Three things come to mind when you hear the word “adware.”The first is in the first syllable – “ad.” This clues you into the concept of adware. So adware is a software that carries an advertisement. This advertisement is displayed as a banner pop up or a bar that appears on your computer screen when you’re using the software.
The second is spyware. Although not all adware are spyware, it is generally agreed that many adware programs also have spyware. This has caused a lot of hoopla because certain adware programs track a user’s information which is passed to third parties without the user’s permission. This prevalent situation has put the Electronic Privacy Information Centre on red alert, not to forget some lobby groups that are huffing and puffing about violation of privacy.
The third thing about adware is that it’s free. If you think about it, however, it isn’t really free because you are bombarded with unwanted ads and your personal identity is compromised. When software developers offer a software for free, they usually integrate codes into the software that will simultaneously download advertising banners into the user’s computer. The authors of such programs do this so they recoup their development costs for the adware. Even if downloading a program is advertised as free (like in shareware), there are strings attached.
Recognizing adwareFor those who aren’t that computer savvy, they may not immediately know that adware is residing on their computer. If you’re not sure, go to any search engine and type “adware” or “removing adware” and you should be able to obtain a list of the more common adware programs that exist.One online guide we consulted lists the more popular adware programs. Here’s a few of them (there are thousands more, so this isn’t a comprehensive listing):· 180 search assistant· 20x2p· 91Cast· 2nd-thought· ABCScrabble· AceNotes· Active Shopper· Active Search· AdClicker· AdRotatorSome web sites will even make a list that will tell you whether it’s adware, malware, Trojan, or a dialer. So far, over 2500 programs have been identified as adware, Trojan or malware, and the list grows longer everyday.
Removing adwareThere are recommended adware removal tools. Like any product, it is a matter of choosing the one that’s right for you. If you’re not sure which product will do the trick, you can read the different forums on adware and adware removal to get an idea of people’s favorite removal tools. Two removal tools we often hear about are Ad-Aware and Spybot.
First step is to be aware that your anti virus programs will not remove adware. You need to have a modern anti-spyware scanner. Second, before running the anti-spyware scanner, shut off all your applications on your computer including your email. Disconnect your computer from the internet.
Command your anti-spyware scanner to scan your PC and give it permission to remove any spyware or adware that it finds. When the task is complete, re-boot your computer. Re-boot even if the scanner does not prompt you.The process does not end there. After re-booting, run the scan a second time. It is likely that your computer is still infested with one, two or more spyware and adware. Re-boot.
After the second re-boot, perform a third scan.
If you believe that your computer is still infected, turn on your computer into safe mode. This will NOT eliminate all spyware and adware remaining in your system, but at least will keep the infestation minimal. As a last resort, you may want to refer to www.TomCoyote.org. This web site will show you how to use HijackThis, a program that will capture pertinent areas that may be housing the “culprits.”

Among all the latest gadgets Ethan Hunt and his team of secret agents lavish out in their latest Mission Impossible III, I am most interested in, perhaps, one of the less flashy technologies, voice synthesization. Within a half minute reading out a short note, the omnipotent villain Owen Davian has his voice programmed into a fine chip that, when attached to Hunt’s throat, modifies the latter’s vocal qualities to perfectly match his.
I come to appreciate the software engineers at Media Morpher or Audio4Fun or Voice Cloak for the galore of voice changer software products they have developed over the years as much as I am amazed at the extreme speed and precision of the Impossible technology. It is these tools that make real-time voice changing a Mission not so Impossible to an average person in the netizen community.
The Mission Impossible voice synthesization technology I adore above is more professionally known as voice comparator or voice changer. A voice comparator is a feature of voice changer software that, in effect, compares the vocal qualities of two parties and transmits the digital waves to the voice morpher. The latter then morphs one voice into the other’s. A voice changer software allows users to perform the seemingly complicated task in real time within split seconds, while voice changer hardware could morphs one’s voice over telephone lines or audio recordings.
Beyond synthesizing one’s voice to match a particular other’s, voice changer programs could well help users customize their voices according to almost all sorts of preference, age, gender, and even non-human sounds. This is not done in a half minute, but instantly, or as soon as users are satisfied with the settings. In addition, voice changers are friendly to even dummy netizens as many include a library of pre-set vocal outputs for ease of use. That reduces the task of voice changing to a seamless process of clicking and speaking.
Don’t take me wrong; I am not at all demeaning Hunt’s gadgets with all these voice changer softwares. Mission Impossible III technologies are simply nothing less than futuristically awesome. What I’m saying throughout this article is that seemingly impossible tasks are not that impossible to us after all, if we care to look, beyond our little selves, into the world of friendly expertise around us. About the Author:Josh Nowell is a press correspondent for Media Morpher. He is an observer of technology trends and is keen on analyzing how technology could enrich the human life.
He could be contacted at media@audio4fun.com (Attention to Josh Nowell).

Everyone knows Windows Vista is a resource hog. Everyone says it doesn’t even get out of first gear without a gigabyte of RAM, and it takes 2 GB before it stops stuttering and stammering with each mouse click. Everyone says Vista Home Basic is the black sheep of the family, deserving only of a sideways glance and a dismissive harrumph. That’s what I keep reading on the Internet, so it must be true. Which is why I had steeled myself for pitiful performance when I yanked all but 512MB out of my test system last week and downgraded to Vista Home Basic. With a 2002–vintage CPU and Microsoft’s minimum recommended RAM, running the most basic of Vista retail editions on a 30GB partition, surely this would be a painful experience. Or not. You shouldn’t believe everything you read. I was expecting to need Valium and vodka and an on-call therapist to handle Vista Home Basic on this low-end system. Instead, I found a snappy, responsive OS that did everything I asked of it. My primary goal was to measure startup times, answering skeptics who thought my test results from a few weeks ago were skewed by the expansive 1.5GB of RAM on this ancient P4 test machine. So I pulled out all but one stick of RAM and prepared for the worst. All you Vista bashers will be disappointed to hear what happened next:
* The system booted two seconds faster than it had with all that extra RAM. On average, Vista’s boot time was less than 30 seconds.
* Menus popped up instantly, with no lag or delay.
* My favorite DVD, Blade Runner, played flawlessly at full resolution, in surround sound. (I had to install a DVD decoder first – Vista Home Basic doesn’t include DVD playback capabilities out of the box.)
* I was able to rip a CD, check my Google Mail account on Mozilla Thunderbird, and play a full-screen slide show, all at the same time, without a single skip or hiccup.
* Even installing Norton Antivirus 2007 couldn’t slow things down. The Norton software added 7 seconds to my startup time, but after it loaded, everything worked exactly as expected. To be fair, I didn’t do anything I knew would have brought this system to its knees. I didn’t try to rip a DVD, decode the human genome, or run Office 2007. But still… I’d have no qualms about handing this system over to my mom, my brother, or my best friend. On the Windows Experience Index, this system rates a 2.0, thanks to its sluggish RAM (and even when I put those two extra 512MB sticks of RAM back in, the number doesn’t budge). The CPU on this system earned a 3.8. By contrast, Intel’s bottom-of-the-line 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo T5200, standard on every $599 notebook PC these days, rates a 4.3. Surprisingly, even the visuals on this system were a treat. With a three-year-old video card, this system was capable of running Vista’s Aero graphics. But because Aero doesn’t run on Home Basic, I was stuck with the Vista Standard display. It lacks the transparent window borders and whizzy live previews on taskbar buttons, but otherwise the look is indistinguishable from a system running Windows Vista Ultimate. The conventional wisdom says Vista Home Basic is a dog, and that it slows to a crawl with 512MB. Don’t believe everything you read.
bron: www.topdownloads.net

What we need is the Dewey Decimal System to go digital …
Specifically, someone needs to coax their keepers into putting some logical order into how computer viruses are sorted.
Recently, warnings abounded about the Kama Sutra virus quickly proliferating cyberspace, joining the Grew.A and Nyxem.E as serious threats to computer file security. However, only those who took a closer look at these strains were able to discover that they all had something in common.
They were virtually the same virus.
There is uniformity in the library world when it comes to catalogging the millions of books contained therein, thanks to Dewey. The weather service administrators do their bit for personnification by breathing a bit of nefarious charm into the tropical storms they track by assigning them names in alphabetical order each year. They key to both of these facts is that someone devised a universal means of identifying something that assists the general public in dealing with it.
The time is rapidly approaching when someone needs to step forward and put some order into the villainous world of computer infections.
New viruses arise so suddenly and spread so quickly that those whose job it is to seek and destroy them have little time to muse over what to name them. With Kama Sutra, for instance, its file-destroying program seemed to be spread by junk e-mail enticements to visit porn sites. The news media ran with that theme and gave it a headline-grabbing handle; Kama Sutra, of course, is the legendary lovemaking guide compiled to classify the creativity of ancient Hindu hedonism.
Geeks, however, have their own perspective when they put a spin on things. Just as banks need to have stately names, spyware apparently needs to carry Matrix-like titles to make them appear darker, more foreboding and a worthy challenge. After all, who amongst them would want to quash the Kama Sutra? Wouldn’t that confirm the geek image as a cyber-eunuch?
Thus, titles like Grew.A and Nyxem.E are coined to look so much more imposing and in need of professional assistance to eradicate.
F-Secure is a Finnish virus fighter and widely acclaimed to be one of the best of its kind on the market. Their stature is such that when they identify an intrusive program, others notice and accept the name they give it. In this case, F-Secure saw the program shared code and techniques with cetain file-destroying predecessors, so they went with ‘Nyxem.E,’ derived from the acronym for the New York Mercentile Exchange, whose web site was targeted by the initial culprit.
Other vendors took note that this program destroyed files instead of overloading websites with fake traffic. Using a logic known only to one of the backroom gnomes in their employ, this meant that ‘Grew.A’ was the most appropriate description. I can only think that asking for a clarification for that decision would cause most of us as much of a headache as trying to remove the program after it has hit our computers.
Anyway, in these trying times of terrorism alerts, if nobody else is willing to tackle the task of virus classification, those rock-lifters and cobweb-sweepers at the USA Department of Homeland Security are prepared to step into the fray. They have devised a system of virus naming through the Common Malware Enumeration, or CME. Outbreaks are assigned a random number, which in this case turned out to be ’24.’We’ll see if such a system captures teh public’s imagination.
This is an important point, because if a unified virus identification system is to be effective, it has to immediately raise a general awareness so that the virus’ spread can be better contained.
If nothing else, ‘Kama Sutra’ generated enough clicks to quickly spread the word that a cyber-invader was on the prowl. Once named as such, a program that had been circulating for weeks, but was set to destroy files only on the third day of each month, finally came to the public’s attention. That gave vendors time to update their products and warn customers.
Incidentally, this strain is known to corrupt documents using the most common file types, including ‘.doc,’ ‘.pdf’ and ‘.zip.’ It affects most versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which caused them to issue the most widely-heeded warning of the problem.
Given the recent animosity-filled anti-trust suit brought by the American government against the software giant, it does seem like their efforts to raise the awareness of this virus has necessitated that they become the proverbial strange bedfellows.
It’s only appropriate that something named Kama Sutra would bring them together. It’s inevitable that they would find themselves in this position. The task now is for them — and everyone else — to agree upon what to call it.

Computer systems across the world are constantly threatened by viruses and worms. These malwares are created by disgruntled or malicious programmers, who let loose their treacherous creations on unwary hosts. Oftentimes, the damage that is caused is immense. Due to the severity of the attacks a small cottage industry has grown up to protect systems from viruses and worms. With a virus that spreads automatically, a huge number of computers can be infected through the Internet and can be very hard to control. Because of this, the virus is the greatest danger to the security of personal computers today.
Companies in the antivirus industry discover large numbers of viruses’ everyday. Scores of viruses are latent or dormant and continue to be present long before they are ever noticed. There are viruses that delete files, displays pop-ups, exchange the buttons of your mouse, uninstall Internet Explorer, they can even slow down your computer’s fan. A computers efficiency is reduced tremendously due to viruses and if that wasn’t enough they also corrupt files as well as stored data. For that reason, it is imperative to locate and eliminate viruses before the damage occurs.
There are a couple of important precautionary measures you can take and that is:
1. Avoid opening e-mails from people you do not know.

2. Avoid downloading anything from websites that are not well known or trustworthy. If you land on a website that is providing content that is possibly unlawful or improper you may well be at risk and you would certainly be better off avoiding it. Another important step is to keep your operating system updated on a regular schedule to reduce the threat to your computer. The Microsoft.com website is a good place to keep track of security patches that have been created to plug the loopholes that viruses exploit.
Now an absolute must for your computer is a reliable antivirus suite. There are many good free anti-virus packages like Avast (avast.com) that are available, although it is best to get reputable antivirus software like Norton or McAfee to deal with viruses and worms.
A few other security measures for your computer are file protection, memory explorers and firewalls, although at times they can conflict with other software, confuse users, or use up scarce resources. It is always good a idea to listen to the advice of security experts to save your system from damages caused by viruses and worms.
Unfortunately, the majorities of people learn these lessons the hard way and realize the risks involved only after they suffered. If you can understand the risks involved, you can take on safety measures to guard your computer from these threats.

You probably have heard or even used Virtual Serial Port Driver 6.0 by Eltima Software. It is an advanced utility, which emulates unlimited number of RS232 serial ports connected via virtual null-modem cable using special driver, which can be easily included in your own software providing simple and convenient way to create and configure virtual serial ports directly from your application. Now let us introduce the new appearance of Virtual Serial Port Driver 6.0. Not only new features were added, but the interface was re-designed as well.
Let’s start with the new features. There are plenty of them and we are sure you will like each and every one. First of all, all internal modules of Virtual Serial Port Driver are digitally signed, meaning that now the driver will work correctly under x64 platforms. Another platform that VSPD fully supports now is Windows Vista. Now all Vista fans can surely use Virtual Serial Port Driver without any problems, both as 32-bit, or 64-bit edition!
As for the technical aspects of VSPD functioning, Eltima has put much work into it to make VSPD as feature-rich as possible. The new version offers you unique emulation of serial cable pinouts, including totally custom ones for your professional needs. Moreover, you will be able to allow or restrict applications access to any created port easily directly from the GUI. In this version we present the new and completely revamped Serial Ports Explorer, which will be your help in getting all the information about serial ports present in your system.
Virtual Serial Port Driver’s interface has been thoroughly re-designed. We have left the simplicity and logical architecture of previous versions, but changed the overall colors and shades to make VSPD GUI appealing and user-friendly.
Virtual Serial Port Driver has a proven reputation of a must-have tool for system developers. The application will cut down your development time dramatically providing you with the full arsenal of its features and capabilities.
Read more about VSPD, the leader of virtual ports creation, by visiting its features page. If you are interested in trying Virtual Serial Port Driver 6.0 you are welcome to download the free trial now: http://www.eltima.com/download/vspdxp/

Remember audio tape? Sound quality was muffled and dark. Play time was limited, cassettes wore out quickly if they weren’t consumed by the deck, and, like kudzu in Mississippi, tapes and cases took over entire sections of the car as collections grew. Once we caught on to MP3s, there was no turning back. All those audio cassettes were unceremoniously retired to the family yard sale, where they sat in the sun with nary a sniff of interest from even the most tech-challenged buyer.
MP3s offer clear advantages over the analog medium they replaced. Now we play music for hours at a stretch. We create custom play lists, search for favorite tracks, and take our music wherever we go. Best of all, we don’t have to lug around all those music titles on tape or disc, because MP3s are electronic files that can be stored on something as handy as a USB key.
For mobile music lovers, things have never been better. They take their music with them, and leave their discs at home. Parents of young children, however, continue to struggle with the problems caused by all those OTHER discs: the CDs and DVDs still required to run PC games and disc-based applications. Once touted for their “durability,” CDs are remarkably fragile: hairline scratches or even a few smudges can render them unplayable. Originally designed to be portable, they’re not all that easy to transport, but incredibly easy to lose.
All too often, shared discs are treated badly. Left out their jewel cases and exposed to kids and pets, game discs are quickly mutilated. Traveling disc collections are soon scattered to the winds: volume 2 of a set may be forgotten in a motel room, volume 3 at a rest stop down the road. The disc-based software that accompanies you on every family trip, whether or not you’re aware of it, frequently comes back ruined — if it comes back at all.
MP3-LIKE CONVENIENCE FOR DISC-BASED APPLICATIONS Virtual CDs are to PC games and applications discs what MP3s are to music CDs. They bring MP3-like ease use and portability to video games, CD-ROM clip art collections, educational software, and other disc-based applications. They’re a perfect disc management solution when you’re sharing disc-based games and applications with members of the family or transporting CDs and DVDs from place to place. You’ll need a CD emulator to convert your physical disc into a virtual CD, or a file that runs directly on a computer’s hard drive. Since it’s nothing more than an electronic file, a virtual CD can be stored on a laptop computer or just about any digital storage device.
A virtual CD plays just like a physical CD, only with a much reduced load time. In fact, there’s no need to load the physical disc at all — you simply click on desktop shortcut to launch a favorite game or application. If you’re so inclined, you can have several virtual CDs running simultaneously in one of several virtual drives, which look just like physical drive in Windows Explorer. It may seem like a silly notion to keep multiple virtual CDs loaded, but gamers in particular like to hot swap between titles or volumes.
Although it emulates, or “acts like” a physical CD, a virtual CD operates directly on the hard drive, improving playback times by as much as 200% and eliminating wear and tear on the CD-ROM drive. It can be shared over a network, customized to contain multi-disc sets and expansion packs, and organized with other virtual CDs in a searchable library with a Windows-like directory tree. CHOOSING THE RIGHT CD EMULATORMost commercial CD emulators cost between $30 and $60 — a bargain compared to many game titles, and well worth the price of admission if you’re able to spare just a few of your discs from abuse. But while nearly all CD emulators have certain basic features in common, not all offer the same usability and disc support.
You should also be aware that while a CD emulator is a great tool for most PC games, educational software, and unprotected DVDs, any legal CD emulator will not work with a CSS protected DVD. In other words, don’t expect to transform your Hollywood videos into a virtual DVD library.
If you’d like to purchase a CD emulator, you might want to download an evaluation version first. Try to determine which product works best with the discs in your collection. Decide which brand gives you the best value for your money and offers ongoing technical support. FarStone Technology makes a solid CD emulator in the form of VirtualDrive (http://www.farstone.com/software/virtualdrive.htm), which weighs in just under 30 dollars. An evaluation download is available at www.farstone.com.
CD EMULATOR RESOURCESFarStone VirtualDrivehttp://www.farstone.com/software/virtualdrive.htmGeneral Emulator Listinghttp://www.thumbshots.net/webguide.aspx?cat=Computers%2FHardware%2FStorage%2FOptical%2FEmulation

Will malefactor steal your most private information right now? Or will he wait for tomorrow?
The relevant issue of privacy protection is important today like never before. Malefactors are hunting users for their personal information, inventing new intricate ways of stealing it.
You may think that there’s nothing wrong with giving away such ‘innocent’ info like your email address, for instance. Well, that’s where you have to think again. By finding some bits of information malefactors are always able to find out more. They may find a way to get into your system and fish out some data which you didn’t even know existed!
The following are just some examples of how your personal data may be used by frauds.
Spammers make use of your address book for sending annoying unwanted letters to you and all of your acquaintances. Phishers masquerade as a trustworthy person or business and send you an apparently official email trying to find out your bank account details or your credit card pin number. Hackers use your login and password for stealing your Internet traffic or sending exploits into your system thus turning your computer into their slave. Not exactly something you’d like to be a part of, is it? The main problem is that most users don’t even suspect they might get ripped off in such a malicious way. They are naive enough to think that their personal information is perfectly safe the way it is without any extra measures taken.
But please consider the following. Your personal private information might be in danger, if:
- you ever used any of the web-services
- you ever filled out any of the online registration forms
- you ever used any online messaging servicesWhich basically means that you are in the risk group if your computer is connected to the Internet. And that would be almost all of us!
So what you need now is to find out how to deal with this problem. Many articles have been written on this subject, and many words have been said. But the number of attacks grows with every day, and so does the users’ alarm. What a user really needs nowadays is not talk but some REAL protection of his PRIVACY. When you input any information into your computer, you trust your system to protect this data. But unfortunately it is you who has to take measures and turn your PC into a SECURE STRONGHOLD, inaccessible by any malefactors. If you wish to find out how to do this, just read on. First of all, let’s get to the root of the problem. Why is it that you need any protection in the first place? What exactly puts you into a risk group?
The thing is that your Operating System collects and stores data about you personally and about your computer’s configuration. This is mainly done to facilitate the process of you getting customer’s support in case any problems occur. Many user’s applications do the same. So when you contact the program’s Support, all you might have to do is to click one single button in the application’s screen rather than to scan your system manually, trying to find the needed information. Rather convenient, isn’t it?
The other reason for the system and applications storing your personal information is you using web-services. Many applications store information about your e-mail address, your passwords, your credit card number or your bank accounts in order to speed up the process of your registration at some websites or your buying and selling stuff via the Internet etc. Now, please note that by personal information we don’t mean any of your files or documents. It is only the data collected by numerous applications and the Operating System that we talk about. Such data is stored in your system separately from any user’s files and usually does not affect the work of the applications themselves.
While all those features of collecting and storing information about you and your system are meant to help you, sometimes they turn into your worst enemy. There are many many malefactors that will try to take advantage of your system’s leaks in order to steal your personal information stored by your OS and applications. Thus instead of making your life easier, the storage of your private info brings you nothing but potential problems.
Now don’t you think that you should be the ONLY one to decide whether you want to share any of your data? Well, exactly! It should be only up to you to determine who should know what about yourself! After all, it is YOUR information!
So we defined the problem and we know you want to solve it. The question is how. There are several ways of protecting your private information. Nowadays there is a great number of software solutions that will help you deal with the problem of privacy protection.
First of all you may choose to install some kind of a firewall that would prevent any hacker attacks. Modern software market offers a great deal of such applications to choose from. But note that setting up these programs is usually a rather complicated process. In order to customize the application you’d have to specify what actions it would take for virtually any event. Besides you will have to download base updates if you want to be sure that you have the best protection available (than means you have to download them daily or hourly even). Considering the fact that malefactors daily invent hundreds of new ways of getting into your system, firewalls might not be just the best solution to keeping your private info safe.
This does not in any way mean that firewalls offer bad protection level. It’s what we should call an ‘insufficient’ measure.
Keeping this in mind you might ask yourself: What if I don’t want these applications to store any info about me in the first place? And that’s exactly right! No one will ever steal something that you just don’t have! Now the problem arises how to clean up the information stored in your system. You may, of course, do that manually by locating system files and settings responsible for storing user’s data and then cleaning them up. But this requires advanced user’s skills and knowledge, as you may accidentally erase something that will cause your applications work unsteadily. Besides, manual clean-up takes time and patience and is not always possible to perform as many applications encrypt your info (so you may have trouble finding it, let alone removing).
And what now? Is that impossible for a common user to protect his own personal information? Well, of course not! Luckily, there are some programs in the market that allow for automatic safe clean-up of all your privacy leaks. You can easily find such applications in search engines, searching for ‘personal data protection tool’, ‘privacy protection tool’ or ‘system-stored personal data search and removal’.
And remember this: No one but you has the right to access your personal information! So take the necessary steps to prevent your private data from being stolen! Do that before it’s too late, as some of the malefactors are attempting to rip you off at this very moment!

WithEvents and Handles clause requires form us to declare the object variable and the event handler as we write our code, so linkage is created upon compilation. On the other hand, with AddHandler and RemoveHandler, linkage is created and removed at runtime, which is more flexible.
Let’s assume that we want to load several MDI child forms, allowing each of them to be loaded only once, and of course to know when one of the child forms is closed. Since we have several forms to load we would like to use the AddHandler and RemoveHandler keywords so we can be flexible and write the minimal code we can.
Let’s get dirty.

1. In each MDI child form we have to declare a public event.
Public Event FormClosed(ByVal f As Form)
2. In each MDI child form we have to use the Form_Closed method which handles the MyBase.Closed class and raise the FormClosed event.
Private Sub Form1_Closed(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _ Handles MyBase.Closed RaiseEvent FormClosed(Me)End Sub
3. On our MDI form we need to declare two member variables. The first’s of type Form and the second’s type is ArrayList.
Private m_f(0) as FormPrivate m_sLoadedChildForms As New ArrayList
4. We need to implement a method the will search the MDI child forms that are loaded. We’ll also use this method when we unload the MDI child forms.
Private Function SearchChildForm(ByVal strSearchForm As String, _Optional ByVal idxEventHandler As Long = -1) As Long Dim i As Long = 0 For i = 0 To m_sLoadedForms.Count – 1 If m_sLoadedForms.Item(i) = strSearchForm Then Dim j As Long = 0 For j = m_f.GetLowerBound(0) To m_f.GetUpperBound(0) If m_f(j).Name = strSearchForm Then idxEventHandler = j Next j Return i End If Next Return -1End Function
5. We need to implement a method to load the mdi child forms and use the SearchChildForm method in order not to load the same mdi child form second time.
Private Sub LoadChildForms(ByVal f As Form) If m_f.GetUpperBound(0) > 0 Then ReDim Preserve m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0) + 1) End If m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0)) = f If Not SearchChildForm(m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0)).Name()) >= 0 Then m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0)).MdiParent = Me AddHandler m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0)).Closed, _ AddressOf UnloadChildForm m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0)).Show() m_sLoadedChildForms.Add(m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0)).Name) Else If m_f.GetUpperBound(0) > 0 Then ReDim Preserve m_f(m_f.GetUpperBound(0) – 1) End If End IfEnd Sub
6. At last we need to implement a method to take out our mdi child form from the array list so we can load it again if we want.
Private Sub UnloadForm(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Dim i As Long Dim s As String = sender.GetType().Name Dim IndexForEventHandler = -1 i = SearchChildForm(s, IndexForEventHandler) If i >= 0 Then m_sLoadedForms.RemoveAt(i) If IndexForEventHandler >= 0 Then RemoveHandler m_f(IndexForEventHandler).Closed, AddressOf UnloadForm m_f(IndexForEventHandler) = Nothing End IfEnd Sub

Validoc is a software for iSeries (AS/400) systems able to apply several graphical enhancements to the standard output by adding graphics, fonts and making a remapping of the print output. Validoc allows you to convert graphical print output into a PC format, such as PDF, TIFF, TXT and many more. It is possible to automatically manage the storage of the resulting files on a LAN and schedule their transmission through fax and e-mail.
It can be seamlessly integrated with your existing software without any modification, no matter if it is a simple accounting package or a full featured E.R.P., reducing thus set-up costs and streamlining your workflow.
Validoc has been entirely developed (and is fully supported) by “RECORD Informatica” and has an Italian user interface. The software is actually split into two integrated sub-systems. The main one, which handles the printing spools, is installed on the iSeries machine; while the document transformation engine and the fax and mail engines work on any common PC.
System requirementsValidoc ensures full compliance with standard pc formats.
The mailing functions work with any standard SMTP mail server.
Fax functions require a standard asynchronous modem supporting fax functions.
As regards the PC side, it works on any Microsoft Windows version, while the document transformation engine, the fax and e-mail functions operate on Windows NT, Windows 2000 and XP.
The iSeries components can be installed on the software release V4R2M0 or later.
The print output can be handled by any laser printer supporting the PCL5 language, which is a de-facto standard for any printer built in recent years. LighweightThe iSeries components stay silent and idle while waiting for documents to be processed. This avoids the common problem of CPU overhead caused by pooling on the printing queues, as most competitors’ software do.
EasyThe user interface is designed to be both simple and effective so that a novice user can become proficient quickly and unleash the full power of the system without specific training. ScalableValidoc follows the growth of your company, with a license system modelled upon the IBM iSeries pricing system. Therefore each company will take advantage from the software at a price proportional to its size.
ModularWe always configure Validoc considering actual customer needs, evaluated individually. At any time it is possible to add further modules to the installed configuration.
The modules can enable functions such as spool processing, graphical enhancements, font formatting, file format conversion (to standard PC formats such as PDF or TIFF), automatic categorisation and filing of documents on the customer’s lan, mailing and faxing and data processing on Excel documents.. SafeData and images are processed on the iSeries, whose reliability is well known. It is possible to setup an authorisation system to grant or deny to specific users the right to open the produced documents. The documents saved on LAN folders before mailing or faxing are always zipped and password protected to avoid unauthorised opening of the files. Validoc is developed by:Record Informatica srlBaluardo A. La Marmora, 2 – 28100 Novara (NO)Tel. 0321611208 – Fax 0321684170record@recordinformatica.itValodic: gestione spool di stampa su as400 Key advantagesVALIDOC grants you several benefits, among them we point out the following:
1) Use a single paper formatEach company usually needs several different paper formats, such as wide “easy reading” paper, pre-printed forms for invoices, customised A4 paper with logo and company headers used for mailing and so on.
All these paper formats can be easily substituted by standard A4 paper. Validoc can add all the graphical elements which are pre-printed on the traditional approach. It allows using any available font and formatting and it enhances the final result delivering laser-printer quality. The advantages of using a single paper format are manifold, and involve filing in standardised folders, simpler mailing, standardised paper handling, easier storage in the company archives, no more risk of running out of stock of a kind of paper and an overall saving in paper costs.

2) Modify your pre-printed forms without the intervention of a typographySeveral events require an editing of the standard forms for several kinds of documents. Think about changes to be made to text printed to meet legal requirements, new data to be printed both in internal or external documents, custom text and graphics to be used just in some cases of for a limited amount of time, special conditional “formatting” to be applied just on some documents and many more cases.
When using pre-printed forms all this means that you have to buy several different kinds of forms, you must handle all the stocks, sustain both the risk of shortage and the cost of unused (and unusable) stocks and so on.
Moreover there is a work time overhead since the paper handling is longer, more complex, less flexible, and ultimately not cost-effective and more error-prone.
All these problems are gone when using a single paper format.

3) No more paper change on the printerUsing pre-printed paper you must handle several paper changes on the printers. This means the people waste time changing paper formats, there are overheads due to errors in loading the wrong paper format or mistakes in handling the print queue, there is the need to ask other people to pause printing while you load a specific paper format and so on.
The bottom line is that printing takes more time, is less efficient, and all this means more costs.
Using Validoc instead printing is a “launch and forget” process, you do not have to worry about the kind of paper loaded, manage the print queue, ask to other people to wait for printing when you load your paper format, you do not have to search for that paper format. You do your job. Validoc delivers you your document properly printed.
4) Better printing qualityValidoc allows the usage of standardised forms for any printing task, even the ones that usually are not form-based since handling pre-printed paper for any kind of document would be too expensive.
Standardised and cost-effective printing allows better communications, reduces errors, and simplifies the filing of information.
Moreover the produced documents have laser printer quality, improving the overall readability of the documents and the quality of faxes.

5) Streamlined workflow for printing, e-mailing and faxing iSeries documents.
Validoc is an integrated software able to handle the whole document processing, from creation to format conversion, storage and transmission. This means that it is possible to save a considerable amount of time, achieving a higher quality result! Let Validoc handle the document life cycle and stop waiting for that fax transmission receipt. Validoc is an investment that pays itself quickly thanks to the improvements in your company processes and immediate savings on documents handling operations.

6) Easy access to iSeries documents stored in your network. It is possible to turn simply and quickly and printout produced by Validoc into PDF and Tiff format, without any loss of information and formatting.
It is therefore possible to organise your storage automatically. You can instruct Validoc (through a simple configuration process) to save all the documents of a specific type, say “orders”, in a dedicated folder, filing them in appropriate subfolders organised by year, or by supplier, or by region, or by category of items ordered or whatever criteria you think is appropriate. Validoc handles the folders and subdfolders to allow several criteria to be applied at the same time. It handles as well proper file naming accordingly with user-defined criteria.
All this happens automatically whenever you print a document.

7) Mailing savingsIn recent years “poste Italiane” developed a successful service called “Postel”. The aim of this service is to reduce costs related to printing, envelopes handling, stamping and other mailing-related operations.
Validoc can handle the whole process that starts with the print command and can take different routes: fax or e-mail or traditional mailing or direct integration with Postel services or any combination of these options.
For each document to be transmitted you can decide with a single command which route it must be directed to, whether it is the inexpensive e-mail, the cheap fax or the old, expensive but sometimes still necessary paper mail the decision is up to you. But once the decision is taken Validoc handles the whole process and delivers the document to the proper interface without further user intervention. Validoc modules.
VALIDOC has 5 distinct modules: Printing, Extract, PDF-Tiff, E-mail and Fax.
We will now point out some key point for each of them.
PrintingThis module adds to iSeries printing graphical layouts, being therefore able to make multiple copies printing of orders, DDT, production documents and so on. The graphical layouts can be created with any Windows-based graphical software; they are then imported into the iSeries and dynamically integrated in the printed documents. This module converts the fonts, the styles, the size (both LPI and CPI); it can operate on the whole document or just a part of it. Moreover the module can be used to print bar-coded labels, even using printers that do not support them natively. It is possible to “remap” the printout, that is redefine its contents (by adding variable or constant text, omitting some parts, copying data from different portions of the document, automatically number pages (also in the format “page x of Y”).
All this can be configured and differentiated for different copies of the document. The configuration is performed directly on the iSeries and uses a graphical preview to show how the document will look like.
Moreover it is possible to setup several conditions to apply automatic formatting parameters. Conditions can be based upon the contents of the document itself, external data, exit values provided by external programs, user data, queues, module-related information, number of the copy and many more. The same set of conditional formatting options are supported by all the 5 modules of validoc.
PDF-TiffFormat conversion moduleThis module converts the output of the “printing” module (both text and graphics) into standard PDF or TIFF files. It can automatically divide a single spool into different files, accordingly with several user-defined parameters. The output files are automatically saved on your server taking advantage of the full support to the filing and folder managing rules defined in the system to automatically build and keep up to date a hierarchy of folders.
E-mailThis module substitutes all the classical shipping systems such as mail and postel. The module can send PDF, TIFF or TXT documents produced by other Validoc modules as an e-mail attachment. It works fully automatically and follows all the formatting and shipping rules defined into the “Validoc” system. FaxThis module allows faxing of graphical files produced by other Validoc modules. It has all the functions you can expect form a full-featured fax software, such as automatic fax sending, ability to create different cover pages accordingly with several parameters, ability to select which version of a document must be sent, ability to divide in different fax sessions the documents contained into a single spool file, configurable scheduling, automatic management of retrial should a transmission problem arise and so on.
You do not need external faxing programs any more, such as WinFax and ZetaFax. The fax modules (as well as the e-mail module) operate on the PC side and they both provide a convenient user interface to filter and manage any transmission status and information so that it is possible to have with a few clicks an overview of the shipping progress and of any transmission problem.
ExtractThis iSeries-based module allows structured extraction of data from printings. It is possible to extract portions of the documents and send them to a receiving service on the iSeries or on a pc file in excel format. This allows further data manipulation, such as queries and statistics on the extracted data. This module can operate even without the support of an EDP manager and in those environments in which it is not possible to modify the installed software.