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