» Software

So you are a blogger and have been blogging for a while, have you ever think of more ways for people to access your blog anywhere anytime? One solution is to mobilize your blog using blog4mobile. With blog4mobile you can improve the accessibility of your blog through cellphone, PDA or any other wireless or mobile devices by storing the content of your blog through the URL of your blog plus your RSS feed URL into their database. One interesting difference between conventional RSS feeder for mobile devices and blog4mobile’s service is that blog4mobile displays not an extract of the content but the actual complete contents from the blog so therefore the readers are reading the contents in full instead of just bits and pieces of them. With this mobility, people can read their favorite blogs anywhere and anytime or when they don’t have access to computers with internet connections.

I also like the fact that instead of just pointing out the “goods” of its services, it honestly and openly lists potential issues and corresponding solutions that may arise such as reading some of the RSS files submitted and issues reading some special characters from some contents. The contents will also be promoted and blog users will receive up to 70% of the advertising revenue!

Another great feature of using blog4mobile is once your blog URL and feed URL are submitted, you don’t have to update them manually as the system will check for updates automatically everyday.

blog4mobile is definitely an innovative web service for bloggers looking to improve the level of accessibility for their readers and potential readers. And it cannot get any better than the fact that the service is free. Finally it also has its own blog for those interesting in news regarding the service.

For tech savvy users, they will probably know files with extensions such as .dmg, .dll, .dat, and .3gp are and what they are for. But on the other hand for the non tech savvy users, they are most likely clueless about them or these people might not even have a chance to come across any of these files. I suggest those and others that want to learn more about these extensions pay a visit to a site called file extension library which is an encyclopedia of the top 20 file extensions. Each file extension has its own sub page with its name as the first part of the URL (the link) such as the DOC files, notice the link is doc.file-extension-library.com? If you click on another extension, it will be [whatever-extension].file-extension-library.com which I find very neat and intuitive. Say if for example, I picked the file extension mp4, the page would be http://mp4.file-extension-library.com.

Sometimes your computer can be bogged down with orphaned files and/or drivers which greatly affect its performance and over time these files will accumute and may slow down the computer even more. Besides providing a detailed encyclopedia, file extension library also provides free scanning of your computer’s registry. It will perform deep scanning and “cleaning up”, if necessary, of your registry so that your computer can always stay “in shape”.

Today in Windows Vista Team Blog Corporate VP, Windows Product Managemet Mike Nash confirms the next Windows operating system or simply OS, will be named Windows 7. At first I thought it didn’t make sense why it would they should use the number 7. But he explains that since its the 7th generation for Windows OS (sorry I seriously didn’t know better, I lost count with so many of them), it makes sense to use 7 as part of the Windows’ name. I also agree with him that using words like XP or Vista didn’t really do the justice as well, they didn’t have too much meanings in them.

For once I agree with MS…..which is a first.

I was reading an article on cnet and I have to agree completely with what David Carnoy have mentioned about the present and future of the Sony PlayStation. The current PlayStation 3 has just started to take off with the lowered production cost (chip shrunk from 90nm down to 45nm) and with slightly more games worth purchasing. Sony should get back or at least break even from the investment and money lost from selling each console under cost when it first came out. That won’t be possible however, if Sony started researching on a completely new processor chip from the ground up as it would need to inject a huge chunk of money for research and development all over again, well before Sony could profit from the current console. Therefore it makes much sense for Sony to stick to the current chip design and modify it.

As a PlayStation 3 (60GB with Spiderman 3 Blu-ray DVD) owner since November 2007, I would prefer to hold on to this console for at least a few more years as oppose to buying a new console every 2 years because I’m just not ready to make another expensive purchase, just like most of us normal consumers who would like to make purchases at the cheapest possible price unlike the hardcore gaming fans who will rush to get new consoles/games on their very first release days. I too agree Sony should improve the current console, not just on the technical side but the look and feel of the console as well. The PlayStation 3 console is huge, though its surprisingly quiet. It would be great if its size could be reduced to the same side as the slim PlayStation 2. I think the slim version of the PS2 is one of the sleekest console of all time, if not THE sleekest. And I assume by the time it can be shrunk to that size, the price will drop as well?

Sony should ignore and forget about Microsoft from releasing an XBox 720 or XBox1080 (I personally like the name XBox1080 as it would match with the current Full HD format). Why? What happened to the earlier versions of the XBox360? Remember the infamous Red Ring of Death? How many times did someone you know had to send back the console for a repair or a new one? Don’t get me wrong, I am not a PS3 fanboy and certainly not here to bash XBox360, at least not in this article and I don’t see a point in bashing it anyway as I heard from people the newer versions are much more stable than the older ones. I just want to point out that history would repeat itself if Microsoft rushed into releasing a new console. And even if a new XBox is released with better graphic capabilities, its not all about the graphics. First if a game has great graphics but no actual playing value, the game would still not be worth purchasing, well most of the time. Take the Nintendo Wii for example, it doesn’t have the graphics compare to the XBox360 and PlayStation 3 but its the best selling console these days. The reason is because it is innovative and it suits a broader range of audience from non gamers, casual gamers and to the hardcore gamers. To me its basically a tweaked GameCube!

But then again, imagine what the PlayStation 4 can do with a completely new chip.

What do you think?

Have you ever experienced a scenario where one of your frequently used programs stopped working because one of your hardware’s drivers was out of date? And what are drivers?

Drivers are software that all the PCs need in order to communicate with hardware such as printers, fax machines and scanners. One example of such scenario would be for example, in PC gaming, say you had a video card and assume you never updated your driver except the time during the initial installation when you started using your current PC for the first time. You wanted to play a fairly new game, chances are you would need to update the driver of your video card. Without updating your driver, you would not be able to either start the game or play the game in a stable way.

Now you know that your hardware are constantly in need of the most up to date drivers, you might ask, is this going to be tedious work to check for new drivers for all your hardware? Uniblue’s driver update tool called Uniblue DriverScanner will help you do all the scanning. You can get the free trail version from their site as well which scans your entire computer’s hardware/devices and displays to you which drivers are out of date, up to date and the total number of drivers you have installed. Full version will allow you to download required/recommended drivers by clicking the “Download Driver” button. If you are worried that the new driver will cause problems to your computer, the scanner also gives you the option to backup all your drivers as well as ones you have selected to perform a backup. When something goes wrong, you know have the backup to restore to previous stable state.

With this software, you will not have to worry about which driver for which hardware is out of date. With a touch of a button, it will scan your entire computer and inform you which drivers need to be updated. Instead of letting your frequently used programs to tell you they need driver updates and stop you from using them, let this scanner tell you what you need to update before you use those programs.

Next time you want to buy a movie on the PSN, short for PlayStation Network, you might want to think again before you make the purchase. According to Sony, once you have purchased a movie, it can only be re-downloaded once and that’s with the assistance from SCEA’s consumer services. While I understand why Sony would want to implement such restriction on movies because of pirating/copy right issues. It is a major turn off for us consumers because we cannot keep what we rightfully purchased. Then what’s the point of purchasing online? Might as well buy the physical Blu-ray DVDs which you can watch anytime and don’t have to worry about re-purchasing them. I for one will continue to purchase physical Blu-ray DVDs for the foreseeable future.

And again it comes down to one question, even if there’s no DRM restriction on purchasing any content on PlayStation Network, do you rather have a stack of hard drive disks storing all your movies and contents or a stack of Blu-ray DVDs. I will go with the latter, at least for now and until someone invents affordable storage devices equal to or smaller than the size of a disc.

Source from: DaileyTech

After following Steel Frog‘s Photoshop tutorial called Dark Art that teaches you ways of creating freakish looking eye ball. The instructions are very clear and to the point even I found it easy to follow since I’m still a Photoshop beginner.

I created a quarter of Angelina’s face when I followed the tutorial a few days ago. Today I have alienized the entire face of Angelina Jolie with a some subtle changes plus a major skin texture change. At first I was planning to use the “blood veinish” texture on the lips only. And ended up pretty good on the entire face as well. I have also toned down the color of the eyes to make them look a bit more blend in to the rest of the face. Finally I have also changed the three “space scars” on her face with a different layer option called vivid light instead of pin light. Again experimenting with other options sometimes can end up with positive surprises.

Here is the pictures of my quarter face:

And the entire face: [click to enlarge]

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There are many people looking for solutions for downgrading from IE 8 back to IE 6 or 7. I actually stumbled upon this blog and found it very useful and thought I should share with you guys. The steps are clear to the point and easy to follow. I MIGHT downgrade to IE 7, but I want to see how much longer I can last with this buggy thing.

Things aren’t looking to go for IE8 Beta, I’m getting really annoyed with the incompatibilities while surfing different websites, specially when I’m in the middle of filling in data, if I press the Compatiblity View button, I lose all the data I typed in.

Uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
•From the Start menu, open Control Panel and click Add or Remove Programs
•Click Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and then click Remove.
•Your computer will be reverted to Internet Explorer 6 + previous IE6 security updates or Internet Explorer 7 + previous IE7 security updates depending on what you had before the upgrade.
•You can confirm that by clicking Help, then About Internet Explorer next time you launch Internet Explorer.
•Be sure to check for any new security updates.

Uninstalling Internet Explorer 8 in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
•From the Start menu, open Control Panel and click Programs
•Click Programs and Features and click View Installed Updates (located in the left side menu
•Select Windows Internet Explorer 8 and Uninstall
•Your machine will be reverted to IE7 + previous IE7 security updates
•You can confirm that by clicking Help, then clicking About Internet Explorer next time you launch Internet Explorer.
•Be sure to check for any new security updates.

From gHacks.net

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