TechCut

Duke Nukem forever and for always...

2008-12-23T13:29:00.001-08:00

Okay, I have been reading this article at Bit-Tech.net which says that the guys at 3D Realms have released a new image for Duke Nukem Forever. If this is their idea of keeping the gamers on the edge of their seats, with saliva dripping from their mouth waiting for anticipation, they must be crazy as hell.

For those of you who don't know about Duke Nukem Forever's story, this game has been in development for over a Decade. Yeah its been 11 years now since the game first started its development. The game has changed many engines leading to long delays.

Here are some of my favorite comments made by site visitors on Bit-tech.

I love it. This game is so overdue that it gets a news article when an IMAGE is released! -Jordan Wise
Maybe this is the game? We're playing it right now. Each pic is the next level and we will be playing Forever! :) -StephenK
Basically this game will have to look better than Beowulf, run maxed out on a 486, have no DRM on it, cost £5 and be the greatest game of all time.... Or people will be pissed and it'll die on it's arse.- Joeymac

My "fantastic"experience with Vista

2008-12-20T23:31:00.001-08:00

I was using Windows Vista for over two months now. Yeah, I know even after all the criticisms about it, I just had to try it once. This is what happens when you are tech geek!

So, initially Vista worked great for me. It had many new features and security improvements too. But then, over time it got slow, too slow for my preferences. I thought installing Service Pack 1 would do something for me. It did, increase the size of my Vista installation to nearly double of what it was before! My Vista partition started to bloat mainly because of installing Service Pack 1 and because (of what I believe) hibernation. At its peak, it reached 19 GB! that too in just 2 months! In contrast, my XP installation never crossed 8 GB.

I have a five year old Pinnacle PCTV tuner card installed which refused to work with the appropriate drivers - which were not available for Vista. The latest drivers dated to 2004, which obviously, which were not for XP.

And then there was Vista's UAC, do I need to say anything else more about it? Well, yeah actually. I am all for security, but when security starts to being a hindrance in your daily life, I would prefer no security at all. If UAC asks me to confirm whether I want to install a specific driver or a software then that's fine with me. But when it asks me whether I want to go to the Control Panel, WTF is that?

But I must admit, that UAC was at least a wee bit helpful. How do I know that? Well mainly because, if I had listened to my UAC the last time it tried to help me, my Vista would not have crashed. I wanted to install Alcohol 120% on my PC to get a boot image to work, and Vista UAC warned me that it was trying to install some drivers and other bullshit which I didn't pay attention to. It turned out - BIG MISTAKE. It crashed my PC so bad, that it became impossible to recover it after that. Yeah, no system restore, no backup, no rescue disk, no nothing. I couldn't even get into safe mode without Vista crashing in on me again.

So, what did I do then? Well, I think the image below answers it all.

Virus scan your emails for free by sending a mail

2008-12-13T21:23:00.001-08:00

Have you ever received a mail from a unknown person or from a friend with an attachment that you are unsure whether you should open it or not?

Now some might think, if they have an anti-virus software sitting on their desktop, it might still be safe to open the attachment, even if there was a virus in it. But that would really be taking a big risk. Because it could be an entirely new virus or the latest variant of an old virus or a trojan that your anti-virus is not prepared to fight, thus resulting in your pc being affected.

Here is how you can take your PC protection one step forward.

Virus Total lets you forward your messages with attachments to them where they will freely scan your mail attachments to find out if there is any virus or trojan in it or not. All you have to do is, forward your mail to scan@virustotal.com with the subject SCAN. Virus Total will scan your mail for viruses and then send you back the results.

Virus Total scans your mail with 38 different anti-virus and anti-malware products including Avast!, AntiVir, Norton Antivirus, TrendMicro, PCTools and Kaspersky. (You can check out the entire list here) So just imagine, its one anti-virus sitting on your pc against 38 anti-virus engines on the web. Which one is the safer bet? With so many anti-virus engines running, you simply cannot go wrong.

Virus Total has been awarded as the one of the 100 best products of year 2007 in the Security Web Site category. So you can imagine how good and useful this service really is.

Tip: The good thing is, you don’t even have to remember the email address. Just add this address in your contacts or in the quick links tab in Gmail (You have to activate this from Gmail Labs) and you can use this service at your convenience.

Virus Total also has a file uploader which enables you to directly send files from your system using the context menu. The uploader is only a 80 kb in size and serves the same function.

Website: http://www.virustotal.com/

The fastest rising Google search terms for 2008

2008-12-13T08:12:00.001-08:00

Here’s a list of 10 search terms that have risen the fastest in 2008 as compared to 2007.

1.    obama
2.    facebook
3.    att
4.    iphone
5.    youtube
6.    fox news
7.    palin
8.    beijing 2008
9.    david cook
10. surf the channel

Obama being on the top of the list was really a no-brainer. And Palin too is on the top-10 list along with iphone which made a lot of noise this year. But Youtube being on the list really surprised me considering how long it has been since it has launched and become popular.

Find all the freely available shows on the web with Prime Time Rewind

2008-12-13T07:54:00.001-08:00

Now-a-days all the major TV networks are making available their TV shows freely available on their websites. But it can be a little difficult and time consuming to find out which shows are available and which network own the show.

So Prime Time Rewind makes this easy for you by showing you a list of which shows are available to view and the number of episodes/seasons available to view.

Info for nine major networks available right including, FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC, CCOMEDY CENTRAL:, TNT, USA, CW and BRAVO.

Here is an example of what info you will find if you click on a particular show.

So for all the convinience in the world, visit Prime Time Rewind and start getting your daily dose of television.

Check if a particular site is facing uptime/downtime

2008-12-12T00:15:00.001-08:00

There are times when you are not able to visit a particular site because it is either blocked, or there might be a network problem from your side or there might be a problem from the website itself.

So how do you know who’s fault it is that you are not able to visit that website? Downforeveryoneorjustme is a website that lets you check if the site is currently up and running.

For example, if I want to find out if my site is up and running, all I have to do is type in the url of my website in to the box provided and click enter

And if the site is up and running it will show the following message.

So keep this in your bookmarks, you never know when this might be helpful. And if you want an alternative site, you can check dnstools.com too.

Special offer: Get Wired Magazine for just $10

2008-12-07T12:47:00.001-08:00

Wired Magazine is one of the top and trusted technology magazines in the U.S. Wired magazine is offering a special subscription offer for their magazine for just $10 for 12 issues or $20 for 24 issues.

This offer is valid only available to U.S. residents. So, if you live in the U.S. and want to take the opportunity to subscribe to this magazine, visit this link.

Buy Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for only $55.95

2008-12-07T11:31:00.001-08:00

Microsoft products have always been very expensive and out-of-reach for most people. Like for example, Vista Ultimate itself costs $319 (originally $399). Now, only the super-rich can buy such an extremely expensive operating system, and that too one that sucks.

Office Ultimate 2007 is another product produced by Microsoft that is insanely expensive, which only a few can afford. It’s priced at $679 which will burn a hole in your pants (and your bank balance as well).

Below you can see a screenshot which shows the retail value of Office Ultimate 2007.

But if you are a student, then Microsoft has a sweet deal for you in place. You can get the latest and greatest Office for a Super-Duper-Trooper discounted price of only $59.95. Yeah, you’ve read it write. If you don’t believe me look at the screenshot below.

Microsoft must have figured that instead of the students not being able to afford their software and thus pirating it, that they might as well sell Office to them ~~for what its worth for~~ for only $59, a whooping total of 91% discount.

But there are certain Terms and Conditions that Microsoft has placed, in order for you to get this discount. It is as follows:

So, if you are a student and fulfill their T&C you could purchase Microsoft Office 2007 at this link.

Get USB Safely Remove 4.0 worth $20 absolutely free

2008-12-07T09:43:00.001-08:00

Here’s a great opportunity for all you guys to get a premium software absolutely free. USB Safely Remove is a software that allows you to safely disconnect your USB device from the computer.

You may ask is there a need for a separate software for just disconnecting the device. Well, the answer is not really. But many times you might face the error that the device cannot be unplugged because it is in use. And no matter what you do, you cannot disconnect the device. And if you do unplug the device forcefully, the files and folders in the device may get corrupted thus could prove dangerous if you have important files in your USB drive. Plus it doesn’t hurt to have a small software in your PC that too when its absolutely Free!

Get USB Safely Remove here

Get Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 FREE!

2008-12-07T07:48:00.001-08:00

One thing I keep wondering is why people still keep buying all these insanely expensive, paid anti-virus softwares even when all these manufacturers keep offering their pro/paid products for free.

Kaspersky is one such anti-virus provider that keeps offering their products for free many times in a year. Now they are providing their latest flagship product, the Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 Free for six months. (By the end of which they’ll most likely be providing another such sweet deal.

Anyways here’s how you can get this one now.

1-Visit http://www.yuvayantra.com/

2-Register on their site with your email address.

3-Receive the activation link in your mail and log-in.

4-Click on the right hand side link of the page that points to the promotional page.

5-Click on Get Your Free License Now button

6-Click on Confirm.

7-Read the Terms and Agreements and click on Agree

8-And get the Activation Code.

9-Read the instructions and click on Download Software.

10-Please save the activation code somewhere safe (like in your email account) so that you don’t loose it.

If you still have any problems with the above procedure, you can contact me further help.

Prayer vs Actually doing something

2008-12-06T18:31:00.001-08:00

Here’s an excellent comic I found at Miscellanea. I liked it because I totally agree with it. What about you?

Gmail’s missing feature

2008-12-05T01:59:00.001-08:00

Gmail is way better and faster than Yahoo can ever be and it certainly has got better features (and themes) than Yahoo. But Yahoo has got some features that Gmail doesn't have, well at least so it seems.

Yahoo always had the feature of letting you check all your unread mails, but Gmail doesn't seem to have this function. Well, there is a turnaround for this. You can actually check all your unread mails with this simple hack.

Just enter the following code in to Gmail’s search box and hit enter.

label:inbox label:unread

And voila! All your unread mails in your inbox are shown.

If you need more advanced hacks check out this article at the Google System blog

Find out the 13th man

2008-12-05T01:46:00.001-08:00

Where here is a real brain teaser for you guys. Look at the image below carefully and tell me where does the 13th man come from.

Make Gmail your default mail handler

2008-12-04T07:13:00.001-08:00

If you use Firefox and Gmail and do not like to use the clunky Microsoft Outlook it gets a little bit difficult to mail back when you click on a email address that uses the standard mailto: email protocol.

Firefox lets you customize this features so that you can mail from Firefox using Gmail itself when clicking on the mailto: email protocol. Lifehacker has a pretty good detailed article explaining the procedure to do this.

Just launch Gmail and when it is loaded, paste this code in the address bar:

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","GMail")

Firefox will ask for your permission to add add Gmail as an application. Just click on the Add Application button and you are set.

Upgrade from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 easily

2008-12-04T06:47:00.001-08:00

If you are still one of those people using the now ancient Firefox 2, then here’s a surprise waiting for you. The Mozilla folks are providing you with a free upgrade from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. The procedure will be seamless. When you start Firefox, a dialogue box will open asking you whether you want to upgrade to Firefox 3.

After that you have three options, Later, Never and Get the new Version.

If you choose Later, the dialogue box will be shown to you again in 24 hours. If you choose Never, the dialogue box will not be shown to you again for a very long time and if you choose Get the new version, your Firefox will be upgraded to the latest version.

It is very advisable to upgrade to the latest version of whichever browser you use because of the never-ending malware/phishing threats from the web.

Fruit Graph

2008-12-02T04:40:00.001-08:00

via: xkcd

Super-Duper portable NES

2008-12-02T03:20:00.001-08:00

I sure wish I had this when I was a child. But instead I had this huge, bulky extra-large version of the NES.

Kotomi did the unthinkable and modded an entire NES console into one of its cartridges!

And it works amazingly fantastic too!

via Technobob

Ping services you can use

2008-12-01T05:11:00.001-08:00

Here is a list of pinging servers you can use to notify blog directories and search engines that you have updated your blog. This helps in updating your content on their servers faster.

If you are a Wordpress user, you can use this list by modifying you ping list under Control Panel, Options, Writing.

And if you use Windows Live Writer, you can add this list under Tools, Options, Ping Servers.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Thanks Daniel

15 Best Google Doodles

2008-12-01T03:52:00.001-08:00

I have been always fascinated and intrigued with Google’s Doodles. I mean look how innovative this company really is. How many other companies can you name that just don’t stick to their same old boring logos all year long (and also, which haven’t copied the idea from Google)? And lets face it, it really is fun to catch a doodle when they come up with one.

Here are the 15 best Doodles throughout Google’s 10 year history.

Happy Halloween - October 31, 2001

Happy New Year! - January 1, 2002

Google celebrates Alfred Hitchcock's birthday - August 13, 2003

Happy Birthday to Michelangelo - March 6, 2003

Celebrating Google's 5th birthday - September 2003

Birthday of Ray Charles - September 23, 2004

National Teacher Day - May 3, 2005

Father's Day - June 18, 2006

Louis Braille's Birthday - January 4, 2006

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Birthday - May 22, 2006

Luciano Pavarotti - October 12, 2007

Large Hadron Collider - September 10, 2008

Alexander Graham Bell's Birthday - March 3, 2008

Leap Year - February 29, 2008

2008 Summer Games in Beijing - August 8, 2008

Flip your text upside down

2008-11-30T23:07:00.001-08:00

Flip Title is a neat online tool that lets you flip your text upside down. It can be easily used to either impress your friends or annoy them

All you have to do is to enter text in the field above and the site immediately generates the upside text below it.

Link: Flip Title

PostSecret: Share your secrets with the world

2008-11-25T11:09:00.001-08:00

All of us have a secret that we hold deep inside our heart that we desire to tell somebody, but can’t for a reason – because it is a secret. There are secrets that we have been told by others to keep, there are secrets that we are ashamed of and then there are secrets where, we wait for the right time to reveal.

PostSecret is a site that lets you reveal your deepest, darkest secret out anonymously for the world to see. Readers send in their secrets written on a postcard via mail to the author and the author posts those notes on the site without making any changes.

Here are two postcards from the site.

These postcards reveal the readers deepest pain and their darkest secrets, which they could never reveal to the outside world.

PostSecret is really a wonderful and a heart touching site and I really recommend you to visit this site at least once.

Call for Free without installing any software

2008-11-21T09:04:00.001-08:00

I’ve just discovered a fabulous new online service called Evaphone. What this site does is, it allows you to make free International and local calls. There is no registration needed, you don’t to download and install anything and the best part is, its Free!

I made a few test calls to a few of my friends and found that the service is great. But, on some occasions, the call did end abruptly. But the service might improve in the future. So, do keep this site in your bookmarks. Even if it doesn’t, who cares? You are not spending a single cent on this baby!

Check it out here: Evaphone

Get Half Life, the Game of the Century for only $0.98

2008-11-21T06:54:00.001-08:00

There are some games out there that are different all together. They are so great, fun to play and advanced for their times that people instantly fall in love with then and they have a dedicated fan following for many, many years to come.

Half Life is such a game. Originally, it was released in 1998 and soon became the biggest hit of the year, getting so many Game of the Year awards that it soon became hard to count.

Its been 10 years since the game was released. And now Valve, to celebrate this gem of a game, is giving out this game for only $1. Yup that’s right. If you have never played this game before, or its been many years since you last played this game, I sincerely recommend you to buy this game and give it one more try.

Yeah, agreed that the graphics are a ~~little~~ outrageously outdated, but still this is still one of the best games out there, in fact this has personally, been one of my favorite FPS games of all time.

You can get Half Life at Steam from here.

Themes introduced to Gmail (Finally!)

2008-11-20T14:25:00.001-08:00

It has been over 2 years that Google released Gmail. Over the years they have added many new features and enhancements, but one thing remained. Their theme. People got so bored of the single theme that they developed their own custom themes for Gmail, such as the user styles script or Better Gmail firefox addon.

But now Google has done wonders by introducing built-in themes directly into Gmail. They have released 31 themes as of now that can be accessed through the settings tab.

All the themes are really wonderful and colorful. All you have to do is select one of the themes and Gmail will automatically install the theme for you.

So go ahead and try those new themes now!

Thanks Lifehacker

Easily add addons with Firefox's latest customization feature

2008-11-18T14:03:00.000-08:00

Firefox has just released a new feature on their site. Its called Fashion Your Firefox. It allows easy customization of your Firefox by letting you easily add addons and themes from a variety of categories.

All you have to do is select the addons that you want to add to your Firefox, and click the "Install My Addons button.

After you click submit, all your addons will be installed and you'll get the following message:

All you have do after that is restart your Firefox as you usually do after installing addons.
You can check this feature at: Fashion Your Firefox