Google Call Phone is the latest Gmail feature from the search engine leader Google. The new feature enable Gmail users to make free calls on US and Canada right straight from your computer. Other countries are also available with very low calling rates. Google Call Phone is available on both PC-to-PC and PC-to-Phone calls. All you need to have are the following: a Gmail account, headset and enough credit (if you’re calling other countries outside the US and Canada). For a complete list of international call rates of Google Call Phone, click here.

Here’s how to start using the Google Call Phone and benefit from such a great Gmail messaging feature.

First, you need to sign-up for a Gmail account if you don’t have one yet — from this link. When and if you have a Gmail account already, login to your account and sign-in to Google Chat.

Once logged in to Google Chat, download and install the Google voice and video setup installer from here.

After the plugin is installed, you can now start making calls by choosing the destination country of the number you’d be calling. No need to pay for a monthly subscription to use the service (I hope it stays that way, please Google).

Below is a short comparison of the call rates of Google Call Phone and Skype for calls going to the Philippines on both landline and mobile numbers.

Skype

Google Call Phone

A short comparison of the call rates from the rest of the service providers.

Based on the above figures, is Google now grabbing the crown from Skype? What do you think?

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I know this is a bit late for this software to be posted here but I am posting it anyway for the sake of those people who didn’t know its existence. Late last year, Microsoft released its own version of anti-virus and anti-spyware program for windows, and since it’s microsoft brewed program; I believe it will work well on windows much better than any other anti-virus or anti-spyware programs which most of the time gives a lot of false positives. Above all, Microsoft Security Essentials is free; of course, you need a genuine version of windows to install it on your computer.

The following are the key features of Microsoft Security Essentials:

* Comprehensive malware protection
* Simple, free download*
* Automatic updates
* Easy to use

To download a copy and install it on your computer, just follow this link.

It’s actually great and a good sign that Microsoft is moving on providing a much secure system by developing an anti-virus software for windows, however, I am crossing my fingers if this will really work well on all windows-based systems.

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Here’s a code for fetching weather data from Google server through its undocumented weather Application Programming Interface (API) which was developed for use with iGoogle. The code below is part of the Flight Information Display System (FIDS) I’ve developed for some airline company few years ago.

Attribute VB_Name = "weatherData"
Dim xmlWeather As MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
Dim xmlWeatherResult As String
Dim xmlWeatherData As MSXML2.DOMDocument60
Dim xmlWeatherDataElement As MSXML2.IXMLDOMElement
Dim weatherCondition As String
Dim weatherTempC As String
Dim weatherTempF As String
Public destWeatherData As String

Public Function getWeatherData(wLocation As String)
    On Error Resume Next

    Set xmlWeather = New MSXML2.XMLHTTP60
        xmlWeather.open "GET", "http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=" & Replace(wLocation, " ", "%20") & "&hl=en", False
        xmlWeather.send
        xmlWeatherResult = xmlWeather.responseXML.xml

    If InStr(1, xmlWeatherResult, "temp_c", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
        Set xmlWeatherData = New MSXML2.DOMDocument60
        xmlWeatherData.loadXML (xmlWeatherResult)

        Set xmlWeatherDataElement = xmlWeatherData.selectSingleNode("//condition")
            weatherCondition = xmlWeatherDataElement.getAttribute("data")

        Set xmlWeatherDataElement = xmlWeatherData.selectSingleNode("//temp_c")
            weatherTempC = xmlWeatherDataElement.getAttribute("data")

        Set xmlWeatherDataElement = xmlWeatherData.selectSingleNode("//temp_f")
            weatherTempF = xmlWeatherDataElement.getAttribute("data")

        If weatherTempC <> "" And weatherTempF <> "" Then
            destWeatherData = weatherTempC & "C / " & weatherTempF & "F"
        End If
    End If
End Function

This part of the code goes to your form.

Private Sub cmdFetchWeather_Click()
    If comboNewDestination.Text <> "" Then
        getWeatherData (comboNewDestination.Text & ",Philippines")

        If destWeatherData <> "" Then
            txtNewWeather.Text = destWeatherData
            destWeatherData = ""
        Else
            MsgBox "Weather data not available, Please try again later!", vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "Error Fetching Weather Data"
            txtNewWeather.Text = ""
        End If

    End If
End Sub

I’ll probably find more goodies from my old cranky drive so stay tune as I intend to post everything I’ll find useful there.

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Here’s a snippet for connecting to MySQL db server from Visual basic. I’ve found it while trying to clean up an old hard drive. It’s quite primitive but I believe still of use for someone.

Option Explicit
Public conn As ADODB.Connection
Public rs As ADODB.Recordset

Public Function myConnect(dbHost As String, dbUser As String, dbPass As String, dbName As String, dbPort As Integer) 'Connect to MySQL server

    Dim constr As String

    constr = "Provider=MSDASQL.1;Password=;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=;Extended Properties=" & Chr$(34) & "DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 5.1 Driver};DESC=;DATABASE=" & dbName & ";SERVER=" & dbHost & ";UID=" & dbUser & ";PASSWORD=" & dbPass & ";PORT=" & dbPort & ";OPTION=16387;Max Pool Size=10000;STMT=;" & Chr$(34)
    Set conn = New ADODB.Connection
    conn.Open constr

End Function

Public Function dbQuery(QueryString As String)

    Set rs = New ADODB.Recordset
    rs.Open QueryString, conn, adOpenUnspecified, adLockUnspecified

End Function

Public Function dbClose()
    If rs.State = 1 Then
        rs.Close
    End If
End Function

I will surely post more here later as I might find more goodies on this cranky drive.

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Here’s how to fix the inverted webcam display problem on Asus K40EA notebook. This procedure will require a re-installation of the webcam driver so if you don’t have the latest driver yet, I advice you to download it now from here for windows xp and here for Windows 7.

After you’ve downloaded the webcam driver, decompress the zip file then look for the file named “snp2uvc.inf” and open it with notepad. Find and change the following value below:


From: HKR,DefaultSettings,Flip,0x00010001,0
To: HKR,DefaultSettings,Flip,0x00010001,1


Now, install the driver and do a quick reboot.

That’s about it, you should have the right webcam display already.

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I’ve just finished migrating more than a hundred websites to a new server only to find out that a couple of the migrated sites are still using Pear DB (database abstraction layer) package. So after spending a minute to install the package from the Web Host Manager (WHM), I decided to post this short-straight-to-the-point how-to on how to install it, and here it goes.

1. Login as root to your Web Host Manager (WHM), and on the left pane, look for the “Software” section.

2. Under the “Software” section, click on the “Module Installers”.

3. On the right pane, just below the search box, type in “DB” (without the quotes) and click on the “Install Now” button.

4. Once you have the package successfully installed, you should see the DB module on the list of installed PHP modules.

That’s all about it. Scripts that are referencing to this module should run now without errors at all.

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Weeks ago, I was looking for an install creator program that I can used to create an installer of a legacy program which I was asked to install — which I must admit to be very much daunting to install because of the way it was designed to handle exceptions when it is not able to find a required file or folder during runtime; the error message wasn’t helpful at all. So I decided to create an installer out of the installed files since the installer of this legacy program was nowhere to be found.

A quick search on the net brought me to the ClickTeam website where I’ve found the shareware Install Creator program that can be used to create a program installer so easily, which you can download from here.

After the software was installed on my VM, I was able to create an installer of the legacy program in just a couple of minutes. Anyway, I’m just posting it here just in case someone will be in need of it too.

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Linksys E1000 is one of the new models of Linksys wireless routers released by Cisco last month. The Linksys E1000 wireless router has features not present on the WRT series. One of these features is the DHCP reservation, which is used to bind an IP address to a particular network client based on its MAC address.

Few reasons why you want to reserve or bind an IP address to a specific network client is that, when you want to give high priority to this client over the other connected clients on the network, or perhaps you want to limit its access to the world wide web, and for many other reasons.

So, without further a do, here’s how to create a DHCP reservation on Linksys E1000 wireless router.

1. Login to the Linksys E1000 wireless router’s setup page. Once logged in, make sure that you are on the Setup - Basic setup page.

2. Under the Network Setup section, look for the DHCP reservation button, click on it and the DHCP reservation page should pop-up.

3. Now, you have two ways to reserve an IP address to a network client.

The first one is for the clients who are connected to the network already and the second is for the clients who aren’t connected to the network yet. So let’s start with the former first.

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By default, Telnet client is disabled on Windows 7. So if you find yourself in need of this handy utility then here’s how to enable it.

Open your control panel and click on Programs. Now, under the Programs window, look for the Programs and Features. Below the Programs and Features, just next to the Uninstall a program shortcut link, you should see the Turn Windows features on or off, click on it.

After you’ve clicked the Turn Windows features on or off link, you will be presented with a box named Windows Features. The Windows Features box has all the available features list down for you. These features can be enabled or disabled by just ticking the check box.

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Anyway, below is the driver for the Creative Vibra PD1100 webcam. Please feel free to download a copy and share, if you wish.

Creative Vibra PD1100 Driver

The driver is tested to work with both Windows 7 and Windows XP.

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