I just noticed today that Grooveshark, one of my three favorite music websites, the others being The Hype Machine and Last.FM, rolled out a new survey platform allowing their users to earn points towards getting a free Plus / VIP account (which is ad-less, and allows for many new cool features like Last.FM scrobbling and a Grooveshark Desktop Application built on Adobe Air, and exclusive preview of other new beta features).

The only survey that appeared to be available was called a Profile survey worth 150 points and I completed it.  Hopefully more will be available soon as I’m looking forward to my free Plus account!  The site states they email you when new surveys are available.

Just create or log into your Grooveshark account and under the Account button on the top right click on Surveys.  Enjoy!

This is something I’d wondered about for quite a while, and wasn’t able to do until now!

With Windows 7 there are a number of changes to how folders work.  You are now able to make ‘symbolic’ folder links among other cool things.

This allows you to congregate files from multiple locations and have windows recognize them as actually being in a location different than the one they are actually in (for example if you have a split archive with different parts on different hard drives you’d be able to make a “symbolic folder” to view them as if they were all on the same hard drive).

1. You’ll need a tool called Link Shell Extension.  This will add shell context menus to your right click context menus in Windows Explorer (giving you an option to make Symbolic Links and folders etc).   While this feature is new in windows 7 it is kind of buried and you would normally need to use the command line to utilize it.  Link Shell Extension provides a graphical front end to make this tool more useable in everyday situations.
2. Second of all, you will need to create a target folder to “paste” your symbolic links into, so Windows will be “tricked” into thinking that your files are actually there.  I guess that’s the best way of explaining it.
3. After creating your target folder wherever, navigate back to where your file is actually stored, and then right click and select Pick Link Source.
4. Navigate to your target folder and select Drop As and then select Junction (this was in instructions for linking folders; for your files you may need to try other options).
5. In your target folder you will see your file again with a little overlay icon. 
   
6. Repeat for all other parts of your archive.

Thanks to unifex from SevenForums.com for providing me with this knowledge!

Understanding your target market is a very important thing if you are trying to promote, or even just create a movie. The target market of The Pirates of the Carribean is a younger viewer, because it is generally appropriate for all ages and because the marketing and the sense of adventure conveyed in the marketing is in my opinion, directed to appeal to kids.

The movie captures a light-hearted comedic feel which pretty much appeals to everyone but it also has its fair share of action sequences which will keep older kids and young adults entertained.

Some people who will be looking for more of an intense and serious type of film that would probably be more violent will be disappointed, but this is generally not the target market of Disney, who are looking to create family-oriented films that appeal to people of all ages.

Pirates of the Caribbean also has several “spin-off” type products and lots of branded merchandise that will keep people wanting more of the franchise.  I know that if I saw a t-shirt or a video game relating to Pirates of the Caribbean in a store I’d be more likely to buy those than something else I hadn’t heard of before because I already know something to do with Pirates of the Caribbean is going to be cool because I know the backstory.

There is even a Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride based on the movie (well actually, the movie was based on the ride, because the ride came first).  Every time a fan of the series is willing to buy one of these related products or visit an attraction based on the movie it strengthens and affirms a movie-goer’s likelihood to go see another movie in the series, if and when it comes out.

All of these promotional marketing efforts and related products based on the movie contribute to the stigma that surrounds Pirates of the Caribbean and keeps people coming back for more (and kids bugging their parents to see the latest film).

If you get an error on Gmail while attemping to make a free call to an actual phone, that says this:

Call failed due to an error [Code: 3 Remote: true]

That error code (as far as I know), means that the person you are calling is on the phone already, or that Gmail is getting a busy signal while trying to call your buddy!

One of our readers (Wave Cool00) just commented that this error can also happen when trying to chat (audio or video) from the same PC but from different Gmail accounts.  Thanks for the feedback!

If you have something to say to the contrary, let me know in the comments section!

Having trouble booting into windows with hal.dll errors and the like?  Here’s how to get rid of your problems.  Make sure you back up before you do it.

Things you need

• Your Windows XP CD
• About an hour of free time
• Computer with Boot problems

Read Here

We got a wierd letter in the mail from, of all places, Tanzania!

I opened it up to find a typical hilarious scam email.  It’s one thing to recieve spam in your email inbox, but it’s another thing to recieve it in the actual physical snail mail!

And it’s complete with the usual typos and everything (*facepalm*).  You’d expect if they were paying all the money for this postage they’d work on their sales pitch at least a little!

Let’s hope some gullible person doesn’t fall for this crap!

When I first got my HP Pavilion DV6753ca computer, it had Vista installed on it!  This was back in 2008.

I felt like downgrading to XP, because I liked the experience on XP better, and one of my favorite applications wouldn’t run on Vista, but would only work on XP.  So I downgraded, but I soon realized that HP, the manufacturer, didn’t really provide any XP drivers for this laptop!  I was really thrown for a loop!

After HOURS and HOURS of endless searching, I’ve managed to compile an almost complete list of all the drivers you need, and I’ve included downloads also, so you can get them all of this one page!  BOOKMARK IT!  Some of these drivers are out of date, like the nVidia drivers, but they work just fine, and I don’t think there are any newer version available for XP, so if you really want XP you’ll have to put up with that.

Otherwise, you could go with Windows 7 .  What’s handy about installing Windows 7 on this particular laptop is that you don’t have to really manually install any drivers at all!  Once you’ve installed windows, it automatically installs all the drivers for you, including your video drivers!

The DRIVERS:

nVidia Graphics Driver

SM56 Modem Driver

Realtek HD Audio Driver

Realtek PCI-E Ethernet Driver

Intel Chipset Driver

Lightscribe Driver

Synaptics Touchpad Driver

Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN

I hope that all of your driver installations run smoothly!  Please comment here if this works for you, or comment if you have a problem.

Thanks!

After much searching, this is a plugin that works with MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, but also works with the latest version of Foobar2000 (v1.1 at the time of writing)!  None of the other plugins I tested would work because they were out of date.

Enjoy!  Let me know it works for you!

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Components_0.9/WLM_Notifier_%28foo_wlm%29

My Daily Tech RECOMMENDED APPLICATIONS!

If you are looking to convert an AVCHD movie to another  format so that you can use it in your project, then you should definitely check out a piece of software called TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress.

It accepts AVCHD and just about any video format as an input, so that you can convert it to the most popular video formats.  Unfortunately it doesn’t support AVCHD as an output.

There ARE free ways of doing this too, I should mention that a free program called Avidemux that can do this too, so if you are technically inclined (Avidemux is harder to use) you may want to go that way instead of spending money on TMPGEnc (but of course TMPGEnc supports more formats etc).

Also, if you are looking for video editing software that is simple and support AVCHD input and output, check out Sony Vegas 9.0.  It is excellent and it supports many plugins and addons that make it really expandable.  It also has an amazing feature that makes recompression not necessary on certain AVCHD files (ones that you don’t edit), and that really speeds up the time that it takes to render videos.

OK, in my last jailbreak article I taught you how to use redsn0w to jailbreak your iPod Touch or iPhone.

In this article I will be showing you a whole new way to jailbreak your iDevice… OK here are some things you need to do:

• Update iTunes to it’s latest version.
• Update your device to firmware 3.1.2
• WARNING: DO NOT, I REPEAT NOT UPGRADE TO FIRMWARE 3.1.3 IT IS A FIRMWARE THAT DOES NOTHING AND STOPS BLACKRA1N FROM WORKING.
• Download Blackra1n from here either for MS Windows or Mac OS sorry – Linux not supported.

and your ready to jailbreak.

1. Open iTunes and make sure your devices firmware is 3.1.2 not 3.1.3
2. Quit iTunes and launch blackra1n.
3. Hit “make it ra1n”
4. Wait
5. Your device will reboot.
6. A window will pop-up asking you to donate if this was the fastest jailbreak you ever had.
7. On your Device go to the second page and look for the Blackra1n app.
8. Launch it
9. From here you can install Cydia, or rock, (I like rock) or blacksn0w to unlock your iPhone (use it with other carriers)
10. Click uninstall blackrain. NO IT WILL NOT DELETE THE JAILBREAK, JUST THE INSTALL APP.
11. Now go into rock, create a RockID and download away!

EASY AS PIE!