Alexander’s Blog

Today a friend of mine called me and said that all of a sudden all his text messages have disappeared on his HTC EVO 4G. I did a little research on this issue and discovered that it appears to be a bug in the Android operating system (OS), rather than HTC EVO 4G because there are thousands of people reporting this error with different phones running Android OS (HTC EVO, Incredible, Droid, etc.).

Because Google, the maker of Android, does not have a fix for this bug at this time, even though they have known about this bug for a long time, all you can do at this time to prevent from potential disaster is backup your text messages if they are important to you. Resetting, rebooting, and other similar solutions don’t seem to help. The tech support for cell phone providers don’t know what to do so they may just tell you to reset your phone. It’s like you complaining that you accidentally deleted a file and would like to recover it and the tech support telling you why don’t you format your hard drive. Hello? that will wipe out all your data and everything on your computer. All kidding aside, I do sympathize with the tech support because they are not responsible for fixing bugs in Google’s operating systems. They only hope that you won’t lose your text messages again in future after the reset but unfortunately people still have the same problem after resetting their phones.

According to my research, Google is aware of this issue since December 26, 2009 and has listed this bug as a high priority (no kidding). The case number is 5569: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5669. As of today (October 1, 2011) Google does not have a fix for this bug in almost two years. If you have an Android phone and have not run into this issue, you are lucky like me (I have an HTC EVO 4G). If you have lost your text messages there is not really much you can do. If you haven’t, here’s my recommendation on what to do.

Download the FREE SMS Backup+ app from the Android Market which will allow you to backup all your text messages and your call logs. Although there are lots of other similar apps, I like this particular app. It connects you to your Gmail account and backs up all your text messages in a Gmail Label called SMS (you can choose a different label if you want). Obviously, you can print, forward, or do whatever you want once they are in Gmail. If you use Microsoft Outlook, you can add your Gmail account as a POP3 or IMAP account in Outlook and receive all your text messages from SMS Backup+ in your Outlook Inbox. If you want to automatically move them to a different folder, just set up an Outlook rule. Here are a couple of screenshots from the Android Market Web site.

You can configure SMS Backup+ to automatically back up your messages at a regular interval using the Auto Backup feature. At this time the apps let you  backup both SMS and MMS messages, however, you can only restore SMS messages. Another nice feature is that you can also backup your Contacts to Gmail, if you want, otherwise just backup text messages. I think this app is way better than relying on your cell phone provider (Sprint, Verizon, etc.) to restore your messages or contacts.

If you are not worried about getting your text messages disappearing then you may not be interested in this post. However, be aware that one issue reported on HTC Forums is that if you send a message and notice that suddenly all your text messages have disappeared, all the people who received your message may also have their messages completely disappear. It’s like your messages committing a team suicide of sorts. This behavior makes you wonder if it is related to some kind of virus. At this point we don’t know for sure. Talking about antivirus, you might want to install an antivirus app on your smartphone, if you haven’t already. For example, you can download and install the free AVG antivirus app from the Market.

When you backup the messages and contacts for the first time you will connect to your Gmail account and will be asked to allow SMS Backup+ access to your Google account. According to the developer, the app will not have access to your password or other personal information. Depending on the number of text messages and contacts it can take hours so it might not be a bad idea to first delete any unwanted text messages and contacts and then start the back.

You may have seen software that turns your Windows 7 computer into a wireless router. In the past, I have downloaded Connectify software. On paper it looked good but when I installed the free version of Connectify I discovered that I could only use WEP. There was no support for WPA2-PSK as advertised on their homepage. I am guessing they must have a paid version of Connectify that will allow people to use security. Anyone referring to WEP protocol as secure loses credibility right off the bat. WEP does not provide end-to-end security and is not considered secure by most security experts today. If that wasn’t bad, Connectify only allowed me to use a password that was limited to something like 4-12 characters and the password was limited to numbers 0-9 and letters a-f. That’s right, you can only use letters a-f. Bottom line: Do not let your friends and family install the free version of Connectify. It’s security a joke.

Recently I ran across another software, developed by a fellow MVP by the name of Chris Pietschmann. Chris is a Windows Live Platform MVP and his free, virtual router software is available from Microsoft’s CodePlex community site, which is a distribution point for open source software. The Virtual Router software turns any Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer into a WiFi Hotspot using Windows 7′s Wireless Hosted Network (Virtual WiFi) technology. Virtual Router allows you to wirelessly share any Internet connection (LAN, WiFi, Cable Modem, Cellular, or even dial-up modem) with any WiFi device (Laptop, Smart Phone, iPod Touch, iPhone, Android Phone, Zune, Netbook, wireless printer, etc.).

The software, written entirely in C#, does not have the password limitations of Connectify. Another good thing about the Virtual Router is that it is completely free of ads. And the best thing about the Virtual Router is that it defaults to WPA2 for secure wireless connectivity. WPA2 is one of the most, if not the most, secure wireless encryption available today.

The software is currently in its beta version. You can download beta 0.9 here.

The other day I was experimenting with the screen options in my WordPress blog. On my Dashboard I changed the Screen Options from 2 columns to 1. Then when I tried to switch back to 2 columns again I was unsuccessful. I spent a lot of time Googling the issue and discovered that this bug has been driving people crazy for a long time…..over a  year. People are experiencing this problem since WordPress version 2.6. I am using WordPress version 3.0.

Problem

In WordPress 2.6 or later, once you switch your Screen Options layout from 2 columns to 1 column you cannot go back to the 2 column layout again. You are stuck. By getting stuck in a single column layout, all the panels are lined up in one column so you have to go way down in the page to select items, such as categories. By using two columns you can easily select categories or publishing options at the top of the screen in the right hand column.

Solution

The solution that worked for me was simple. I made sure the Screen Options was set to 2 columns and then I clicked and dragged the panels that I wanted to the right side of my screen, such as Author, Publish and Categories.

Another possible solution is to remove one of your screen options and then exit the edit screen. Re-enter the edit screen and choose a different option. This may work for some of you but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t.

Managing your workstations and servers remotely has become a necessity these days. Here’s a comparison of remote desktop software on wikipedia that you may find helpful.

Click on the image below to see the complete comparison of remote desktop software for various platforms.

If you are unable to preview Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in Outlook 2010, make sure that the previewers are not disabled. The attachment previewers are enabled by default. Here’s how the previewers work in Outlook 2010.

First of all, make sure that the attached file that you are trying to preview in Outlook has the application installed. In other words, if you are trying to preview a Word file in an Outlook message then Microsoft Word must be installed on your computer. For security reasons, you have the option to selectively remove some or all the attachment previewers.

If you want to selectively use only certain attachment previewers in Outlook then follow these steps.

1. Click the File tab.
2. Click Options
3. Click Trust Center.

   

4. Under Microsoft Outlook Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings, and then click Attachment Handling.
5. Do one of the following:
   • To turn off all attachment previewers, click Turn off Attachment Preview.
   • To turn off a specific attachment previewer, click Attachment and Document Previewers, clear the check box for a previewer that you want to turn off, and then click OK.