If you’ve rode the bus, gone shopping or just been in a public area then the chances are you’ve touched the dreaded H1N1 virus. It was probably just some guy sneezing and then hundreds of people touched the same handrail as him. I guess that’s how it spreads. Then, you went home and turned on the family PC and typed out a blog post or just surfed. Now it’s all over the keyboard and mouse. Oh God! We’re doomed!
Not really, because at the end of the day it’s just like the normal flu and 99% of those infected can’t tell the difference and can simply ride it out in bed for a week or so.
However, a new UV germ killing wand has been released and claims it can massacre any H1N1 germs living on a surface. Well, 98% of them anyway. When it’s held a few inches over countertops and other surfaces it kills pretty much any germ living on there or renders them incapable of multiplying. It costs $70 from Hammacher and Schlemmer. Here’s what they said on the product page:
“Also capable of killing MRSA, mold, and dust mites, the UV-C light penetrates viral and bacterial membranes and destroys their DNA, rendering the microorganisms incapable of reproduction and survival. Unlike liquid disinfectants, UV-C light can sanitize keyboards, upholstered furniture, cell phones, or any delicate surface that harbors germs.”
Some may say this is exploiting the fears of millions – but then they’ll probably buy the thing.
Last summer Dell mentioned they were going to launch their tiny Inspiron Zine PC and now its here. It looks like an excellent addition to any home theater or desktop, especially if you configure it with a terabyte of hard disk space, 8GB of RAM, 64-bit Windows 7, a 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4330 graphics card capable of blasting out 1080p, and its upcoming optional TV tuner. Sounds like hot competition for Apple’s newly updated Mac Mini.
There’s no Intel Atom processor or the NVIDIA Ion platform on board as we had hoped, but we’re still satisfied with the highest-end processor available on it, the 1.8GHz dual-core AMD Athlon Neo X2 6850e. Decked out with all this goodness, the Zino’s not the cheapest home theater PC in the world, but its price of around $700 fully configured ain’t bad. Or if you go with its basic trim, you’ll have a fully functioning PC for a rock-bottom $229.
Gizmodo had an exclusive regarding the new Tablet PC from Microsoft. The tablet will be call the Courier and man does it look good.
The Courier is currently in “late prototype” stage of development and not exactly a tablet, its more of a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.
The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style.
It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications.
At this stage I’m getting fed up. Every day I open my inbox there are a dozen e-mails from colleagues and readers of the
various publications I write for including Crenk asking about the news or a new product. There’s always at least one talking about the supposed upcoming Mac Tablet.
‘What do you reckon will be included?’, they ask.
Honestly, I’m nowhere near 100% certain. Obviously you’d have a touch screen QWERTY keyboard, media centre of some sort and maybe even fingerprint recognition (I believe Apple have patented that idea).
In truth, only the bigwigs at Apple could tell us. And even then they would probably just numb our brains with pre-release jargon so we all buzz around the internet still asking ‘Ohh, what could it be?!’
My reason for writing this post is clear and simple. I want to know what you would like in a Mac tablet. Send us in your thoughts, opinions and ravings here at Crenk. Either leave a comment below of tell us on the Crenk Twitter.
They could be about anything – ‘when will it be released?’, ‘what features will it have?’, ‘how much will it cost?’, ‘what will it look like?’ and so on. I look forward to reading your replies.
Flash games are becoming more and more popular as internet speeds increase. Have you ever wanted to download those flash games and play them on your desktop without any annoying ads?
Here we’ll show you how to do just that. First how to download flash games to your PC and then how to play them offline. So if you’re hooked on some addictive flash game this guide should help you get it offline and play it on your desktop.
Download Flash Games:
Downloading flash games to your PC is a fairly easy process and there are lots of ways to do it. One way to get the game file is to look inside the page’s source code and find the direct link to the game file on the site. Another option is to wait for the game to load in your browser and later get it from the temporary files folder of your browser. Or you can just go to the site called File2HD and let it get the game file for you. We have already featured it earlier as a MP3 and video download tool for Myspace.
File2HD can help you download flash games from most of the online gaming sites. That being said, it doesn’t work with Kongregate, one of the best sites for Flash games. Althou I had no problems getting flash games from hugely popular sites like AddictiveGames.
So how does it work:
1. Go to the page with the flash game you want to download.
3. Set ‘Filter’ to ‘Objects’ option and click on ‘Get Files’ button.
4. Next, File2HD should retrieve the direct link to the game file.
5. Right click on the link an use ‘Save Link As’ option to save the game to your computer.
Play Flash Games Offline:
Once you have the game files on your system you can use a simple freeware program called FlashOffliner (Windows only) to take those raw .swf flash files, turn them into playable games, and neatly organize them under one menu.
Here are the steps you need to do:
1. Download and Install FlashOffliner.
The FlashOffliner setup comes with 2 games by default and 3 more that can be added later. If you want to install them as well then check step 4.
2. Once you have FlashOffliner up and running, you should see a new icon in the taskbar. Right click on the icon to see the list of available games and program options.
3. It takes two steps to add a downloaded flash game to your FlashOffliner games list. The first thing you need to do is click on the ‘Create New Flash Offliner Package’ and then point it to the downloaded file. Then you will be asked to name your new game and for a couple of more optional details. At the end it should create game_name.fop file for you.
4. Again right click on the FlashOffliner icon and this time select the ‘Install FlashOffliner Option’. Point the app to the newly created game_name.fop file to “install” the game.
5. This will install the game and add it to your FlashOffliner games. See screenshot below.
That’s about it, now you can simply click on the game of your choice and play it offline right on your desktop. By default the game window size is set to 800×600 but you can easily resize it to 400×300, 640×480, 1024×768 or Full Screen mode.
Now that you know how to take flash games offline check out our short post on best online flash games.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Dell has been developing a Mobile Internet Device (MID) based on Google’s Android operating system. The device is reportedly slightly larger than Apple’s iPod touch, with which Dell’s offering would presumably compete in many respects should it eventually be released.
Another person who was briefed on the company’s plans said Dell may begin selling the device later this year, though this person said the plan could be delayed or scrapped entirely.
The development effort is one of the first experiments by a big-name PC maker in a nascent category of products known as mobile Internet devices, or MIDs,which are designed to fill a perceived gap between mobile phones and laptop computers.
Dell is expected to use ARM processors for the new device, the same platform that powers the iPhone and iPod touch. Back in 2003, Dell introduced its “Dell DJ” music players to compete with the iPod, but the line was discontinued by the end of 2006.
Over at TorrentFreak they were the first to report on a new bittorrent startup like no other, BitBlinder. Most regular bittorrent users are always looking for the best way to hide themselves online and this just may be the answer.
BitBlinder is a new and free cross platform (Mac coming soon) open source project which not only claims to make anonymous BitTorrent transfers a reality but also hides your IP address while browsing the web. Its functionality also extends to the bypassing of some web filters and in the future will be compatible with more applications, such as email, IRC and instant messaging clients.
As one of its creators explains: “We want to make online anonymity fast, usable and ubiquitous to the point that organisations give up on spying and filtering us”.
It’s apparently not as fast as regular BitTorrent use, but it’s fast enough – and the key thing is that it’s free. Previously, using BitTorrent anonymously has involved paying to use a virtual private network (VPN). Among new features promised are the ability to avoid university and corporate firewalls, too.
The standard orientation of our computer screens is generally horizontal (also known as landscape) but monitors placed in portrait mode (where height becomes greater than the width) can be pretty useful for performing tasks that require lot of scrolling (like reading lengthy web pages).
Windows 7 includes a new option under Display Settings that can help you flip the screen from portrait to landscape mode (and vice-versa) without requiring additional software.
This may come very handy if you are using a dual monitor setup with Windows 7 where you want one screen in the default horizontal mode and other one in vertical mode for reading content.
Previously we have wrote a bit about upgrading and downgrading your Apple products. Today we wanted to run through the steps of downgrading your iPhone 3.0 firmware to 2.2.1.
Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC and select your iPhone from the list of devices in iTunes. If iTunes does not detect your iPhone then you will need to put it in DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode.
You can follow these steps to put your iPhone in DFU mode (this is required only if iTunes does not recognize your iPhone):
* Connect your iPhone to your computer.
* Turn iPhone off.
* Hold power and home together for 10 seconds (exactly).
* Release power but keep holding home until the computers beeps (observed on a PC) as a USB device is recognized.
* A few seconds later iTunes should detect your iPhone.
Browse the Summary Tab, For Mac user Hold down Option and press the “Restore” button. For Windows user hold down Shift and press the Restore button. Now you will be able to browse the folder where you have the iPhone firmware.Select the firmware & hit the restore button and cross your fingers for 5 minutes.
If you get error message like 1011, 1013, 1015, just ignore them(Actually the firmware 2.2 is already successfully installed). Fire Quickpwn 2.2.1 and jailbreak your iPhone use this guide
But if you encountered with error message like 1601, 1602, 1600 or anything else then try putting the iPhone into DFU mode and try again.
If you have an Unlocked iPhone then use pwnage tool to make a custom firmware then enter DFU and restore / downgrade to 2.2.1 if not works in first time done it again n again.
FileHippo.com is a great web site from where you can download a lot of freeware and some shareware. The page is organized in the following categories of software:
- Browsers and Plugins
- Anti-Spyware
- Audio and Video
- File Sharing
- Firewalls ans Security
- CD and DVD Tools
- Messaging and Chat
- Anti-Virus
- Cleaning and Tweaking
- Desktop
- File Transfer
- Compression and Backup
- Imaging
- Office and News
- Benchmarking
- Drivers
- Developer Tools
- Networking and Admin
And also two interesting categories, one is Latest updates and the other is Most popular downloads, very useful.
You can apply the following filters to the software shown: No Beta versions(very useful if you need stability) and Freeware Only(useful in my case, I don’t buy software).
And the best of the site(but still in beta) is that you can download a Client Agent program(called Update Checker) to maintain all the software that you install from this page to the latest version. You can download the Update Checker in two versions, Installer and Standalone.
I found this web page very useful to maintain all my freeware tools up to date. I’m actually using it at work, and found no issues.
The GOOD:
- Has a RSS, e-Mail and Twitter notification system.
Last week Techcrunch reported about how images of their new Tablet had leaked. This makes a big difference because it is normally Techcrunch who is the first to report on a leak. However in this case the team over at Techcrunch have been working on a new Tablet in which in essence is a giant iPhone.
The Tablet has been in development for the last six months or so, and it has really changed dramatically in design since the first prototype. This Tablet moves Techcrunch a little away from just being a technology blog and more towards a tech company with two arms, journalism and actual technology.
Amazon has launched on Tuesday a new video game download store. The site itself can be found here. The initial library offers over 600 games which are all under $10. All casual games are currently for the PC platform, but Im sure this will branch out in the near future.
The store allows customers to download and try any game for 30 minutes, after which point they may choose to pay for the full version.
“We have 88 million active customers who can appreciate the convenience of the true amazon shopping experience combined with the casual games experience,” Greg Hart, VP of video games and software at Amazon, told Kotaku.
While the service currently lacks some of the more popular casual games from top publishers, it will look to expand its selection.
Amazon recently acquired casual game developer Reflexive, which counts a library of over 1,000 games.
If you’ve rode the bus, gone shopping or just been in a public area then the chances are you’ve touched the dreaded H1N1 virus. It was probably just some guy sneezing and then hundreds of people touched the same handrail as him. I guess that’s how it spreads. Then, you went home and turned on the family PC and typed out a blog post or just surfed. Now it’s all over the keyboard and mouse. Oh God! We’re doomed!
Dear Readers,
Amazon has launched on Tuesday a new video game download store. The site itself can be 
