.0001), to 500 Indonesian Rupiah (USD 0.0550)!

So, which brings me to question the usefulness of this service for users in Asia (South East Asia to be more specific).

For those who’d like to give it a try, do take note that whilst Skype (Version 2.5) allows you to send SMS using your Skype name (username) or your own mobile number, registering your number is not free.

Update [13-Oct-2006],
Recently heard about this website called SMSZilla, whose rates are quite low for the countries I used for comparison above. Typical rates looks like:

Looks like a very good deal to me and they let me sign up and send SMS using my own mobile number and registering my number was free using SMSZilla! No wonder they advertise themselves as the “Cheapest SMS In The World!”

Now, I can do that in less than 2 seconds!

The reason for Adobe Acrobat reader to take a long time to open any PDF file is because it loads several plugins (21 on Acrobat 6.0 Reader) each and every time someone tries to open a file.

Option #1: Press the shift key when opening the PDF file. This will stop the loading of some of plugins.

Option #2:

1. Browse to a folder called ‘plug_ins‘ under Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat X.0\Reader (replace ‘X‘ with your Acrobat Reader’s version, 5, 6 or 7).
2. Initially, you will see several files with file type ‘Adobe Acrobat Plugin file‘. (If you were using Acrobat Reader 6.0, you would see 21 such files).
3. Assuming you are using Acrobat Reader 6.0, create a new folder (lets say ‘optional‘) and then copy all but 3 of those ‘Adobe Acrobat Plugin‘ files to this new folder. The only 3 that are required are: ‘EWH32‘, ‘printme‘ & ‘Search‘, so just make sure that they remain under ‘plug_ins‘ folder.
4. Thats it. Open any PDF document.

You don’t necessarily have to call that folder ‘optional‘. I called it ‘xyz‘ and it worked and was much faster then before I tried this option (Option #2).

The nice people at the Institute for Posttayloristic Studies in Austria have come up with an interesting(?) work around for people who want to watch the world cup but only have access to telnet. A stream of the World Cup in ASCII!

At times there were closeups of some players, here’s one of Radoslaw Sobolewski of Poland (during the Germany Vs Poland match)

But unfortunately, for most part of the game, the match looked like this, (see below)

I’m not sure about others, but 90 minutes of this, 3 times a night, for 30 days, is a sure way to be affected by scroll blindness! There are many other alternatives out there for those without live coverage on TV, one being

However, if you are still keen to give it a try, tomorrow night (early morning actually:)) you can telnet ascii-wm.net 2006. On Windows, you can just key this in cmd (Press ‘Windows-Key’-'R’, type ‘cmd’ and ENTER). The ASCII stream is made available 10 minutes after the start of each match.

A few weeks ago I had written about finding a free alternative to Visio, but the alternative/s I tried had a few shortcomings.

I found DIA to be great for drawing use case diagrams, but not so good for drawing sequence diagrams.

Drawing sequence diagrams using a 30 day trial version of SmartDraw took me ages, mainly becuase when making changes, the messages’ text boxes got selected, much more often that I liked them to be. Moreover, exported PNG images had a huge watermark running across the lower right corner. Had to use MS Paint to get rid of them, sometimes pixel-by-pixel!. Thats wasting my time.

I wanted something that
- can draw the most commonly used UML diagrams
- has clean exported images (preferrably as PNG),
- easy to pick up,
- free, or at a reasonable cost

Here came JUDE (Java and UML Developers’ Environment).
- Can draw good use case diagrams AND neat sequence diagrams
- No watermarks (atleast not when images are export as PNG)
- No struggling with the diagram, when introducing changes
- Very short learning curve
- Super fast operation
- Written in Java

Other features include
- Support for UML 1.4
- Collaboration Diagram
- Statechart Diagram
- Activity Diagram
- Deployment Diagram
- Component Diagram
- Generate Java source code from model
- Import Java source files to create model

For screenshots, please refer to their website.

Related: Free Alternative To MS Visio

On A Sidenote:
“Hey Jude!” was one the best songs by the Beatles [Source].

[Click on images to enlarge]

As you can see, it produces pretty clean images. Something not always possible when using Visio (I have a habit of exporting all use case diagrams as PNG image files, before inserting them into the use case documents – helps keep the file size small).

I had been looking around for alternatives to Visio for the past week.

Amongst the free ones, there were Violet and ArgoUML. But I wasn’t too satisfied with the quality of the PNG images they generated. (Violet’s had a shadow under the use cases and the text couldn’t be centred, which DIA allows.) ArgoUML kept hanging on me. I undertstand that its a free version to a paid one, but I wasn’t at all impressed.

Amongst the commercial ones, there was SmartDraw, starting from US$148 for its most basic version, which was good enough for most software diagrams, flowcharts & gantt charts. I am currently evaluating their 30-day trial version.

Another commercial UML tool that I had look at, was MagicDraw. Looking at the list of its features, MagicDraw’s Standard Edition suits most of my (current) needs. Costs around US$500 (US$799 for a floating licence). Even more attractive is their Professional Edition, which allows code generation and reverse engineering functionality, for Java, C++ and C#. But that costs approx. US$1500.

Had I not found DIA, I’d probably have recommended MagicDraw or Smartdraw, depending on what the needs and budget was like.

Overall, I’d rate DIA a 7.0 (on a scale of 1 to 10). It suits my requirements to quite an extent, though drawing sequence diagrams isn’t as good as other tools.

Installation is a breeze. You can download Dia for Windows, from here.
It is very easy to use and scores pretty well where others failed (i.e. easy manipulation of the use cases).
DIA can export as PNG, EPS, JPG/JPEG, SVG (amongst several other formats)

In addition to drawing E-R diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, etc., the DIA homepage suggests that it is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files.

Unlike MS Project, where one is very likely to have spent a considerable amount of time getting the software to do what we want, the learning curve for GanttProject is greatly reduced, all thanks to its very well scripted flash demo. [See for yourself].

Only very few, very very minor inconveniences.

1. Undo doesn’t exist. But worry not, solution to that is very simple.
2. Cannot change the working/non-working time. What this means is that Saturdays & Sundays are included in the length of a task, although they are very clearly marked on the display area, so am not quite sure why some of my colleagues aren’t too happy about this minor disadvantage.

The advantages:

1. Can export as PDF, HTML, PNG files.
2. Installation is a breeze. For one click installation lovers, try their windows installer. You can also try it online.
3. Very lightweight.
4. Schedule represented internally by means of a very easy to interpret XML-formatted .ext file. What this means is that you could make some minor corrections to the file (if you felt comfortable working that way — I certainly do) and then restart GanttProject. I found this particularly useful when I wanted to Undo something.

No matter what one says, its still much better off than drawing project schedules using coloured boxes in a spreadsheet software such OpenOffice’s Spreadsheet, MS Excel, etc.

Another very compelling reason for me to speak all good things about it (besides it being open source, better-than-microsoft, etc.) is that this tool too is written in Java

For further reading
- http://homepage.mac.com/hodelas/tar/C483433060/E685153914/
- Kidasa Software (Trial users are limited to 20 file saves)