Owner: Teckh URL:http://www.teckh.com Join Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 09:56:00 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Where Tech meets Nology. Technology related news, reviews and opinions. Site statistics:Click here
500 Joost Invites and Counting 2007-05-07 16:12:30 I have given out close to 500 invites to Joost
since it went unlimited. I am just wondering when they are going to open up the flood gates and let the rest of the currently uninvited world in. Hopefully soon.
A new version of Joost was just released labeled the friends edition. I am assuming the naming convention is due to the inclusion of truly unlimited invites (was actually 999 in the previous version). If you are still fishing for an invite check out my invite post and maybe someone will hook you up.
On a related note, Joost has a number of nice to use keyboard shortcuts for those of us that prefer to use the keyboard:
Windows
Mac
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Updated WM6 Dash 2007-05-05 00:20:14 I updated my T-Mobile Dash (AKA HTC Excalibur) to Windows Mobile 6 today. The dash is the first phone in the US to have WM6. The upgrade was provided free of charge from the T-Mobile site.
The actual upgrade process was very simple and took no more than about 15 minutes. I did however initially have one problem. When trying to run the upgrade program, I was repeatedly getting a connection error which was solved by a complete reboot of the computer and phone.
First impressions of WM6 are good. It really does not seem a lot different than WM5. One thing I did notice is that Yahoo mail service is now integrated, despite the fact that I do not have a Yahoo premium account with pop access, I was still able to access my mail in the same way that I do my G-Mail account. I will give a full write up and review in a future article.
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Unlimited Joost Beta Invites. 2007-05-01 21:38:32
**UPDATE** I will not be personally filling any more requests after comment 420. Anyone I have already invited, please feel free to fill those requests after that point and comment to say you have done so. Please do come back and check out my blog and if you are feeling so inclined, please visit our sponsered links.
Joost
announced today that current beta testers (of which I am one) will be given an unlimited number of invites to the service. This makes it sort of an unofficial launch, as invites were in limited numbers previously. Here’s the exert from the BBC news story:
Joost, the on-demand online video service backed by the founders of Skype, has launched commercially.
The internet television service boasts more than 150 content channels - from cartoons to music videos and films.
Services like Joost may change the way viewers consume media and revolutionise the business model of broadcasters.
Until now Joost could be watched by just a few thousand testers. These will now
Where do you turn for Help? 2007-04-30 21:24:59 Unfortunately I can’t say that I know everything about everything. But, I do know a couple of resources to find answers to my questions. I use, or have used the following services for solutions to my problems:
Tech Support Guy Forum - A great resource with lots of active users. If I have a PC problem this is the first place I go. Simply search the forums, as chances are if your having a problem, somebody else is having the same issue. If you cannot find a thread with a similar problem/solution, just create one. There are many smart users on this site with a great wealth of information to share.
Qunu - An interactive help service. You can find experts in many areas who donate their time to assist you with your problem. Its a one-on-one help service provided free of charge.
Yahoo Answers - The use of this one is debatable as I have seen some really good answers to questions provided by very smart users and then I have seen some junk answers provided by complete idiots. I
DRM Free Music….Good but not Great! 2007-04-25 20:43:22 Its about time the mega music corporations of the world who sell us our overpriced music started listening to its customers and realized that DRM is getting them nowhere. Its a complete pain in the ass that I can only listen to music that I purchase from the iTunes music store on my iPod and no other portable player (not that I don’t love my iPod). Or that I am unable to purchase music from an all you can eat subscription service such as Napter or Rhapsody and listen to those tracks on my iPod. DRM has caused a complete mess and done very little to curb piracy. Just look at any of the many torrent sites out there and you will find pretty much any music you choose. Pirates will always find away around the restrictions so why hurt the consumer by adding more?
Finally we are seeing DRM free music from the big players not just the smaller companies, who long ago realized DRM was not the way to go. Apple, EMI and Amazon are some of the big names announcing they will either be re Read more:Music
, Great
iTunes Podcast Problem 2007-04-24 19:33:11 iTunes
is my music player of choice. Its easy to use interface, powerful features, ipod integration and integration with services like lastfm and ilike make it a valuable piece of software. I also use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts, well vidcasts (or whatever your preferred naming convention), however I am having a small issue.
For some unknown reason (at least to me) iTunes downloads multiple version of the same podcast. For example the Diggnation episode from April 11th, is displayed twice in the podcast list. I have posted my problem on the following forums:
Apple Support
Tech Guy
Extreme Tech
I have yet to get a response from any of these sources. Lets see if anyone can solve my problem. Any ideas?
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Joost Beta Invites 2007-04-23 23:48:08
I have been using Joost
since it was known as the Venice project. For those of you that are unaware of Joost, it’s a full screen P2P streaming video application for both windows and OSX. The service is currently in beta and is invite only.
I have a total of five invites to give away. The first five requests (please include e-mail address) in the comments will get the invites.
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Destroying the Battlefield Franchise 2007-04-19 20:03:14 I have played the battlefield franchise games all the way back to Battlefield 1942 and was a hugh fan of the desert combat mod. I played in tournaments for Battlefield Vietnam, Battlefield 2 and 2142 so I know my way around these games. Recently BF2142 has a taken a turn for the worse. Since the release of the game, it has been plagued with bugs, exploits and major outage issues.
I have personally had the following issues:
I had to reinstall the game due to an invalid CD Key error after a software update. I do have a valid copy and had been playing it for a couple of months when this happened. I tried everything other than a reinstall to get around this issue. This sucks in itself but what makes it worse is that I purchased the game through EA’s download service, EA Link, and had to re-download the entire game.
Punkbuster! I understand the need to protect a game from cheaters. If the cheaters had their way the game would certainly be unenjoyable to play. However,
I Love a Good Scam 2007-04-13 21:23:17 One of the latest variation’s on the Nigerian scam appeared in my mail box yesterday. This one stoops to a new low, informing me that a potential relative and his family died in a recent Greek place crash. There is a link to the BBC news coverage included. Very convincing…NOT! I still find it hard to believe that people fall for these things, but I guess its that one in a million idiot sending money that means I have to keep getting them in my mail box. For some reason they do a pretty good job of getting passed the spam filters.
Dear Doyle,
I am Barrister Author Rufus from London. A solicitor at law, I was the Personal attorney to late property magnate,Mr Mark Doyle who died in Greek air crash with his wife Maria and their only daughter Andrea.No survivors in Greek air crash. All 121 people on board a Cypriot airliner are feared dead after it plunged into a hill near Athens after an apparent drop in cabin pressure. Please go through this website http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/
Google Changes Analytics Reports 2007-05-08 21:06:21 Goggle today launched a change to their GoogleAnalytics
reports. The new reports do look much nicer than the old versions. The average time on site is a pretty interesting statistic. Mine is only 01:24. Please stay longer, I am begging you!
Another nice feature is the ability to create a custom dashboard page using a nice drag and drop interface. Take the tour.
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Trojan Virus Spoofs Windows Activation 2007-05-08 20:54:35 A new trojan virus does a pretty good job of disguising itself as a windows activation. Of course minus the spelling error, a lot of people are likely to fall for this one. Let your friends and family know. Never give your credit card details to anyone soliciting information…even if it appears to be or is Microsoft.
[via CyberNet]
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Backup Solution 2007-05-08 19:24:28 My XP box crashed on me at the end of last week. In the carnage I realized that my backup was not as current as I would have liked. In fact it was almost a month out of date. A pretty useless backup at this point.
In order to fix my problem I needed to reload the OS so decided it was time to take the plunge and install vista. The thought had been in the back of my mind for a few weeks and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. The only real install problem I ran into was due to RAID drivers. I have a couple of 74GB raptor drives set up in RAID 0. It’s a great system that I wanted to carry over into Vista. The original RAID drivers supplied by my motherboard manufacturer (DFI) were not vista compatible. After searching the help forums I was eventually able to find some 3rd party drivers with some very complex instructions. I was however eventually able to get it all running.
With a new OS in place, its time to implement a new backup system. One that actually wor Read more:Solution
Stop Firefox Resizing Windows 2007-05-10 22:39:22 Don’t you hate it when certain websites resize your firefox window to suit their specific needs? I know I do. This becomes very apparent when stumbling. About 1 in 20 sites want to resize the window.
There is however a fix for this problem:
Under firefox preferences, select the content tab.
Click the advanced button next to ‘Enable Javascript’.
Uncheck the ‘Move or resize existing windows’ box and you are good to go.
A simple fix to an annoying problem.
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ABC TV Shows On Your Sprint Phone 2007-05-16 00:01:18 According to PC World Sprint
and ABC have partnered to broadcast shows to your cell phone. Sprint will charge $20 a month to watch their crappy shows on a screen the size of your thumbnail. We all know that this plan will fail miserably, why don’t they? Especially when anyone can get on iTunes and purchase a show for $1.99, why would you want to pay $20 a month for the same? You would have to purchase 10 TV shows that month to make it worth it when compared to iTunes. Normally there are 3 maybe 4 new episodes of any given show in a month so if you have one favorite show that you like to watch on a tiny screen you’re getting ripped off.
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Add an IP filter to uTorrent in Vista 2007-05-15 00:05:44 If you’re using Windows Vista
you might know that Phoenix Lab’s PeerGuardian doesn’t work. So if you like knowing that fewer people are able to spy on you while you are downloading the latest version of Linux Mint or those songs from Nine Inch Nails off of The Pirate Bay, you should add this ipfilter.dat file to uTorrent
for some relief.
1. Download the file to C:UsersusernameAppDataRoamingutorrent.
2. Open uTorrent
3. Click Options
4. Click Preferences
5. Click Advanced
6. Make sure ipfilter.enable = true
If ipfilter.enable was false you will have to restart uTorrent after changing it to true.
Viola, now your neighbor without the computer is more likely to get that letter from the RIAA.
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Giveaway of the Day (PC Edition) 2007-05-14 21:34:59 I have previously used a number of mac sites that have a similar model to Give Away of the Day including the wonderful and enjoyable Mac Heist. It’s a pretty simple concept, they offer a new piece of software for download every 24 hours (or something longer) for free. In return you give them nothing, nada, zip!
The software on offer must be downloaded and installed within the allotted 24 hour time frame and although might not appeal to everyones tastes, you certainly can’t beat free. As an example, the item listed today ‘Elprime Media Recovery’ usually retails at USD55.00 from their site http://www.elprime.com. Downloaded from Give away of the day today, and its your for the price of free.
I like this so much, I have added their widget to the sidebar of this blog. You can count me in anytime when it includes getting something for nothing.
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Rootkits Used To Beat DRM 2007-05-14 03:46:48 Mark Russinovich, the guy that discovered the Sony rootkit, did a little digging into why he believes a couple of popular virtual CD applications use rootkits. Alcohol and Daemon Tools both use rootkits to trick the DRM into thinking it is a real drive not a virtual one.
From the blog:
CD burning and emulation software companies owe a significant amount of their sales to customers that want to store games on their hard drives. The legitimate claim for doing this is that it enables fast, cached access to the game., though it is well known that this is also used to make illegal copies of games to share with friends - so content-protected CDs and DVDs present a challenge the companies can't ignore. One way to deal with the problem is to re-engineer the software that interprets the data stored on the media, but that approach requires enormous and on-going resources dedicated to deciphering changes and enhancements made to the encoding schemes.
An easier approach is to fool game DRM soft Read more:Rootkits
Free Incoming Calls On T-mobile 2007-05-14 01:44:00
This tip comes courtesy of one of my favorite pro-consumer sites, Consumerist. By combining a T-mobile My Faves plan and an account from GrandCentral.com you can get free incoming calls to your cellphone. I have personally set this up and it works great!Here’s the basics:
1) Be a T-Mobile customer with a My Fave 5 plan
2) Sign up for Grand Central
3) Set Grand Central so that Grand Central forwards to your T-mobile cellphone
4) Add the Grand Central number to your “Fave 5″
5) Give everyone your Grand Central number.
You really can’t beat free!
[via Consumerist]
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Alt Key Character List 2007-05-18 17:42:12 If you have ever needed to put a special symbol into a document you were writing but you couldn’t remember the key combination so you ended up going to the Character
Map in Windows then look no further than this list. It’s a great reference; print it, bookmark it, tattoo it to your arm or whatever you want to do.
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SQL Injection Cheat Sheet 2007-05-18 03:49:46
(image from MSDN stopping a SQL
injection attack)
If you are at all interested in the world of SQL vulnerabilities then this cheat sheet is for you. Whether your intentions are good or bad, this is a great reference. I am a man of many hats at my workplace, and overseeing a small but important set of databases is one of those hats. So this cheat sheet is very informative. I get a look into the world of those identity thieves you hear about on a near daily basis. I almost wanted to call them hackers but they really aren’t, most are using programs or cheat sheets like this that the real hacker made. If you aren’t familiar with what a SQL injection attack, Wikipedia can help.
SQL injection is a technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application. The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereb Read more:Injection
, Cheat
Mac Zoom 2007-05-17 21:57:40 This is an oldie but a goodie (at least for me). If you have OSX 10.4.8 or newer (doesn’t everyone by now?), you have a built in screen zoom feature you probably never knew about.
The option can be found in the mouse preference panel. Ensure the box that says “Zoom using scroll wheel while holding” is checked (it is by default). You can change the key from Control to either option or command.
Now when you hold down that key and either scroll with your mouse wheel, or for those of us using a laptop, use the two finger scroll on the trackpad, you can zoom in and out of the screen. Like everything else in OSX, the zoom is super smooth and does a great job of smoothing all those rough edges.
Use it to impress your Windows friends or enlarge those naked dwarf pictures you keep “accidentally” running across. Your fooling no-one!
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Trillian is Adding Widgets 2007-05-17 03:39:17 A couple of days ago on the Trillian
blog they announced they are adding widgets to the newest version of Trillian coming out, Trillian Astra.
In Build 42, you will see a more pervasive presence of our “Social Widgets”. Unlike other ordinary widget engines, Social Widgets from Trillian Astra focus on more than just grabbing RSS feeds and rendering news clippings on your desktop. The major goals of Social Widgets are twofold:
1. Bring dynamic information from the web straight to your desktop or contact list, in multiple view modes and with many different options.
2. Empower you to share and broadcast information about yourself with your contacts and the public, in a privacy-controlled and secure manner.
I must say that Trillian Astra looks great. I am excited for it’s release since I use Trillian as my center for the IM universe but I don’t need another piece of software to clutter up my desktop with widgets that tell me what time it is and how the weather is out
Latest PLAYSTATION 3 Firmware Update v1.80 2007-05-23 15:59:02 If you follow the news you know that the Playstation 3 is doing Sony a bit of disservice to their name. This latest firmware update will certainly make the current PS3 owners happy, it may help motivate the reluctant people to purchase one. The best thing they could do is lower the price to where it is actually competitive but that is old news to all of you I’m sure. Below is a list of some of the features that show someone at Sony knows what gamers like to be able to do with their systems.
Upscale games and movies to 1080p
SCEA is enhancing the PS3 user experience by enabling PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games to be upscaled to HD resolution, up to 1080p. Classic games as well as recently released titles can now be enjoyed like never before. And PS3 system now has the capability to upscale DVD videos to HD quality (up to 1080p), a feature typically limited to top-of-the-line DVD players. Upscaling games requires an HDMI or component AV cable, while upscaling DVD-ROM (including Read more:Firmware
, Update
File Sharing Between OS X and Vista 2007-05-22 16:39:22 Here is a great tip I found in the MacTalk forums
To enable Windows Vista
to connect to Mac OS X with Windows File Sharing
enabled, you will need to change the following policy in Windows Vista:
1. Click the Start Orb, type gpedit.msc into the Start Search field, and press Enter
Click the Continue button on the User Account Control prompt.
This will launch the Group Policy Object Editor for the Local Computer Policy.
2. In the Group Policy Object Editor, expand:
-> Computer Configuration
-> Windows Settings
-> Security Settings
-> Local Policies
-> Security Options
3. Open the ‘Network security: LAN Manager authentication level’ policy and change the Security Setting to:
Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated
4. Click the OK button to save changes, and then close the Group Policy Object Editor.
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Windows Vista Shortcut Keys 2007-05-21 18:06:25 Microsoft has a very helpful page on their site with all of the shortcut keys available in WindowsVista
. Below are a few of my favorites.
Windows key+X - Opens Windows Mobility Center
Ctrl+Shift+Esc - Task Manager
Ctrl+Shift+Enter - Runs an executable with elevated privileges
Windows key+Spacebar - Brings all gadgets to the front and select Windows Sidebar
Windows key+1-0 - Launches the shortcuts on the Quick Launch toolbar
Windows key+T - Cycles through programs on the taskbar
Windows key+Tab - Cycles through programs on the taskbar by using Flip 3-D
Ctrl+Windows key+Tab - Use the arrow keys to cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Windows Flip 3-D
Ctrl+Alt+Del - Tasks Screen
Windows key+G - Cycles through Sidebar gadgets
Windows key+X - Opens Windows Mobility Center
Full list of Windows Vista
Shortchuts
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PSP’s killer App? 2007-05-27 07:02:27 Sony’s Playstation Portable (PSP) is an awesome piece of hardware and has the best looking screen of any portable gaming machine. But its always been lacking that something special. It never had that killer app to drive sales. I purchased a PSP at release and traded up for Nintendo’s DS Lite. Great hardware only gets you so far!
But maybe the killer app is on the way. Sony has announced the PSP will offer VoIP calling and video conferencing. The services was created by British Telecom (BT) and is currently limited to the UK (maybe a hack or proxy could fix that limitation?) and will initially be limited to calling/conferencing with other PSP owners and select BT lines while using BT’s wireless hotspots.
Although the limitations are a big drawback the fact that using the new PSP camera and microphone is possible its only a mater of time before it either officially launches in the US or someone puts together an “un-official” solution.
More details will
Amnesty Generator - Turns Web Gadgets Into Windows and OS X Gadgets 2007-05-25 18:21:44 There is a great freeware tool I came across that is really nice, you can turn any of your widgets that you might use on your blog or on myspace into a widget/gadget in Windows
Vista and OS X. The tool is AmnestyGenerator
. So far it works pretty well, I haven’t tried it with all of the different things I have on my Google homepage yet though. From the website:
Amnesty™ Generator 0.9b
Easily convert millions of web widgets, games and videos – designed to live on home pages, blogs or MySpace – into gadgets for your Sidebar. If you like widgets on the web, you’ll love them on your Sidebar.
[Windows Vista Download] [Mac OS X Download]
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Facial Recognition In Google Image Search 2007-05-30 16:24:15 Google Blogoscoped discovered a neat little trick in the Google image search. If you add &imgtype=face to the end of your search your results will only be of people. I imagine soon enough you can show it a picture of a person and have Google search for all images of that person through it’s recognition software. Is Google moving in the right direction or are they getting a little bit creepy?
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, Recognition
, Image
, Search
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Circuit City’s Horrible Game Policy 2007-05-30 12:24:44 Circuit City’s policy regarding new video games truly stinks. Circuit City now advertises in their weekly advertisement that games are guaranteed instore at 2pm on the day of launch or you get a $20 gift card. At initial glance, this looks like a great policy, however it has a few unspoken rules:
To qualify for the $20 gift card the game must not have been received instore at all. This means that if you stop by Circuit City at 2:05pm and they are sold out, no $20 for you. Note it says guaranteed instore by 2pm, which technically it was. You just showed up too late.
You can not purchase the game until 2pm on that day. I know this because today I went to Circuit City to purchase Forza 2 for the 360 and was told they have a whole bunch in stock but the computer was not allowed to sell them until 2pm. This policy confuses me. they basically have something but do not want to sell it to me. It’s not like there was a line of people waiting or other stores did not have it on Read more:Circuit
, Policy
, Circuit City
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