All Entries In Tech Links Category
By Once upon a time there was a printer who lived in the woods. He was a lonely printer, because nobody knew how to configure him. He hoped and hoped for someone to play with.
One day, the wind passed by the printer's cottage. "Whoosh," said the wind. The printer became excited. Maybe the wind would be his friend!
"Will you be my friend?" the printer asked.
"Whoosh," said the wind.
"What does that mean?" asked the printer.
"Whoosh," said the wind, and with that it was gone.
The printer was confused. He spent the rest of the day thinking and jamming paper (for that is what little printers do when they are confused).
The next day a storm came. The rain came pouring down, darkening the morning sky and destroying the printer's garden. The little printer was upset. "Why are you being so mean to me?" he asked.
"Pitter Patter, Pitter Patter," said the rain.
"Will you be my friend?" the printer asked shyly.
"Pitter Patter, Pitter Patter," said the rain, and then it left and the sun came out.
The printer was sad. He spent the rest of the day inside, sobbing and blinking lights cryptically (for that is what little printers do when they are sad).
Then one day, a little girl stumbled into the printer's clearing in the woods. The printer looked at this curious sight. He didn't know what to think.
The little girl looked up at him. "Will you be my friend?" she asked.
"Yes," said the printer.
"What is your name?" asked the little girl.
"HP 4100TN", replied the printer.
"My name is gnome-cups-manager" said the little girl.
The printer was happy. He spent the rest of the day playing games and printing documents, for that is what little printers do when they are happy.
I have just recently discovered this article on Lifehacker that details some of the best free add-ons for Explorer in XP to improve functionality. They include add-ons that enable tabbed browsing, folder breadcrumbs and real thumbnail icons.
Windows Reference is a very useful site full of articles, tips and advice for all Windows users. One of the most recent articles posted is a list of over 20 common problems and solutions for them.
I'm off roleplaying so click here for 25 top high-tech pranks to pull on your buddies.
Firefox 3.0 has been officially launched today. Some of the old add-ons from Firefox 2.0 still don't work with 3.0 so I would recommend that if you have an add-on that you desperately need then check and make sure that it's compatible with 3.0 first.
European users can download Firefox 3.0 from here. The US site still lists 2.0.0.14 as the latest version.
You can check add-ons here.
It's definitely more stable and less of a memory hog than previous versions and I would recommend upgrading to 3.0 to everybody and I would also recommend Firefox over Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.
I've found a rather cool piece of freebie software: SUMo.
From the website:
SUMo, which stands for Software Update Monitor. Thanks to SUMo you'll be able to keep your PC up-to-date by using the most recent version of your favorite software! Unlike built-in auto update features, SUMo tells you if updates are available before you need to use your software.
FreeApps.co.in is a website that lists a variety of free applications intended for a variety of purposes. I can heartily recommend Pidgin (or it's MacOSX equivalent Adium), Audacity, FileZilla, Firefox, Foxit Reader, Open Office, VLC and µTorrent. I'm actually going to download Scribus; a free DTP package, and see if it's any good.
Those awfully nice people at Avanquest and VNU have teamed up to give readers of Computer act!ve magazine a free copy of VCOM Fix-It Utilities 7 Express.
The download is available from here and then you will need to visit here to register with a valid email address.
Computer act!ve also provide a variety of other software downloads which can be perused here.
As part of a promotion meant exclusively for readers of VNU, ComputerActive and Personal Computer World, Avira is giving away a free 6-month license for Avira AntiVir Premium.
Visit the Avira Online Shop to register for the key code and then download Avira AntiVir Premium (for Windows 2000, XP, XP 64 Bit, Vista 32 Bit and 64 Bit) from here.
Nokia's N-Gage site has finally gone live. Currently, only the N81, N82 and N95 are supported. Support for the N73 and N93 is coming soon. However, it only works with the latest version of the N95 firmware so I had to update my firmware first.
Previous experience has taught me that updating the firmware on the N95 blanks the phone's settings, contacts and stored messages. I made sure I backed up the phone first and, after having something to eat, the phone's firmware was updated. I restored my backed up content and installed the N-Gage application onto the phone. There's not that many games available on N-Gage at the moment but it looks promising.
Some of the extra icons that were previously proliferated around the interface have been removed and integrated into other menus with no apparent way of restoring them back to the way they were on the old layout. An annoyance rather than a problem though.
PortableApps.com is a really useful site that I can highly recommend to anybody that has a need to have a collection of applications handy. It's especially handy if you're going to look at somebody's PC and you want to use software that you're familiar with. The Standard version will run from a 512mb USB stick, their Lite version will run from a 256mb USB stick and the totally stripped down Base version will run off a 1.44mb floppy disk. All 3 versions are easily extendable with other applications available from the same site.
Another Firefox plug-in that I can recommend is PicLens. PicLens transforms your browser into a full-screen "3D Wall" that lets you view images on the web by letting you effortlessly drag, click, and zoom your way around a wall of pictures. PicLens currently works on Flickr, Smugmug, DeviantArt, Photobucket, Picasa, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Image search on Google, Yahoo, Ask, Live, AOL and a growing number of Media RSS-enabled web sites
I have recently came across arguably the best extension ever for Firefox. If you've ever used Opera there's a chance you'll have seen Speed Dial; which is a feature in Opera 9.2 which allows you to transform your top nine sites into visual favorites that are immediately available in any new tab. Now, Firefox has it's own version of Speed Dial and it works just like the Opera version. The really nice thing is that you can set it up as a start page in Firefox and then browse from there. I've got it set up with My Yahoo, Google, eBay, Facebook, MySpace and Online Banking sites along with a couple of others and can easily just click on an image to instantly go straight to that site.
I can also recommend a couple of other nifty Firefox extensions. BugMeNot tries to take the pain out of accessing free content on sites that ask you to register and Foxmarks is a bookmark synchroniser that is handy for keeping track of your bookmarks on multiple computers.
Up until today I've been streaming films and tv shows from the pc to the xbox to watch on the big tv. However, I switched on the xbox this morning to watch the new pilot for Knight Rider and the xbox couldn't connect to the pc. Normally, closing down the network component of windows media player would solve the problem when the service automatically restarted. But, not today. So, after about an hour of fiddling and getting nowhere I totally disabled media sharing in WMP and installed TVersity.
TVersity is a media server that lets you manage your Internet and home media and create a personalized lineup of channels, and then serves this media to a multitude of networked devices in the home or on the go; making your media available anywhere, anytime and on any device.
Devices that have been reported to work, through a variety of means, include:
- The Sony Playstation 3
- The Xbox 360
- The Nintendo Wii
- The Sony PSP (firmware 2.6 or higher) via its built-in web browser
- The Nokia 770
- The Nokia N800
- Terratec Noxon
- The Nokia N80 phone
- Xbox Media Center
- The Apple iPod via iTunes
Do you have a wee bit of spare cash squirrelled away for a rainy day? How about blowing it on a new PC? A Japanese firm; Zeus PC, is currently offering 2 fairly high spec pcs; namely the Jupiter and the Mars for the princely sums of ¥80,000,000 and ¥60,000,000 respectively. That converts to approximately £375k and £280k each.
Both include a 3Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, 1TB hard disk drive, a 256MB GeForce 8400GS graphics card, 24in LCD monitor and some decent Onkyo speakers. The Jupiter has a custom built jewel encrusted platinum chassis; whilst the Mars, comes in yellow gold.
Have a look at Gizmodo for more details and a translated link to their website.
Click is the BBC's flagship technology show and, in the UK, is broadcast weekly on BBC One and BBC News 24. Every week Spencer Kelly and the team cover the latest developments in the world of technology. The team review the latest gadgets and major tech news. Web highlights are covered by Kate Russell in the Webscape segment.
You can catch Click on the following days and times:
- UK Viewers:
Saturday
0645 BBC One / BBC News 24 (Short version)
1130 BBC News 24
Sunday
0430 BBC One / BBC News 24
0745 BBC News 24 (Short version)
1530 BBC News 24
Monday
0030 BBC News 24
- International viewers:
Click is also shown on the BBC's commercial and international channel, BBC World. Please visit BBC World for full scheduling details.
- On the website:
You can watch the latest programme online using the video link on the Click website. The programme will play in the BBC News Player. The internet edition of Click is always updated at 18:00 on Fridays.
Although some shops do manage to sell blank cds or dvds at reasonable prices the best deals are still to be found online; especially if you're buying in bulk.
I tend to check about 5 or 6 different sites before purchasing blank media and two of the sites that I use more often are:
Both have a large selection of media available and tend to be cheaper than the others more often than not. They also sell a number of other PC and general entertainment related items.
Consumer Electronics Show 2008
The biggest electronics show of the year has recently taken place in Las Vegas and you can check out various reports of what we can look forward to below.
Found a nice useful geeky site.
Meta
