Archive for July, 2008

When moving, copying, pasting, browsing, and getting information about your files feels like tedious work—and it can in the feature-sparse Windows Explorer—you need some power add-ons that can help. Instead of completely replacing Windows Explorer with an alternative file manager, you can pick and choose the extra features you want and add them piecemeal. Let’s take a look at some free power add-ons for Windows Explorer that make dealing with your growing file collection faster and easier.

Note: Installing every single one of these toolbars and add-ons may slow down Windows Explorer, so pick and choose the ones that give you the features you need.

QTTabBar Adds Tabs to Windows Explorer: Get the tabbed browsing experience in Windows Explorer with the QuickTimeTabBar add-on. Once installed, right-click on the Explorer toolbar and select the QTTabBar toolbars, which add both tabbing and other features, like access to recent tabs and file previews. QTTabBar works in Vista and XP with .Net Framework 2.0 or later. QTTabBar homepage, original post.

Explorer Breadcrumbs Adds "Breadcrumb" Folder Trail: Move up and down your folder hierarchy with ease by adding a "breadcrumb" folder trail to Windows Explorer. This little ditty is a a bit buggy—it didn’t work for Adam in his original tests, but it has worked for me—so proceed with that in mind. Explorer Breadcrumbs is a free download for Windows 2000 and XP, donations requested. Explorer Breadcrumbs homepage, original post.

Windows Explorer: Power Up Windows Explorer with Free Add-ons

Any iPhone or iPod touch running the 2.0 firmware can use a little speed boost when it comes to syncing, and some intrepid tweakers have found at least one no-pain way to boost syncing time, at least a little bit. To disable iTunes taking the time to send error or crash reports to Apple every sync, turn off automatic syncing (if enabled) on your phone/iPod, right-click on the unit in iTunes, and click "Reset Warnings." The next time you sync, your system will ask if you want to send the reports. Un-check the "Do not ask me again" option, hit "Don’t Send," and you’re good to go. It’s not going to eliminate the longer lags for application syncing, but it might help move things along.

Iphone 2.0: Turn Off Crash Reports to Speed Up iPhone Sync

Yesterday, CERT released a notice that many DNS vendors are vulnerable to a particularly evil form of DNS Cache Poisoning. Furthermore, there are companies like Road Runner which redirect you to spammy sites when you typo domain names instead of just reporting an error and letting your browser show a 404 or whatever.

There are better alternatives to getting 404s, dealing with a slow ISPs ability to fix their DNS, and even dealing with ISP’s who have sold out and are directing you to spam when you make an honest typo. I recommend OpenDNS. They are prebuilt with anti-phishing technology to help protect you from criminals, they don’t use ad-laden pseudo search engines that don’t help you at all, and they are fast. Finally, they were one of the only DNS providers who were not vulnerable to the latest security threat.

If you are looking to use a better DNS service that actually helps you then I suggest OpenDNS. It’s so simple to get started and they walk you right through it. It can be as simple as changing the DNS in your router or updating the DNS in your network settings on your computer.

Why you should use OpenDNS. | The OSM Blog

After the WWDC ‘08 Keynote, everyone wanted this iPhone game, it received almost as much hype as the iPhone itself. Super Monkey Ball from SEGA definitely has some good qualities, however it does have some bad qualities as well. First off, this game costs $9.99 which might be a little steep for some.

Super Monkey Ball sports some great graphics and almost proves itself as one of the best games created for the iPhone. There are over a 100 leves to play which means you might not get bored from this for a while.

So without further delay we would like to offer you the cracked version of this game. We would also like to inform you that this release has not been tested on jailbroken/unlocked iPhone’s running firmware 2.0 which is impossible at the moment for the lack of an unlock out there.

How do you install this game?

1. Make sure you are on firmware 2.0

2. Download the Super Monkey Ball Cracked game and extract the Monkey Ball.app folder to your desktop.

3) Copy Monkey Ball.app into /Applications via SSH and set it to 775

4) Create a folder called “Documents” in /var/mobile/ and set permission to 777

5) Reboot your iPhone // Kudos to iamheretostay for the find!

We have also launched a forum dedicated to sharing cracked iPhone apps. Please join us there.

Once again drop us a line if you like this release

Super Monkey Ball iPhone – Cracked | Haklabs

Whether you’re looking to change a video format to save space or because you lack a necessary codec, the freeware FormatFactory could be the last converter you’ll need. It’s not perfect, but it handles 12 types of video formats, six audio types, eight image formats, and DVD/ISO conversions with speed and accuracy.

The interface is simple and utilitarian, although spiked with format-icons and a big banner announcing the program’s name for no reason other than to put lipstick on the pig. The left navigation menu has collapsible links to the various formats you can convert to, based on type: video, audio, image, mobile device, and ROM device. Below the massive title banner, the central pane sports decorative icons until you start the conversion process.

Once you’ve selected your files, you can change the output quality to presets or custom settings. Hit Start on the Toolbar of the main window to begin the process, which is surprisingly fast for smaller video files. FormatFactory excels at batch conversion without error. It does, however, eat up much of your processor while it’s running even one conversion.

Because there are so many file formats out there and even more codecs, it’s likely that FormatFactory will fail to convert at some point. Nevertheless, FormatFactory is a solid, free, catch-all converter, with excellent tools–lacking only a more sensible interface.

Download

Featured Freeware: FormatFactory | Software news, tips and opinions from Download.com editors – Download.com

Windows only: Free application Glary Utilities performs vital maintenance on your system to keep it in tip-top shape. Glary Utilities performs six key functions, from optimizing your registry to clearing out that spyware you accidentally installed. The application also removes dangerous entries from your Start Menu, fixes invalid shortcuts, erases your web browsing and application usage history, and frees up space on your hard drive by deleting temporary files. Glary Tools was voted a user a favorite by many of our readers in our best Windows maintenance tools Hive Five, and with all these features and functionality, we’re not surprised. A free version of Glary Utilities is available for download for Windows only, though there is a professional version available for $39.95.

Glary Utilities

Featured Windows Download: Glary Utilities Optimizes Your Windows PC

Yesterday, the Live Mesh team surprised everyone by opening up the service to all and today they’ve gone mobile. That’s right – it’s official – the mobile portal is now available at m.mesh.com. From this mobile website, you can access all your meshified folders and files from your browser and read the news feed about the changes that have been made to the various folders. You can even add a new folder from m.mesh.com to your mesh, which can then be used to move your mobile content to – for example, images and videos you took with your mobile phone. There’s also a homepage link that can be used to create a Mobile Pictures folder for you. To see a bunch of screenshots of the mobilized version of Mesh, check out LiveSide, who broke the news (img courtesy of LiveSide)

Live Mesh Goes Mobile | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Turn your XNA projects into cash with Xbox Live Community Games.
Coming holiday 2008, Xbox Live Community Games will give XNA game developers (that’s YOU!) the opportunity to publish and sell their projects to millions of gamers worldwide via the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Here’s how it works. XNA game developers (again that’s YOU!) submit their titles to http://creators.xna.com for peer review. Once approved the games are then made available for sale on Xbox Live Marketplace for a price point that you set (between 200 and 800 points). You then receive up to 70% of the games total revenue!
So let’s say you create a game that you sell for 200 points (which is approx USD$2.50). The game is then purchased 10,000 times. That’s $25,000 in total revenue of which you stand a chance to receive up to 70% or $17,500!!! WOW!!
More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/ & http://creators.xna.com/

Make Money with Xbox Live Community Games | Nic Fillingham | Channel 10

Kevin over at Gamerscore Blog has the details:
I love getting achievements when I play games. I love having the same friends list shared between my PC games and my XBOX 360. And I love not having to pick games from a list of servers, but just having matchmaking that puts me into a game. And today, we made some announcements that are going to make that much more common in Windows games… Games for Windows – LIVE – our online multiplayer gaming service for Windows, now offers completely free multiplayer. No exceptions – multiplayer is completely free, even cross-platform gameplay with XBOX 360 users.
Full post: http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2008/07/22/560107.aspx
More info: http://www.gamesforwindows.com/live

Games For Windows LIVE is Now FREE | Nic Fillingham | Channel 10

Just a week and a half ago WordPress for the iPhone was announced with a pretty killer screencast detailing what you could do with it. Tuesday morning it finally showed up on the app store (download it here), and I’ve had ample time to play with it. The good news is that it’s very enjoyable to use and quite capable for creating posts on the go. The bad news? You’ve got to have an iPhone or iPod Touch to take advantage of it.

The key benefit to using this app is writing and publishing quick posts on the go. What I found after using it, though, is that it offers up far more to the discerning user who wants to use it as a very powerful publishing tool. You can upload photos either from your existing library or snap a quick shot with your phone’s camera. I can see this leading to many food-related photo blogs. Also nice is that whatever you write can be saved on your phone, so you can work on dozens of posts at once and only publish when you want. There’s also a great preview function that will show you what your post will look like without kicking you off to Safari.

I successfully connected two WordPress.com hosted blogs to the app in just a minute or two, although I ran into problems connecting my personal hosted blog that uses the software install from WordPress.org. It’s worth noting you’ll need version 2.5.1 or higher to hook it up to a hosted blog, although updating to the recently released 2.6 is definitely worth it for all those extra publishing goodies.

Read More …

WordPress app hits the iPhone fashionably late | Software news, tips and opinions from Download.com editors – Download.com

 

Mail Forward for Windows fetches mail from Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, POP or IMAP accounts and forwards it to any other email address reliably and without much fuss.

Pros

• Mail Foward forwards Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo!, AOL, POP and IMAP mail to any address
• You can have Mail Forward process mail periodically and automatically
• Mail Frward can forward mail from each account to a different address

Cons

• Mail Forward cannot work as POP proxy or IMAP server
• Accounts can’t be processed individually in Mail Forward
• For IMAP accounts, Mail Forward can only forward mail arriving in the Inbox

Description

• Mail Forward for Windows retrieves mail from Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, MSN, AOL, IMAP or POP accounts.
• The collected messages are forwarded to any email address — or more than one if desired.
• You can specify a special forwarding address for every account in Mail Forward.
• Mail Forward for Windows can delete retrieved mail from the original account or leave a copy.
• You can manually trigger forwarding or have Mail Forward do it automatically on a schedule.
• If an email forwarded by Mail Forward is undeliverable, it will be returned to the original account.
• Mail Forward for Windows works with custom, alternate or international domain names for web-based services, too.
• Mail Forward for Windows supports Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/3/XP/Vista.

Guide Review – Mail Forward for Windows 5.1 – Webmail to POP Tool

Of course, I have a Windows Live Hotmail account. And I have a Yahoo! Mail account, too. Plus a Gmail account. Add to this a number of POP and IMAP accounts, and you can picture what I go through each morning. Not any more!

Mail Forward for Windows is a simple, but very useful tool that lets you collect various email accounts at one address. Mail Forward retrieves messages from multiple Windows Live Hotmail classic, Yahoo! Mail, MSN, AOL, IMAP or POP accounts and forwards them to any other email address.

So you can get all your mail in one place (and one email program) and read it comfortably. You can have Mail Forward run in the background and it will process mail periodically and quietly.

Unfortunately, Mail Forward can’t act as a POP proxy or IMAP server, though, and doesn’t support downloading mail from arbitrary IMAP folders (other than the Inbox) accounts either.

Visit Their Web Site

Mail Forward for Windows – Webmail to POP Tool Review – About Email

Windows only: Free application DVD Catalyst Free rips videos from DVDs to device-friendly formats for your iPod, iPhone, PSP, PS3, Xbox, smartphone, and more in one simple click. Normally we prefer previously mentioned HandBrake for this job, but DVD Catalyst Free is much friendlier if a quick and simple rip is all you’re looking for. Either way, DVD Catalyst Free is worth a download. If it’s not quite what you’re looking for, check out our five best DVD ripping tools for more great ripping tools. DVD Catalyst Free is freeware, Windows only. A shareware version of DVD Catalyst is available if you need an expanded feature set, but the free version should be plenty for most

Featured Windows Download: DVD Catalyst Rips DVDs to Friendly Formats in One Click

Turn your PC into an iPhone web server.

Yoics makes is instantly possible (ok, it takes about 10 seconds) to view any folders on your computer from you iPhone. Even better the folders are viewable from any web browser, and shareable to anyone that you want, securely and privately. Watch the video.

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Yoics, Internet access (almost) anything

Windows only: Freeware application ToneShop creates ringtones from a variety of formats, for a variety of formats supported by most popular mobile phones (including the iPhone). To use it, just point ToneShop to the WAV, WMA, M4A, or MP3 file you want to use as your source, and then use ToneShop’s simple editing tools to choose the start and end time of your ringtone. Choose the output format supported by your cell phone, hit convert, and voilà—you’ve got a new ringtone. ToneShop could use a bit of polish on the interface, but as young as it is, it still makes it dead simple to create ringtones for your phone in just a few clicks. ToneShop is freeware, Windows only. If you’ve got a preferred ringtone tool that puts ToneShop to shame, let’s hear about it in the comments.   Download Now

Jott for iPhone is the ultimate mobile notepad that turns your voice into notes. Just tap the record screen and leave a note with your voice, Jott will then turn that note into text and add it to your Jott notepad or any of your lists. To get the same satisfaction of completing something on a paper list, cross off any item by swiping your finger across it on your Jott list. No matter where you are, now adding something to your notepad is as quick and easy as saying “Get strawberries for dessert.”

How does it work?

Download the free application at the Apple App Store. To record a note, tap anywhere on the screen to start recording, then tap again to end recording.

Your voice note will be converted to text and appear moments later in the Jott notepad on the iPhone. You can choose to receive an email copy of your notes in the Emails section of the Settings page on the web site.

Jott for iPhone notes can be organized into lists, prioritized, or crossed-off with the swipe of a finger. It also syncs with the Jott web site, so your lists are backed up. If you are a current Jott customer, your lists will be pre-loaded when you open the application for the first time. If you are a new Jott customer, a “To-Do” list will be added for you, but you can easily add your own custom lists on your iPhone or on Jott.com.

Jott for iPhone

One of the coolest features available in the new iPhone 2.0 software update is the ability to get new email messages, contacts, and calendar events pushed to your device automatically. The catch: If you don’t want to shell out $100 for MobileMe and you don’t have a Microsoft Exchange server lying around, you’re stuck pulling data or manually syncing it to your computer. But, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, you can set up push email and wireless contact and calendar syncing using the free Microsoft Exchange service Mail2Web.

What’s the Big Deal with Push?

If you’ve never carried a company-issue BlackBerry, you may be wondering what makes push so special. Let’s start with email: Without push email, your phone has to check in with your server every now and then to determine whether or not you’ve got any new email—it has to pull the email from your email server. With push email, your phone gets an alert as soon as new mail arrives—it’s pushed from the server to your phone as soon as it’s available.

Now if we extend that to our contacts and calendars, push functionality means instantaneous, wireless syncing of our contacts and events. If you add a new contact to your phone, it’ll automatically sync to the Mail2Web Exchange server and—depending on your setup—to your desktop application of choice. Likewise, if you were to tweak a contact’s email address on your desktop, you can sync it to Mail2Web and then wirelessly to your iPhone or iPod touch.

What Can I Expect?

You may not want to switch your email to Mail2Web just so you can get push email, or maybe you prefer using Google Calendar to the Exchange calendar you get with Mail2Web. The great part of this is that you can pick and choose exactly which aspects you want to use depending on your current setup. So when you’re done, you can choose to use any combination of the following features through Mail2Web:

• Push Email
• Push Contacts
• Push Calendar

Sound good? Let’s get started

Iphone 2.0: Set Up Push Email, Contacts, and Calendar on Your iPhone for Free

This morning we announced support for Netflix service as being built-in in an upcoming software update to 360 service. As C|Net points out, there have been some workarounds for this in the meantime, but this solution will allow you to stream natively and without a dedicated Media Center PC.
Also announced is a shared movie experience that will let you watch a movie at distance with up to 7 friends at once. Major Nelson promises more details on this later today.

It’s Official: Get Netflix on your Xbox 360 | Larry Larsen | Channel 10

This Video will take you through the steps to create an iPhone ringtone, which is just a 30 second or less AAC file with a m4r extension.  Watch the video a few times, and save yourself some cash.  –  David

YouTube – How to put ringtones in your iPhone for FREE!! (Easiest Way)

All of us iPhone fanatics are just getting our hands on the new apps, but I’ve already found one that I’m sure to consider indispensable within the next few months: Facebook’s new app.

Why is it so compelling? Because it almost eliminates the need to maintain a separate contacts list on my phone. While Facebook’s web app for the iPhone was cool enough, the native app basically transforms Facebook into a mobile directory with rich information about your friends.

If you’re even semi-serious about using Facebook to keep track of your friends, you may never have to click the “Phone” icon to dial them up. Just hit the Facebook icon and move over to the “Friends” tab. You’ll see all of your Facebook friends laid out, and when you click on their names, their contact info appears in the iPhone’s customary user interface.

Tap a friend’s phone number to call them (or hit their email address to write). The only time this method falls through is when a friend has decided not to enter the requisite contact info into their profile (something unnecessarily cautious, in my opinion, if you’ve set up your privacy settings correctly).

This application has the potential to eliminate the need for two other native iPhone features as well: SMS and Email. The app comes with Facebook Chat baked right in so you can send instant messages to friends who are currently online (either at their computers or on their phones). As soon as Facebook figures out a way to keep you “online” and available for chat even when the app is closed – and hooks Chat to the new push notification service so you’re aware of messages as they come in – I’ll be one step closer to saving that extra $10 per month I pay AT&T to let me send ludicrously overpriced text messages. Facebook should be working on a Chat-to-SMS (or Message-to-SMS) conversion feature that can be used to message with my friends who don’t own iPhones, or any other email-equipped smartphone.

As for email, Facebook’s messaging system is also built right into the app making it unnecessary to send lengthy messages through email (who wants to keep track of friends’ email addresses anyway when you can look them up by name?).

 

Read more ..

Facebook’s iPhone App (Almost) Replaces My Contacts List

If there’s one thing that Google Earth taught us, it’s that the stars never outgrow their mystery. For fans of the sky layer on Google Earth, there’s Starmap, an educational iPhone app that, unlike your laptop or desktop, you can easily take with you on a cloudless night to a nearby hilltop.

Pocket astronomers will find a screen that shows a sky full of planets, visible stars, named stars, galaxies, and nebulae, and coordinates that you can access and search for from an unobtrusive ribbon of icons. Sensitivity to the accelerometer tips the view vertically and horizontally, and you can pinch and pull the screen to get a closer look at the arrangement of the points of light.

It’s a fair and interesting start, if not a bit static, and the land-locked dreamer in me sees many more interactive possibilities as the tools and technology progress–like a real-time night mode that uses the camera as a telescope to automatically fix the star chart around you and a Wikipedia plug-in that spoon-feeds you information about what you’re looking at. You know, the kinds of extras you’d expect from Google Earth.

iPhone stargazers geek out with Starmap | Software news, tips and opinions from Download.com editors – Download.com

New iTunes 7.7 ready for download.  Do you know what is really sad?  Apply released a 64bit version day 1, and I am still waiting on a 64bit version for my Zune software? 

Apple – iTunes – Download iTunes

I got this little reminder in my email from Apple today.  Good thing they sent it, I would have not known.  

Apple – iPhone

Having third-party apps fill in the missing holes in iPhone’s functionality seems to be a genius idea, since Fonix has done the voice dialing legwork for Apple with their iSpeak app. The app consists of "a run-time engine that sits on the phone," which says always-running app to us, that can listen for names on your contact list and dial them. Also, you can look for songs in your music library by saying the name of the artist, song or playlist.

Iphone Application: iPhone Gets Voice Dialing With iSpeak

Many people will be going to the AT&T or Apple stores to get their iPhones only to be surprised that they will not get the 199 price, or they wont get the 3G.  If you have a current iPhone, and dont live in a 3G area, there is no reason to upgrade.  Go to the AT&T iPhone site and see if you qualify of the 199/299 prices, or if 3G is in your area.  

Other Links

AT&T iPhone site

Prepare for your purchase.

View 3G coverage in your area

View and print checklist

Find the location nearest you

iPhone 3G, Exclusively from AT&T and Apple – | Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular

I cant fight it any more.  I hate many things about Apple and the way they do business. The way the lock out developers and limit form factors to users, and stifle openness.  But, they made a damn good phone. I am now going to get on the iPhone band wagon, and make the iPhone part of the bigBrains universe.  I will start out with some of the obviose stuff and then get to the hacks and jail brakes.  I will start off with some of the Demos from Apple’s site.

Email on iPhone looks and works just like email on your computer. With support for popular email servers and providers — including MobileMe, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo! Mail, Google Gmail, and AOL — and most industry-standard IMAP or POP mail systems, iPhone puts email in your pocket.

Watch the demo

 

Apple – iPhone – Features – Mail