justBcoz » Software

Doing my bit for autism awareness

justBcoz — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:24:00 +0000

There’s a lot of publicity around about autism at the moment, what with the Jail4Bail campaign being in the spotlight while Gerhard Pieterse, the Executive Director of Autism Western Cape (AWC), remains locked up in his cell at Canal Walk Shopping Centre until the AWC R1 million target for donations has been reached.

Some time ago, I wrote about ZAC, a web browser designed specifically for autistic children, and I thought that now would be an appropriate time to dig that post out of the archives and republish …

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Thanks to my RSS feed from The Download Squad, I recently came across ZAC (Zone for Autistic Children), a web browser specifically developed for autistic children and decided to share it with a friend of mine.

She has two little boys who are both displaying signs of autism and she really has her hands full! I was hoping that this piece of Windows software would be helpful to her as the poor girl struggles to keep her boys stimulated and hardly gets a second to herself.

“ZAC is the first web browser developed specifically for children with autism, and autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and PDD-NOS. We have made this browser for the children – for their enjoyment, enrichment, and freedom. Children touch it, use it, play it, interact with it, and experience independence through ZAC.”

And here’s what my friend had to say:

“Just wanted to say thanks for this email! I have installed it and the boys LOVE it!!! They both love the PC but I’ve never let them go on it ‘cause they end up trashing my stuff but now it entertains A for an hour every afternoon ”

There you go!

So if you have a young child with autism, then ZAC may help you. Oh, and by the way, it’s completely FREE =)

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You can donate to the Jail4Bail campaign by by SMSing the word “Vuka” to 38010.
Each SMS costs R10, and puts you in line to win a Vuka skuta.

Exorcising Outlook

justBcoz — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:44:18 +0000

One of the things I had to do as part of the migration to my sexy new iMac was recreate my Outlook setup on the new machine as I had it on the dinosaur laptop I’ve been using. I’m sure this wouldn’t be too much of a mission for most people, but I have over 20 active email accounts, hundreds of rules to help me process and sort through the more than 2000 emails I get every day, a massive task list, and notes for Africa plus about 6Gigs of emails, organized into 60 different PST files.

Needless to say, I was NOT looking forward to setting this up all over again! So I had a hunt on the interwebs and found a really handy tool to backup Outlook from my old machine (compressing it at the same time) and then restore it again to exactly the same settings on my new machine. It’s called ABF Outlook Backup, sells for $39 and it works a treat. What should have taken me DAYS to do only took me a couple of hours.

Actually it would have taken much less time, but I ran into a snag.

I did something wrong in the restoration process and somehow managed to duplicate my mail profile. The end result was that I landed up with duplicate PST folders showing up in Outlook and I couldn’t get rid of them. Trying the “Close ” option did not work – it kept telling me that “an object could not be found”. I was getting extremely frustrated, I even tried uninstalling and reinstalling Office, but that did nothing. I was close to bashing my head on the table!!

Back to the interwebs again to find a solution …

And the news was not good. All sorts of scary stuff like going into the registry and mucking around in the deep, dark unknown. No thanks! And then I spotted something – a free little application called PSTGhostbuster. It was a lifesaver! I managed to get rid of those pesky ghost files very quickly and easily, no mess no fuss =)

So there you go – 2 very handy tools that you could need one day.

Update Adobe Acrobat and Reader today

justBcoz — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:03:37 +0000

A code injection vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.1.2 required a quick fix amid reports of an exploit for it in the wild.

Users of Adobe’s Reader and Acrobat products will want to perform an update or upgrade today, depending on the software version they have in place. A JavaScript vulnerability received a Critical rating from Adobe, meriting immediate attention.

“This vulnerability would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system,” Adobe said in its security bulletin. “This update resolves an input validation issue in a JavaScript method that could potentially lead to remote code execution.”

People on versions up to 8.1.2 of Reader and Acrobat may update their products with a security fix, currently available for download. Adobe recommended users of Acrobat and Reader 7 update those products to version 7.1.0.

Via WebProNews

See http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/27641/solution for links to appropriate downloads.

Zone for Autistic Children

justBcoz — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:39:03 +0000

“ZAC is the first web browser developed specifically for children with autism, and autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and PDD-NOS. We have made this browser for the children – for their enjoyment, enrichment, and freedom. Children touch it, use it, play it, interact with it, and experience independence through ZAC.”

And here’s what my friend had to say:

There you go!

So if you have a young child with autism, then ZAC may help you. Oh, and by the way, it’s completely FREE =)

D-Day for Firefox 3.0

justBcoz — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:31:28 +0000

TUESDAY – 17 JUNE 2008

It’s official!

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

Hope you’ve all pledged to download Firefox 3.0 to help them break the Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours!

Quick update

justBcoz — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:39:36 +0000

Firstly, thanks to coda for pointing me towards Snarfer – looks like a great feed reader (I have been trying Google Reader today but I don’t like it) … AND thanks for letting me know that making people register on this site before they can comment is not cool! Sorry about that people – I really thought I had disabled that requirement.

Next, I have added an “About Me” page. I had previously published a post called 100 Things About Me, but I realise that it’s probably now buried way too deep for anyone to ever find. I know that I like to know a bit about the people behind the blogs that I read, so if you’re as nosy as me, then this is for you =)

And that’s it for now. Catch up with you all tomorrow …

Arb Quote: “Every time we open our mouths, people can look into our minds.”