October 2013 archive

How to Upgrade to Windows 8 and Windows RT 8.1

With Windows 8.1 upon us I thought I would do a video on how to upgrade your Windows RT device (such as a Microsoft Surface RT) to Windows RT 8.1. It’s not a difficult process but it does take some time given the limited processing power in RT devices. The upgrade process for both Windows …

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Apple iPhone 5S Unboxing

Well, it was time for my wife to upgrade her smartphone which saw the iPhone 4S replaced with the iPhone 5S. The replacement was somewhat of a necessity given a very annoying quirk with the iPhonewhere the volume would turn down by itself (both music and phone calls) which was a constant annoyance. Apparently, the …

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Use the Rain Radar to Approximately Track Bushfires

Tracking Bushfires on the BOM Radar

With the recent bushfires in New South Wales it isn’t surprising that a good number of people have been hitting up the Rural Fire Service website to find out what is going on. Unfortunately, the demand has been so high that the RFS website has buckled under the strain leaving its Twitter account to pick …

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Windows 8.1 Ready to Download via Windows Store

Just a quick update. If you’ve got Windows 8 on one or more of your computers you can now upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free by checking the Windows Store app on your computer. You should see something similar to this: Just click on that big purple rectangle and you’ll get to the download screen: …

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Meeting Request Error 0x80070057-00000000-00000000 In Microsoft Outlook

An obscure tip but one that I found worked this week. A colleague at work was attempting to send a meeting request but repeatedly received errors from our Microsoft Exchange server for one of the recipients. Everything seemed fine and the contacts were correctly populated from the contacts cache. Sending the request met with no …

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Pinterest – Not Just for Sharing Pictures

There are lots of picture sharing services out there – Flickr amd Instagram come to mind whilst Facebook and Twitter are also popular alternatives. However, Pinterest is another alternative that is growing on the masses particularly when it comes to arts and crafts. That said, I’ve found another use for Pinterest – it’s great for …

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Test Drive Update 3 for Windows Phone 8

Something for Windows Phone 8 users out there. If you’re interested in trying out “Update 3” (also known as GDR3 previously) for Windows Phone 8 then you might be interested in checking out the Preview for Developers app which will enable your phone to receive this update ahead of the official roll out by carriers. …

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PRTG – Realtime Network Monitoring

Well, after the old Dynalink RTA1025W ADSL modem died and I took the opportunity to remediate several network devices in the process I lost the ability to measure network traffic. Most notably, I could no longer measure the amount of data being uploaded and downloaded over the ADSL connection via the new Billion 7800 DXL …

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Excel Spreadsheet Dates Out by Four Years

This might be a bit of an obscure issue but one worth keeping in mind. If you work with Microsoft Excel under both Mac OS X and Windows then you may find an issue with date values changing by themselves when you open them on the other platform (i.e. opening a spreadsheet creating in Mac …

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Check for Updates After Upgrading to Windows 8.1

Another short and sweet tip. With the general availability of Windows 8.1 almost upon us it is worth reminding everyone that if you already have Windows 8 then this is a free upgrade for you available via the Windows Store. Before you can execute the upgrade you may have to install some updates via Windows …

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