While a lot of Mactards scream from the rooftop about the stability of a Mac and how great it is for music and video production as well as graphic design, having used both Macs and PCs extensively, I would like to point out that if you are a power user and you know how to work a PC, you could do as much with a well built PC as you could with a Mac. That being said, I’ve also taken it up as a challenge to build a better Mac Pro at around half the price, and then extend that to a dual boot setup to get the best of both worlds.

This first part covers the component selection, not only to ensure I get the best bang for the buck, but also select components that are least likely to cause issues with an OSX install. Read on.

The Mac Pro

The current price (at the time of writing this) of the base Mac Pro in India is an insane Rs. 1,63,440. This does not include a monitor and the configuration is listed below

2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor
3GB (three 1GB) memory
ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5
1TB hard drive
18x double-layer SuperDrive

Apple has just released the new line of iMacs using the Intel Sandy Bridge processors, but not yet carried these forward to the Mac Pro. The plan here for me is to go with a Sandy Bridge based system and either match or exceed this Mac Pro configuration at around half the price.

Components

Keyboard / Mouse not included, feel free to add a simple keyboard and mouse at under Rs.1000 or buy the expensive Mac keyboard and mouse – your choice! Note that all component prices listed here are the current prices in India as of May 01 2011, and are significantly lower in the US or Singapore / Malaysia. I’ve linked each product to its product page on Newegg so you can see the international prices. However, since I am comparing it to the Indian Mac Pro price, I will only be sourcing the components locally and the prices listed above are what I paid in Chennai.

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3 GHz Quad Core

This is one of the new line of Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, running 17% more CPU performance than the Lynnfield processors (Nehalem generation, such as the ones used in the Mac Pro listed above). This i5 offers unbeatable performance for the price, and while I considered the i7 as well, it was more expensive and the i5 was good enough to outperform the Mac Pro processor. The K-edition also feature unlocked multipliers to enable overclocking (Intel has demonstrated a Sandy Bridge CPU running stably overclocked at 4.9 GHz on air cooling!)

Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth P67 Rev 3

If you head over to the TonyMacx86 forums, or the Insanelymac forums, you will find a lot of great information about component compatibility and working user build specifications. The Gigabyte motherboards come heavily recommended, but sadly, the availability of the Gigabyte P67 boards locally is quite poor, and the options on Ebay India were also expensive. I decided instead to go with the Asus Sabertooth P67 instead, which quite a few users have used in their builds successfully. The P67 Express chipset is the recommended chipset for SB processors until the Z68 comes out later this year – Intel has already debuted this on the new iMacs.

The Asus board is one gorgeous socket LGA 1155 MoBo with thermal armour encasing the board to keep it cooler, and features both Sata 6GBps and USB 3 ports, Firewire, Multi GPU (SLI and CrossFireX) and eSATA. It also uses the UEFI Bios, which is a pleasure to use as it is not only better looking and well laid out, but also supports the use of a mouse within the BIOS. Note that the ASUS P8P67 PRO is also a great option and it also has onboard Bluetooth. Just remember to get the Rev 3 versions of any P67 boards as they sort out several issues in the earlier P67 boards.

RAM: 8GB (2GBx4) G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

Low voltage high speed RAM with a 9-9-9-24 timing. With Dual Channel support on the motherboard, I have used two matched pairs. Note that using the Core i5 processor means that the RAM will run at 1333MHz instead of 1600MHz. There is no noticeable difference in regular use, but the max speed can be made available by either using the i7 processor or overclocking the i5. This is something I will attempt later when I get a better CPU cooler. I’m currently using the Intel stock cooler which runs the CPU at a reasonable 40C idle (reasonable without air conditioning in the 40C+ Chennai summer. Drops below 40C with air conditioning turned on), and will need better cooling if I decide to overclock.

GPU: XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5

Decided to just match the Mac Pro spec. The XFX is a great card, and I chose the single slot version as the smaller space provides better airflow within the case and is quieter (note that the link above is to the dual slot version – could not find the single slot one that I bought on Newegg. The ZHLC version I have can be found on the XFX Website). It also has two DVI outputs and one HDMI with out of the box ATI Eyefinity support for 3 monitors.

Hard Drive 1: Kingston SSDNow V100 64GB SSD

Not the best choice for an SSD with a few faster options out there, but the best I could source locally. The SSD provides blazing read performance and vastly improved write performance over the standard platter drives. Post setup, I’ve been getting from BIOS screen to usable in under 12 seconds, and application launches in under a second, largely due to the SSD. Note that in case you are buying the same drive, make sure to update the firmware as well as use the latest Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) Drivers instead of the Microsoft ones that default with Windows 7. Doing this boosted my Windows Experience Index score for the drive from 5.9 to 7 (out of 7.9). The SSD will be my primary drive for OS and software installs. I will be getting a second SSD later once I dual boot Win 7 with Mac OSX, but for now I’m just going to be running Windows 7 to check if everything’s okay and run some benchmarking tests. Also remember to buy a mounting kit as these drives are tiny, and require the kit to mount to standard drive bays.

Hard Drive 2: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB Sata 6GBps

Decided to make use of the Sata 6GBps port for improved speeds. This will be my storage drive.

Power Supply: Coolermaster SilentPro M600

A great 600W power supply that is very silent as its name implies, and also has modular connectors. Separate detachable connectors for Sata, PCIe and Molex allow you to only use the cables you need, greatly reducing clutter and improving airflow.

Case: Antec Solo

One of the reasons I bought both the power supply and the single slot GPU was to minimize noise since this was going to be used for music production, and the Antec Solo perfectly complements that. This is a solidly built case with sound dampening on the inside that reduces noise to a bare minimum. In fact, post install, my APC UPS is louder than this build! The case also has removable hard drive and optical bays, 120mm rear fan and a beautiful gloss black finish on three sides with a matte silver front. You have the option to add two front intake 92mm fans, but I have decided against it to keep noise lower. Note that I bought the case about a year back so I’m not exactly sure of the current price.

Optical Drive: LG GH24 24x DVD Burner

The LG and Sony Drives seem to have better compatibility with OSX (Apple uses the Sony Optiarc drives). I went with the LG one as I could not get my hands on an Optiarc burner.

OS: Mac OSX Snow Leopard

Strangely, the local Apple stores do not stock the standalone OSX retail DVD, only the box set with iLife and iWork that costs 5 times as much. The standalone 10.6.3 Retail DVD is available on eBay India though, so I ordered it from there. Click through above to visit the eBay product page.

Summary

That’s the full list of components. As you can see, we’ve dropped the price to less than half that of the Mac Pro, and got a faster processor with all the Sandy Bridge goodness, 2.5 times the amount of faster RAM, dual hard drives with SSD and Sata 6GBps. The huge cost savings allows me to also add in my Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 Audio interface and still have money left over to buy a good mic, midi controller, monitors and other goodies. Besides this, the only thing that I’ve bought extra was a SIIG Firewire PCIe card. This card uses the Texas Instruments chipset as opposed to the VIA chipset on the motherboard, and the TI cards are recommended for most pro audio interfaces.

Here are most of the goodies ready to be assembled!

I will be updating the next two parts over the next couple of weeks.

Part 1: Component selection and pricing
Part 2: Build + Windows 7 64 Bit install & benchmarking
Part 3: Mac OSX install & benchmarking

While this is clearly listed on their website, and as a potential customer you know what you are getting into before you subscribe to a plan, what annoys me the most is that Airtel changes the policy on plans that you have already purchased, that originally came with a different set of usage conditions. When I upgraded my plan to a 2Mbps unlimited plan 2 years back, it did what it said on the box. It was 2 Mbps and it was unlimited. Earlier this year they introduced the FUP and suddenly I had a bandwidth cap and the subsequent speed cut once that cap was exceeded. When you’ve paid for something and used it for over a year, changing the conditions of the plan after that time leaves you feeling downright cheated.

Torrent Troubles

The latest attack on home broadband users from Airtel seems to be on Bit Torrent users. Bit Torrent is the leading P2P protocol for file sharing and is estimated to account for 27% – 55% of all internet traffic worldwide. While torrents are widely used to distribute pirated material, it is a perfectly legal protocol and is increasingly being used to distribute licensed material. Airtel now appears to be throttling torrent download speeds for its broadband users. A quick question I posted on Twitter yesterday revealed that several people seem to be having the same problem, and mine is not an isolated case.

The image below shows my HTTP speed tested via Speedtest.net. As you can see, my FUP is not in effect, and I’ve got my full 2 Mbps speed (Actually Airtel promised 1:1 connectivity on their 2 Mbps plan, but I’m getting less than 1 Mbps upload speeds). I’ve taken full screen captures so that my time stamp is visible and you can see that no other applications are running, and also so that you can see that the tests on HTTP and Bit Torrent have been done at the same time.

Note: Kbps is kilobits per second and Mbps is Megabits per second – generally what ISPs advertise. Data transfer speeds listed in applications use Kilobytes and Megabytes per second, denoted by KBps and MBps (note the capital B). 8 bits make a byte, so you can divide the bps by 8 to get the Bps transfer rate)

click image to view full size

Next up is the Bit Torrent test. I’m downloading Ubuntu 10.10 via Bit Torrent, and as you can see, this is an extremely well seeded file with over 3500 seeds, and a seed / leech ratio of 3:1. I’m connected to 40 seeds, and I’ve left the torrent running for 5 minutes so you can clearly see the average speeds. The average speed for this transfer over 5 minutes is 81 kB/s, and the speed never once went over 100 kB/s. This translates to a speed of 640 kbps, which is over three times less than the 2 Mbps bandwidth I’m paying for. Since my HTTP transfer rate at this time is tested and showing 2 Mbps, I should be getting transfer rates of around 256 KBps max, and definitely not less than 200 KBps

click image to view full size

A few days back, I called Airtel support, who told me that my FUP was not in effect and I should not be getting a drop in speed. He also feigned ignorance on the matter of torrent downloads, but made me restart my router which fixed the problem. However, this does not seem to work when tried again over the last few days, leading me to believe that some settings were changed on their side before I was asked to restart my router.

Broadband plans from other ISPs

I’m quite fed up with Airtel at this point, and don’t see any point in sticking around with them. So I’ve done a quick round up of the available options (as of today) in the market for 1 Mbps / 2 Mbps connections.

click image to view full size

As you can see, with the exception of the Reliance plans, all the other ISPs have bandwidth caps (Reliance also offers capped plans, but they are the only ones listed here to also offer uncapped plans). Their night booster plan offers a 1 Mbps day / 2 Mbps night (10PM to 8AM) connection at a very reasonable price and seems to be the best on offer in terms of features and price.  Tata Indicom offers the next best bandwidth cap options with 150GB / 200GB caps on their 2.5 and 1 Mbps plans, but are significantly more expensive than the others (Their website lists it under business plans, but I could not find any options for home plans). Note that the Tata Indicom FUP does not specify the speed cut after the limit is exceeded, but states that it will warn the user and subsequently move them to a higher plan if the limit is exceeded consistently. This does, however, seem unlikely given that you could transfer 5GB per day and still be under the limit.

BSNL and Airtel seem to offer the worst plans of the lot, with limits as low as 15GB per month! To make matters worse, both these ISPs drop their speeds to a ridiculous 256 Kbps when you cross that limit. BSNL seems to be slightly better than Airtel in offering twice the bandwidth limit for their 2 Mbps connections.

Right now, if you are a power user, your best bet is to go for one of the Reliance plans. That is, until they too decide to jump on the FUP bandwagon.

If you have any better options or would like to rant about your Airtel experience, please post a comment.

For various reasons, I have been unable to keep this blog fresh. Those reasons have been listed below (along with one not so true reason)

• I’ve moved to a new job and have been focusing on that
• I’m putting in more time into my music production and DJing
• I’m making an effort to get back into competitive Snooker
• I’ve been dating Angelina Jolie and she is quite high maintenance, leaving me with little time for this blog

Yes – as you guessed, I have not yet started with my Snooker practice, but I plan to quite soon.

So to make a long story short, I’m taking a break for a couple of months and will get back to regular blogging soon.

In the meantime, follow my nonsense on Twitter

More after the break…

From your Facebook home page, click on events in the left navigation pane and select birthdays.

This will now show you your friend’s birthdays for today, tomorrow and this week. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the right arrow. If the number of friends in your friend’s list is less, you can just keep pressing this right arrow a few times and it will keep moving forward through the months until it returns back to the same month (of the next year). There you go – you can now see all the birthdays you missed! You can bookmark the page for easy access later – it will display the current month as long as the number of friends remain about the same. In case it does change, you could just press either the next or previous arrow button to bring it to the current month and bookmark again.

However, if you have a lot of friends, you could end up clicking a lot of times (around 4-5 pages for every 100 friends) so here’s a handy shortcut. Click on the right arrow once – now if you look in the address bar, you will see a URL like this.

The number at the end indicates how many pages to skip, so you can just change this number to a higher number and press enter (example change s=1 to s=20). It will require some trial and error depending on the number of friends you have – at around 1000 friends mine went up to page 42. Just keep changing it in multiples of 10s until you get close and then adjust by smaller numbers. As before, you can bookmark this for easy access later on.

I’ve been using my Blackberry for around a year now and am still amazed at the features this phone has, and keep discovering new things every day. When I just bought this phone, I kept searching the internet for tips and tricks and found a wealth of information. I find a lot of friends with BBs are still surprised when I throw out a tip or two, so to make things easy, I’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to Blackberry keyboard shortcuts so you don’t need to do the searching! Knowing most of these shortcuts enables you to make the most out of your phone, and as a power user, you will find you are able to perform the most routine tasks much faster.

Note that many of the shortcuts will only work on BBs with full QWERTY keyboards, and some of them may not work on all phones, so the best way to find out if it works for your phone model is to just try it!

Setup Wizard

If you’ve not already, run the setup wizard (located in the main menu). This will allow you to make basic customizations. If you have good eyesight, one useful customization is to change the font to BBAlpha Sans and change the font size to 7. This manages to fit in a lot of text on screen compared to some of the default font options.

Blackberry Holster / Case

The official Blackberry holsters / cases have a magnet at the base which detects whether the phone is inside or outside. This allows you to set separate notifications / ring tones depending on whether the phone is within the case or outside and quickly switch profiles this way. In case you also receive an incoming message notification, if you immediately pull your phone out (within 20-30 seconds), it will automatically display the message.

Basic Shortcuts

The following shortcuts can be used in many applications:

• To exit a screen (or to move to a previous page in a browser) press the Escape key (the bendy arrow)
• To select or clear a check box, press the Space key
• To keep an application active and return to the home screen, press the end button (red phone / power). You can use the switch application option below to return or simply select the application again
• The default theme home screen displays 5 application icons, and to control which ones appear here, go to the main menu, highlight an icon and press the menu key. Select move and move your icon to the top row. The first five icons on the top row will be visible on your home screen as well. Also use this tip to rearrange your menu as you please.
• To switch applications, hold the Alt key and press the Escape key. Continue holding the Alt key and select an application, then release the Alt key
• To return to the Home screen, press the End key
• Use ALT+Right Shift+DEL to do a Soft Reset
• Pressing the menu key while inside an open application will open up a separate menu just for this application – don’t forget to try this out to find lots of new options.

Quickly change Profiles

On the home screen, roll your trackball / trackpad to the upper right corner where the volume icon is located and select it. You can now quickly activate any profile of your choice.

Blackberry Messenger

The Blackberry Messenger is a free Instant Messaging application connecting you to any Blackberry user around the world. If you have lots of friends with BBs, this is a great (and free) way to communicate. To add a user, select the BB Messenger and press the menu key and select ‘New Contact’. The easiest way to add a contact is by their BB Pin (In the new contact box, type the Pin and select the Pin option instead of the email), and once the user accepts the request, they will be available in your list. BB Messenger also supports group IM and you can add multiple contacts into a conversation!

Find your BB Pin

• To easily find your BB Pin, press and hold the left Alt+Shift keys and press H while holding to launch the ‘Help Me’ screen which contains all your phone info, including the Pin
• Even easier, if you want to message someone your pin, in any compose screen (Email, SMS, BB Messenger), just type mypin and hit space and the phone will replace it with your actual pin! Some others you can use are myver - Device Model/Version, LD - Local Date, LT - Local Time

Speed Dial

Blackberries offer speed dial for 26 keys – all letters of the alphabet are capable of launching a number just by pressing and holding them. To add a number to speed dial, just press and hold the key from the home screen – you will now be asked if you want to assign a speed dial to that key. Select yes and choose a number from your address book. Now to use the speed dial, just press and hold the same key from the home screen.

Convenience Key

The convenience keys are located on the sides of your phone and can be customized. You have the option to change this to whatever you find to be the most useful – to lock your keys, activate the camera, compose an email – you name it.  To change this option, from the main menu select Options > Screen/Keyboard and set it under Convenience Key.

Mute / Standby / Speakerphone

The mute button is at the top of the phone and can be pressed to mute the phone. You can press and hold this button from the home screen to switch to standby mode. Standby mode conserves battery and prevents accidental dialing of numbers (we’ve all done this at some time). This button can also be used to pause / resume media playback.

While on a call, you can press the $ key to activate / deactivate the speakerphone.

Low Battery / Radio Off

The Blackberry has an excellent feature for when your battery runs low – unlike most other phones that go dead when the battery runs out, the BB switches the radio off just before the point when the phone is likely to go dead. While this still means you cannot make or receive calls / messages, you will be access your address book, call logs and calendar. This is an extremely helpful feature and I have had problems with my old phone running out of juice and me desperately trying to turn it on just for a few seconds to find that number in my address book!

Message Shortcuts

In a message:

• R – Reply To Message
• L – Reply To All
• F – Forward Message
• I – File Highlighted Message
• Q – To view the email address of a contact, in a message, highlight the contact. Press Q. To view the display name again, press Q.

In a message list:

• C – Compose Message
• ALT+U – Mark Message As Opened/Unopened
• ALT+I – View only Inbox
• ALT+O – View only Outbox
• ALT+V – View only Voicemail
• ALT+S – View only SMS
• ALT+P – View Call Log
• To view all your messages again, press the Escape key
• SHIFT+SPACE – Move to the top of a screen
• SPACE – Move to the bottom of a screen
• T – Go to top of a message
• B – Go to bottom of a message
• N – Move to the next date
• P – Move to the previous date
• U – Move to the next unopened item
• J – Move to the next related item
• K – Move to the previous related item
• F – Search for text in an attachment/web page
• G – Move to the last cursor position in a message after closing and reopening an attachment
• Highlight a date in the message list and press the menu button – you can now choose the ‘Delete Prior’ option to delete all messages on and before that date.

Typing Shortcuts

• To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized
• To capitalize a letter, hold the letter key until the capitalized letter appears
• Alt + Left Shift – NUM Lock
• Alt + Right Shift – CAPS Lock
• To turn off NUM lock or CAP lock, press the Shift key
• To insert an at sign (@) or a period (.) in an email address field, press the Space key
• To highlight a line of text, press the Shift key and roll the trackball
• To highlight text character by character, hold the Shift key and roll the trackball left or right
• To cancel a text selection, press the Escape key
• To cut highlighted text when typing, press the Shift + Backspace/Delete key
• To copy highlighted text when typing, press the Alt key and click the trackball
• To paste highlighted text when typing, press the Shift key and click the trackball
• Autotext - Many people have asked how to easily create multiple signatures for emails or SMS or shortcuts to frequently used phrases.  The simplest way is by creating an AutoText entry with your preset signature.  To do this, go to Options > AutoText.  Select “New”.  Under “Replace”, type a shortcut (ie. sig, zzz – something quick and easy).  Under “With” type your desired signature (“Sent by Sid”) then choose save and you’re set!  Now in your SMS just type your shortcut and hit Space and you’re signature will appear. Use this to also abbreviate any common words or phrases such as your company name or address or even an email or message template!
  

Phone Shortcuts

The following shortcuts can be used in the Phone application or during a phone call:

• To answer a phone call, press the Send key
• To view the call log, press the Send key from any screen
• To insert a plus sign (+) when typing a phone number, hold the letter O
• To add an extension to a phone number, press the Alt key and the X key, then type the extension number
• To assign a speed dial number to a key, from the Home screen or in the Phone application, hold the key you want to assign. Type the phone number
• To type a letter in a phone number field, press the Alt key and the letter
• To move to the top of the Phone screen, press the Space key
• To change between headset, speakerphone and handset, press the menu key and choose an option, or better yet, Tap the $ (dollar sign) key on your keyboard to turn speakerphone on/off during a call
• To stay in a call and return to the home screen, press the Escape key and select Ok

Browser Shortcuts

• To insert a period in the Go To dialog box, press the Space key
• To insert a slash mark (/) in the Go To dialog box, press Shift+Space
• To open the browser options, in the browser, press O
• To stop loading a web page, press the Escape key
• To hide the browser, press D
• To close the browser, hold the Escape key
• To view the address for a link, highlight a link. Press L
• To move forward a screen, press the Shift key and the Space key
• To move to a previous screen, press the Space key
• G – Move to a specific page
• H – Return to the home page
• K – Open bookmarks
• A – Add a bookmark
• I – View recent web pages
• R – Refresh page
• P – View page address
• S – Save web page
• U – Hide browser banner
• X – View thumbnail version of a page
• T – Move to the top of a page
• B – Move to the bottom of a page

Media Shortcuts

• Mute Key – Pause/Resume a video/song
• R – Rotate pictures
• I – Zoom In
• O – Zoom Out
• W – Original Size

Calendar Shortcuts

• C – schedule an appointment
• A – Change to Agenda view
• D – Change to Day view
• W – Change to Week view
• M – Change to Month view
• Space – Move to the next day/week/month
• Shift+Space – Move to the previous day/week/month
• T – Move to the current date
• G – Move to a specific date

Application Launch Shortcuts

An easy way to access the default applications is through keyboard shortcuts as well.  To use these, you must have Dial From Home Screen set to “Off”.  Press the Send key (the green phone icon) to open the call log screen. Now press the menu key to activate the menu and choose ‘Options>General Options’ and change Dial From Home Screen to “Off”.  If this is disabled and you now want to make a call by directly typing out the numbers, then you will have to press the send key first and then begin typing, but you will now have all the following shortcuts available from the home screen. Note that the speed dialing will still be available for the keys by pressing and holding the same keys.

• W – WAP Browser
• R – Alarm
• T – Tasks
• U – Calculator
• O – Options
• A – Address Book
• S – Search
• D – Notes
• F – Profiles
• H – Help
• K – Lock keypad
• L – Calendar
• M – Messages
• B – Browser
• N – Blackberry Messenger
• V – Saved messages
• C – Compose

Blinking LED

Here’s the key to figure out the cryptic blinking LED of your phone

• Blinking RED: The LED indicator blinks red whenever you have incoming/waiting communication messages on your phone – new email, new call/missed call, new BlackBerry Messenger message, new SMS, etc.
• Blinking GREEN: Coverage Indicator light. This lets you know you are connected to a network. This can also be turned off by going into Options – Screen/Keyboard and set the “LED Coverage Indicator” to Off
• Blinking BLUE:Lets you know your phone is connected to a Bluetooth device, such as a Bluetooth headset.
• Blinking YELLOW: Plug it in! A blinking yellow light means it is time to charge your BlackBerry as you are running low on juice.

Password protect your BB

Password protect your BB. To set a password, go to the Options menu to the Security item. Set the desired timeout (10-15 minutes is fine in case you leave your phone unattended and you don’t want anyone to mess around with it) and enable/set a password. In conjunction with this, you should also go to the Options menu to the Owner item, and enter your name, phone number, etc. When the password protection kicks in, this is what is displayed on the screen.

While logging back in, after five incorrect attempts at typing in your password, the password starts echoing (figuring you really need all the help you can get). After ten attempts, it self destructs (OK, not completely) and almost all data is cleared. The Memo database, however, is retained and visible.

Automatically dial phone numbers with extensions / IVR menus

This is a great feature if you frequently make conference calls or call up numbers with IVR menus that require keypresses to continue. I’ve detailed this in another post that you can access here.

Facebook for Blackberry

If you are on Facebook, point your BB browser to www.blackberry.com/facebook to download and install the Facebook app. From version 1.5. In it, the app loads on new features to integrate your BlackBerry contact information with that contact’s Facebook photo. If you choose, the app will update the existing photos in your BlackBerry contact list with your Facebook friends’ profile photos, an association you can also create manually in Facebook, by clicking a friend’s name. From that screen, you can request a friend’s phone number, and view their BlackBerry contact information.

Your friend’s photo shows up in the address book along with their Facebook name. You’ll still be able to click their number to call, or to utilize a shortcut to poke a buddy or open Facebook for you to draft a personal message or wall note. In addition, the new Facebook for BlackBerry will also plot birthdays and events onto your BlackBerry calendar.

RIM has also integrated messages and status updates into the BlackBerry. Conversations will now show up as an IM thread in the application, and as a message in your phone’s message list.

In the message list, you can also press the menu key and choose Facebook to directly send a message, write on someone’s wall or poke someone.

Blackberry Desktop Manager

You can live perfectly fine without using the BBDM, but using it allows you to backup your data, install and manage applications through your computer instead of over-the-air as well as Sync your contacts, tasks and calendar to a PIM such as Outlook. The BBDM is also bundled with a Media Manager which allows you to transfer your media to the memory card and back out to your computer. The software will also convert popular video formats to a Blackberry optimized format on the fly while copying if you choose. You can download it from the Blackberry website.

Credits

Besides my inputs, some of the information here is compiled from the Crackberry website and forums, so full credit to the guys there – they have a great Blackberry 101 Lecture Series that is outstanding. Head over and take a look for more great tips and tricks!

If you are using peoples names, birth dates or common English words for your passwords, you are at a high risk of it getting cracked. Besides this, some very common password bloopers including using the word password, numbers in sequence (12345678 etc) or familiar letter sequences such as qwertyuiop or zxcvbnm (yes, admit it, you’ve used one of these at some time or the other).

For a password to be effective and secure, you need to use a random sequence of numbers, letters (in both lower and upper case) and punctuation and make sure that your passwords are different for different accounts. A common mistake is using the same password across multiple accounts just because it’s easy to remember – this will only make it easier for someone to get into multiple accounts with just one password. We’re going to look at a simple online (and offline) tool that will help you out.

Remember that the consequences of using a weak password could range from someone breaking into your email account and sending spam or viruses to logging into your bank or credit card online account and stealing from you. As 4Chan’s recent attack on Facebook accounts shows, much embarrassment can also ensue if you are on the receiving end (or fun if you are not!).

More after the break…

PC Tools, a respected developer of … um … PC Tools (with some well known products such as Registry Mechanic and Spyware Doctor) has a simple online tool to generate a random and secure password. You can customize the options to choose from uppercase, lowercase, number, punctuations and a useful option to avoid similar letters. While there are many password generation tools online, I like this one since they also offer a small free downloadable app called PC Tools Password Utilities (download – 391kb) that not only does the same thing offline, but also has a password checker that allows you to input a password you already use and check it for its strength. It also has a useful password revealer tool – if you have saved Internet Explorer passwords that you have forgotten, you can use this tool to reveal the saved password.

So churn out those passwords and get yourself insured!

Let’s face it – I’m a media addict. I love my movies, TV shows, music, photos, but there’s only so much of it I can watch sitting in front of a computer monitor. I’ve got a 46″ Full HD TV in my living room and I’d rather be curled up on a couch in front of this. Getting your media files from your PC to your TV has always been a bit flaky and there are several options, each of which has its benefits and downside.

1. Media Center PC – A separate PC that’s hooked up to your TV offers the most flexible option but is also the most expensive. If you are going to be playing HD videos, you will need to have a good processor and graphics card – but if you do, this will support the most number of formats. It also means you need a second computer.
2. DVD Players – Most new DVD players offer USB drives that allow you to copy your media and plug it in. Besides playing DVDs, most of them playback DivX / XviD files and some of them offer decent upscaling as well as subtitle support but no HD Video support. They also do not support media storage.
3. Game Consoles / Media Extenders – Games consoles like the XBox 360 and PS3 and other Media Extenders allow you to wirelessly (or wired in some cases) extend your PC to your TV. While native support for various formats is high, support for MKV files is missing in most cases and subtitle support is also mediocre (non existent on the PS3). This also requires your PC to be turned on while the console / extender is in use.

Now Western Digital brings us a device that can pretty much play any media format you throw at it and eats 1080p video for breakfast…I like! Let’s look at it in detail after the break!

What is this then?

The WD TV is a pocket sized device (not really pocket sized in thickness, but still small) that you can connect to your TV either by HDMI or standard composite connections. It is essentially a processing device that has NO storage onboard. Two USB ports allow you to connect a USB Flash Drive or an external hard drive – there are no limits to capacity so you can connect a 1TB or higher external drive and use it as a media library. Hard drives can be formatted for both Mac and PC (FAT32 and NTFS).

So what can I play on this?

The WD TV has support for a huge number of formats – besides playing standard video formats, it supports MKV HD Video files, DivX / XviD, Ripped DVDs in VOB format, FLAC Audio and a whole bunch of others listed below.

• Music – MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA
• Photo – JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
• Video -MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264), MTS, TP, TS
• Playlist – PLS, M3U, WPL
• Subtitle -SRT (UTF-8), SMI, SUB, ASS, SSA (IDX/SUB also works for me after the latest firmware update)

The Review

The WD TV has two USB ports and I’ve got my 500GB WD Passport Essentials drive hooked up to one of them. This is one of the larger drives that are available that does not require an external power supply (WD has just released a 1TB versions as well). I’ve got the WD TV hooked up via HDMI to my Sony Bravia 46″ LCD, and the first thing you notice when you switch the device on is that the menu interface is not really running in HD resolution and seems to have a bit of pixellation and color banding on the gradients. Minor gripe though, since this in no way reflects on the video output quality. The device scans through the attached drives on startup and is reasonable fast with an average number of files. This scanning took much longer when I copied over my photo and music collection with over 20000 files, but this in no way affected my ability to select the folder and start a video even though the scanning was still in progress.

Navigating through the menu is easy – you can use the up and down buttons on the remote to select either video, music or pictures, and then the right and left buttons to select to browse either as a list or in thumbnail mode. If you take the trouble to organize your media in folders and drop in images of the movie posters or music album covers in the folder containing the media, you will be able to visually browse through your library – much more satisfying that going through a list!

Video quality is fantastic with no stuttering or skipping even with 1080p files. I only had a problem once while fast forwarding a 1080p video for a long time and couldn’t get it to stop – had to switch the power off and reboot! The device also supports a digital out for the audio, so if you have an external receiver, you can use this to get better quality sound. This option also allows you to use your receiver’s DTS decoder, which as of now the WD TV does not support.

Conclusion

Having used this gadget for a over a month now, It’s quickly become one of my favorites! Excellent value for money and huge array of features and media support make this a must buy for anyone with a sizable collection of digital media. Just remember to keep your remote safely, since there are no buttons on the device itself!

WD TV Mini

At around $130, the WD TV is definitely an affordable device, but Western Digital is now offering a smaller $99 Mini version. This WD TV Mini strips out the HDMI and Full HD playback options and is in a much more pocket friendly size. While this might be useful for travelers, I’d rather pay the extra 30 bucks to get the works. However, if you do not have a full HD TV or don’t care for full HD video, the mini compensates by offering 1080i playback and component outputs and becomes an excellent option to consider.

Tips & Tricks

• Keep an eye out for new firmware releases and upgrade to the latest firmware whenever possible – media and subtitle support is always improving. To know how, go to the product page and click on the “First Time Updating Your WDTV?” button.
• Organize your hard drive well. Have separate folders for videos, music and photos, and create subfolders within each of these for your media. This way, you don’t have to wait for the device to scan and sort your media, and you can browse through them faster in folder mode if you know exactly where to find what you’re looking for.
• For faster browsing in thumbnail mode, resize your movie posters to exactly 120×180 pixels and place the thumbnail in the folder and call it folder.jpg. You could just rename any size image and copy it into the folders, but the larger images take a while to render on screen.
• If you have multiple videos within a single folder, place thumbnails for each of these videos with the same name as the video. Now when you enter this folder, you will be able to see all the video thumbnails.
• While browsing in thumbnail mode, press the next or previous buttons to move page up or down
• While fast forwarding a video, press the next button to jump 10 minutes ahead
• For subtitles in different languages for most movies and TV shows, head over to Subscene, which I find is a great source. Once you download the sub, extract it if necessary and make sure to copy this to the same folder as the video and rename it to exactly the same name as the video.
• If you try to playback an MKV file and find no audio, most likely the file has a DTS audio track which needs to be converted. DTS support for MKV files is still not available, so to convert this, download the PopCorn MKV Audio Converter. Once set up, this piece of software will allow you to convert the audio track from DTS to Dolby Digital in around 15 minutes or less.
• If you like tweaking around with your gadgets, head over to the WDTVHD forums, where you will find custom firmware, mods and more hacks – play around at your own risk!

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Menus have become pretty commonplace now, and you will frequently find yourself listening to a strangely enthusiastic recorded voice asking you to press insane number combinations to get to the feature you require or to speak to an operator. This can quickly become frustrating if you need to do this often. If you frequently use conference bridges, this is another place where you will be asked to enter a conference code followed by a hash (#) key to confirm. This also happens when you need to retrieve your voice mail or call an office number and access an extension.

Most mobile phones allows you to store these combinations of phone numbers and keypad inputs so that you will never have to manually enter these again. This little known trick can save you tons of time and may also save you a couple of phones by not having to throw them against a wall in frustration.

Find out how after the break!

This technique works for most phones, but I’ve only tried it out on a Nokia and Sony Ericsson, and Blackberries (which use a slightly different method).

For both methods, I’ve used the following example. I’m dialing in to a conference bridge (+1-555-5555). After dialling, the sweet lady welcomes me and asks me to enter my conference access code followed by the hash sign (12345678#). This can be entered at any time once the phone connects and the recorded message starts, so I can start punching in the code within a second or two. Next, I will be asked to confirm the code by pressing 1 followed by the # key. This can also be entered at any point after the recorded message starts, but usually takes a couple of seconds to start playing the recorded message.

Nokia  / Sony Ericsson

In either a Nokia or Sony Ericsson phone, you can enter a ‘p’ in the phone number at any time you want a pause lasting two seconds. For longer pauses, just enter more ‘p’s. So in your phone book, store the number as

+15555555p12345678#pp1

What this does is dial in the main number, wait for two seconds (by which time the recorded message would have started), then dial in the conference code and # key, then wait four seconds, and dials 1 to confirm.

If you are dialling a number (+1-555-5555) followed by an extension (123), you can use the same format to store the number as +15555555p123. In case you have a longer wait before you can actually dial the extension, just add more ‘p’s.

Blackberry

The Blackberry uses a slightly different system. I’ve just switched from a Nokia E61i to a Blackberry Curve, and found that all my stored numbers with pauses in it didn’t work. After some research, I found that the pauses need to be entered in while storing the phone numbers via the Blackberry menu.

• Create a new contact or edit an existing one
• In the phone number field, first enter +15555555
• Now press down on the trackball to get a new menu – you can choose to add a pause or wait here. The pause option allows you to automatically pause for two seconds and continue, while the wait option will wait for your manual input. This is a useful option if you are dialing in to your bank, for example, and you need to enter your pin – this is something you would not want to store on your phone so you would insert a wait instead of a pause. A ‘wait’ will wait for the trackball to be pressed to continue the sequence. You can also add a wait instead of a pause if the wait time varies, and when you press the trackball it will continue the saved sequence
• This will now appear in your phone as a ‘p’ within a black circle
• Now enter the conference code 12345678#
• Press on the trackball again and enter a pause – repeat for a second pause
• Enter 1
• Your number should now read +15555555(p)12345678#(p)(p)1 (but the ‘p’s will now be in a black circle)

Now the next time you need to call, just find the contact and dial, and watch your phone do the rest!

Many iTunes users frequently forget that there’s more to iTunes than just managing and playing back your music. One of those overlooked features is the ability to subscribe to a podcast. By Wikipedia’s definition, a podcast is a series of digital media files, usually digital audio or video, that is made available for download via web syndication. In simple terms this means that you can subscribe to a podcast, which then gets delivered to your iTunes at regular intervals.

Most podcasts are free and there are thousands of quality podcasts over several genres including Music, Arts, Education, Comedy, Health, News & Politics and more. Podcasts are available in both Audio and Video formats, and can be synched to your iPod to take with you on the move. I subscribe to several podcasts and sync them to my iPod in the mornings before I head out to work. If you have a longer commute like I do, you will find that podcasts offer a fresh way to make that commute seem shorter.

Let’s take a look at how you can find and subscribe to podcasts using iTunes after the break …

Fire up iTunes, and in the left pane, click on the ‘Podcasts’ link. You should have a blank screen – not to worry – click on the ‘Podcast Directory’ link at the bottom right. This will take you to the podcast section of the iTunes store. You can alternatively select the ‘iTunes Store’ in the left pane and click on the ‘Podcasts’ link in the store.

Here’s a screenshot of the podcast homepage (Click on any of the images to see a larger view).

On the left you can see the categories – you can choose to browse by Video or Audio podcasts, or select a genre from the list. On the right you will find the ‘Top Podcasts’ list. I find that both these options are good places to start if you are browsing for something new. If you are searching for something specific, you can just type it in the search box and view the results.

Two of my favorites are The Adam Carolla Podcast and the Onion News Network (Video). The Adam Carolla podcast is in a radio talk show format and runs an average of an hour long. Adam Carolla offers an intelligent brand of humor that makes for a very entertaining show. The Onion News Network is a spoof news channel that offers fake video news items that are not more than a couple of minutes long and are often hilarious. So let’s pick one of these and subscribe to it.

Both are in the ‘Top Podcasts’ list at the time of writing this article, so for now, I am going to click on ‘The Adam Carolla Podcast’ from this list. This brings up the info screen for this podcast.

This screen contains information about the podcast at the top of the screen and a list of episodes at the bottom. If you want to just sample a single episode, clcik on the ‘Get Episode’ button next to the episode you want. This will download just one episode without subscribing to it – if you want to subscribe to the podcast, click on the ‘Subscribe’ button in the top half. You will be asked to confirm the same before subscribing and once that’s done, your first episode(s) should start downloading automatically. A ‘Downloads’ link will now appear in the left pane just below the ‘iTunes Store’ link. You can click on it to see the status of the download.

Once downloaded, if you click on the Podcast link in iTunes, you will see a thumbnail of your subscribed podcast. Double click to open it.

You will now see the list of all podcasts available along with the recent ones just downloaded. Items that you have not yet downloaded will be greyed out, and you can click on the ‘Get’ button for any other episodes you want, or ‘Get all’ to download all available podcasts. For some reason, the ‘Get all’ doesn’t work that well for me since if I download more than two at the same time, the downloads get interrupted.

There you go! Feel free to add in as many podcasts as you like. I like to manage these manually, but if you prefer iTunes do your spring cleaning, click on the ‘Podcasts’ link and select the ‘Settings’ button.

If you uncheck the ‘use default settings’ box, you can choose which episodes to download and which ones to keep and iTunes will take care of the rest…

I’ve been using the 3G iPod shuffle for a couple of weeks now and can’t seem to understand what the negative buzz on the interweb is all about. It’s my belief that Apple is headed in the right direction with this. Here’s my thoughts why.

First up, the negative buzz – common complaints include a lack of a display and no controls on the device (which have been shifted to the the headphone unit) that renders the use of third party headphones useless (for now, until an external dongle that enables this is soon available).

My counter arguments and full review (and some tips & tricks) after the break…

Lack of Display – Not sure about you, but my main reason for getting a shuffle in the first place is to use at the gym, during my run and while traveling. For this, the lack of display is perfectly acceptable. If I wanted to see the names of my tracks and pretty album art flipping over, I would have gone for a Nano or an iPod touch (or another brand MP3 player). This wouldn’t still serve any purpose during my workout as I will not be looking at it and I would end up looking like a pretentious prick with an armband holding an iPod while I workout (apologies to the pretentious pricks who workout with iPods strapped to their arm).

Headphone Controls – I love this! I have my shuffle clipped to the inside of my shorts pocket while running, so trying to change tracks while running is not the easiest thing if the controls were on the device. It’s much easier to use the headphone controls to adjust volume and change tracks while on the move. Having recently spent 10 hours on a flight with my iPod for company, I can safely say that I enjoyed using these controls in my half sleepy state without having to fish out the device.

Size / Capacity - The smallest iPod available is smaller than my thumb (it’s a regular sized thumb), and is extremely lightweight (the iPod, not my thumb) – I cannot feel it when it’s clipped on. 1.8″ tall x 0.3″ thin to be exact. I’ve heard people moaning about how easy it is to lose at this size – how do you lose something that’s clipped at one end and is stuck in your ear at the other? If you are losing it by leaving it at places and forgetting about it, then it’s nothing to do with your iPod’s size. The capacity is now increased to 4GB, which is aplenty – I think its the perfect size to add in tons of music, yet retain enough control to manage it without a display.

Headphones – Moving the controls to the headphones does have a downside. It restricts your ability to use 3rd party headphones until a manufacturer builds a dongle with a remote control unit that allows you to attach another headphone to it. The sound quality is good but not great – no complaints in this department. The only downside is that Apple seems to have reduced the length of the headphone cable, so if you have it clipped to your shorts, or kept inside your jeans, you will find the cable stretched to max. This also places the remote at neck level, which is not a good place to be if you sweat buckets while on a run or during a workout.

Voiceover - At first glance, this seemed quite gimmicky, but to be honest, it’s one of the two most useful new features (the other being the addition of play list control for the first time in a shuffle). Pressing down the center button on the remote causes the device to speak out the name of the song – this works surprisingly well. Continue holding it and you will hear a beep at the end of the track name and the name of the play lists will be spoken out in order. When you hear the name of the play list you want, click the middle button again to start playing it.

Controls - Besides the voiceover controls mentioned above, the top and bottom buttons marked + and – allow you to change the volume. While a track is playing, press the center button once quickly to pause, and once again to resume playback. Double click this button to move to the next track, and triple click to move to the previous track (or to the beginning of the current track). Here’s where it gets a bit tricky for me – for some reason I sometimes find it difficult to triple click and end up clicking four times (just comfortable with pairs I guess), so I end up either moving to the next track or pausing it unintentionally. It’s a strange problem but doesn’t happen too often, and I guess is restricted to me!

Play lists – Huge change! I have an older 1G shuffle as well, and though that was only half a gig, it was a pain to navigate through the tracks even though I was managing the play lists manually in iTunes. So with a 4GB device, it’s so much more useful to be able to sort music into play lists. The voiceover control also allows you to easily run through the play lists and select the right one.

Podcasts – If you subscribe to Podcasts, you will be happy to know that the Shuffle organizes your podcasts into a separate play lists. Another huge useful feature is that the shuffle remembers your position within the podcast. I subscribe to podcasts such as the Ricky Gervais Show and the Adam Carolla Show (both highly recommended), and these run an hour long or more, and sometimes I switch over to music and it is comforting to know that I can get back to the podcast and resume from where i left off.

Tips & Tricks

Controls - Apple’s iPod page and manual that comes with the shuffle only list the basic controls, but there are some interesting tips and tricks – not sure why they want us to discover this – should have been in the manual (though these are available on the Apple support site if you search hard enough).

• If you are scanning through tracks to find a particular song, press the center button till you hear the name of the track first. Now double click or triple click to move back and forward in your play list to hear the names of the tracks and select it. Just double or triple clicking without the voiceover does the trick but sometimes you need to wait more than a few seconds to figure out which track it is, so this is a handy shortcut when you can hear the names of the tracks.
• When you hold the center button till the beep and play list names are spoken, you can use the + and – buttons to quickly run through your play lists
• You can double-click-and hold on the second click to fast-forward, or triple-click-and hold on the third click to rewind. It’s tricky, but doable!
• Flick the play mode switch on the Shuffle body to off then back to either of the play positions and the Shuffle tells you the battery status (“Battery Full”, “Battery 75%/50%/25%”, and finally “Battery Low”). If you don’t hear anything your shuffle is probably dead and needs to be charged

Sweaty Remote Syndrome

• As mentioned somewhere in this article, if you run and sweat, the remote is not exactly at the best place to remain dry – I’ve used a small piece of clingwrap around the remote that keeps it dry and still easy to operate

Organize

• In iTunes, create a new play list folder called ‘Shuffle Play lists’, and create new play lists inside that. My suggestion here is to not create just a few play lists with a large number of tracks. Instead, create more play lists with around 20 tracks each at the most – it’s easier to browse through play lists than double-clicking your way through a long play list.
• Once your iPod is connected, select it in iTunes and in the music page, choose to Sync this play list folder – this will sync all play lists within it. You can keep adding / removing tracks to these play lists and they wil sync automatically. If you add a new playlist to this folder, remember to go back to the music tab and select this new play list as well. You can do the same for podcasts by selecting the options from the podcast tab – you can also choose to sync new podcasts only so this stays fresh everytime you sync.

Using Third Party Headphones / Speakers / Car Use

• Not the best of hacks, but this is possible. Select the song / play list that you want to listen to, and set the volume. Now switch off the iPod, disconnect the iPod headphone and connect your other headphone / speaker / car aux cable and turn the iPod back on. It does work, but to change tracks or adjust the volume, you will need to reconnect the iPod headphone and do the same all over again! Works fine though, if you have a set play list that you want to run through a car stereo or external speakers – both have volume controls so that can be taken care of!