Category Archives: Software

Category containing all information relating to software.

Ice Cream Sandwich imminent for HTC Sensation and Sensation XE in the UK

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This week has brought a whole load of important Ice Cream Sandwich news. The Samsung Galaxy S II has apparently started getting updates today, and earlier this week brought ICS to the Sensation XE is some European countries such as Germany.

HTC has said that they’re expecting the roll out to spread to the rest of Europe in the coming weeks – and we sure hope it does as they promised it would arrive on our phones before the end of March.

I’m frequently checking my phone for updates and also regularly keeping up with the news online to make sure I’m one of the first in line!

All I can say is that if it is set to arrive with us before the end of March, HTC should issue it within the next two weeks. We’ll update you as soon as we have more news!

Android 4.0 ICS for the HTC Sensation XE is nearly here – what to expect?

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Well, HTC have told us recently that we should expect Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the HTC Sensation XE (as well as many other HTC phones) by the end of this month. This is great news for me as I’ve been looking forward to it since I got my phone back in November last year. But what are you to expect? Here’s a round up.

  • New(ish) home screen – HTC haven’t really changed it massively themselves, but with ICS some changes have been brought in. The famous rounded bar that shows at the bottom of the screen in Gingerbread (with the big phone button) has been replaced with the ICS equivalent. You can now set four shortcuts on the bottom bar. You can also specifically set how many home screens you want (up to 7), rather than being stuck with empty home screens.
  • Face unlock – the new software brings in face unlock – so you can use your camera to unlock the phone. Handy, I guess.
  • Updated web browser  – the web browser has got a couple of minor new features – like being able to force websites to load desktop pages.
  • Other new stock ICS features – Whilst some ICS features aren’t added in (probably for compatibility reasons), there are some new things like data cap settings which could come in handy. You can tell the phone how much data you get per month, and the phone will moderate itself accordingly.
  • Better app organisation – you now get app folders (finally). In addition, the recent apps feature has been overhauled to give you a much better preview of what is going on in the background.
  • Access to notifications from the lock screen – pretty self explanatory, but this will be useful.
  • Updated Google apps – some Google apps like Gmail and Google Maps have been updated somewhat.
  • Sense 3.6 – An update to HTC’s Sense software.

That’s the main key feature update. I’m looking forward to it – but I would have liked to have seen HTC working on some of their own apps – such as the Music app which, I feel, needs some fixes and updates!

Update: PEAK 100417AGPK USB Dual TV Tuner Windows XP/Vista/7 32/64Bit Driver

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I’ve just updated my GEEK! post that included the driver for the PEAK 100417AGPK dual TV tuner. This being because I’ve found the driver disk and have uploaded the official driver for consumer use!

If you need a copy of the driver yourself, please see this post. Leave a comment and let us know how you got on!

(Alternatively, if you know what you’re doing and would just like the download – click here)

Configuring anti-spam (SpamAssassin) in ISPConfig 3

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As you may have noticed, I’ve recently moved GEEK! to a brand new VPS – which, hopefully, will massively improve the uptime and performance of the site in the long run. It’s a little too early to tell, but now most of the trial bugs are ironed out, improvements should start to be seen soon.

However, by moving my site (and all other sites I run) to a VPS, I have had to make some sacrifices. The key sacrifice on my end has been cPanel – which I’ve used ever since I started working with web servers. I love cPanel – it’s generally very reliable and controls most of the functions I would ever want. But now, as I’m slowly getting more experienced with the way web servers work, I thought it would be a good time to move on to something a little more advanced (and, as a result, cheaper). I was recommended to ISPConfig – a free and open source control panel for web servers running on Linux. And after a slow start, I seem to be getting the hang of it.

The one thing that really did get to me for a while was the poor performance of the spam filter built into ISPConfig. ISPConfig relies on SpamAssassin – which is, when configured correctly, a very powerful spam filter. But for some reason, it just wasn’t working on my installation of ISPConfig. Spam would get through and it can get seriously frustrating!

Thankfully I now have it cracked – and wanted to share the configuration I chose for ISPConfig and SpamAssassin. I think the correct settings vary from person to person – but if you want general spam filtering, this should show you how to get it.

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Rewind: A look back at GEEK! so far

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Well, GEEK! is just over three years old now; and during that time I’ve written over 400 posts. So, while I don’t really want to add anything too new to GEEK! while I get my backup system finalised, I thought now would be a good time to run over some of the posts have brought the most traffic to GEEK!.

By far and away, the most popular post on GEEK! is the “Get the old Windows Live Essentials back“. So many of you were fed up with the poor functionality of Essentials 2011 (including me), so I linked you up with a download and instructions to get the old 2009 version back.

Next up, it’s the tool I found that allowed you to find the biggest files on your hard drive. The tiny tool quickly locates the files that are occupying the most space on your drive, allowing you to delete anything you see as unnecessary.

My review of the Samsung N145P netbook brought the next largest amount of attention to GEEK!. A fully comprehensive review that details everything you needed to know.

Not too far behind, my finding of TVCatchup back in mid 2009 provided Freeview TV access over the internet (in the UK). I still use the site regularly when I’m on the go, as it provides live TV without a bombardment of adverts.

Last in the top five, it’s my iPod touch 4G review. Simple and sweet – it explains all the new features that were (and still are) great additions to the iPod range.

And that’s it – a round-up of the top five biggest posts on GEEK!. Normal service on GEEK! will resume soon, but I’m just optimising the backup process on my new VPS!