Archive for December, 2006
As I was browsing the websites of Wal-Mart and Target I noticed Unreal Tournament 2007 with a release date. I have read that it will be released in the first quarter of 2007, but had not seen an exact date. Wal-Mart has a release date set for January 5th, 2007 and also provides a preview video for all you curious people out there.
Target also has a release date set, but theirs is set for January 8th, 2006.
The game is currently only being sold for PC, so all of you PlayStation 3 fan boys out there will have to continue to wait. With the incredible success of Unreal Tournament 2004, I would suggest preordering your copy now. I have personally played Unreal Tournament 2004 and would recommend buying Unreal Tournament 2007 to anyone that drools over a great first person shooter. Pre-ordering it doesn’t spit out any errors, so it seems legit.
Other thoughts
Not every antivirus software is as good as it claims to be. When using wireless internet with services like startlogic or even bluehost, make sure that you are talking across an antivirus firewall software. Usually zone alarm is used and is the best option too.
If you’ve been using RapidShare or Yousendit to send files across the internet, you might be interested in divShare. You can upload or download files at high speeds with no wait time - without registering. There is no file size limit on what you can upload, you can download the file as many times as you want, and the files unlike Yousendit will last forever. Basically there are no restrictions; and yes it’s a free service!
Registering does have its advantage. You can track how many downloads your files have, and when the last download was. You can see when it was uploaded, and choose to delete it. If you decide to register you’ll see the files you’ve recently uploaded even before you registered. When uploading images, it gives you a direct link to the image so you can display it on a website, generates a thumbnail preview of the image, and gives the HTML code to display it. If you upload more than one image you can create a gallery to display them in, and upload multiple images at the same time. The gallery is displayed to the public, and is pretty simple. It shows thumbnails of all the images, which you can click to enlarge along with a button to go to the next image.
However there is one downside that I see. You can’t upload PHP or EXE files. I’m not exactly sure what other file types aren’t allowed, but those two were the most noticeable. To get around this just add another digit on to the file’s extension before you upload it. Hopefully they will allow files of these types in the future.
News Source: CyberNetNews
Omea has always been my favorite RSS reader, for its abundance of features. Now that the pro version of it is absolutely free, there is no reason not to try it out. Along with RSS, it also works with Outlook to import your contacts into its built in address book. To send and receive mail you can use the built in mail client as well. You can take notes within the program, and give it certain flags. You can even manage all your news groups using the supported NNTP protocol.
I’m going to focus on the RSS reader part of it, because it’s the part I’m most familiar with. In an RSS reader the main features I’m looking for is auto updating feeds, and an alert box to tell you when the feed has been updated. Omea has both of those features. You can customize the time each individual feed is updated, and if it alerts you or not. There are multiple views to choose from when reading the feed as well, including a newspaper view. Managing feeds is easily done, because you can sort them by day, week, and month It tells you which feed is un-read, and which is read. You can them make different flags to sort them even further.
If you’re looking for a professional RSS reader and more, Omea is defiantly for you. If you don’t want any of the un-needed features and just want a clean interface with no extra features, check out the RSS reader I made, QuickRSS. It’s a dead project, but you can pick up coding it if you’d like. I’ll update the project if you add anything.
With all the hype around Apple’s iPod, I don’t think many people are looking into alternatives. Recently I got my hands on Creative’s Zen:M mp3 player, and think it’s great. It has 30 gigs for music, videos, and pictures. Along with the typical media formats you can also use it as a storage device for any type of file. Its color screen makes watching music videos or going through your photo gallery on slideshow mode a breeze. It also has a very nice feature Apple’s doesn’t; an FM tuner. Like the Microsoft’s Zune you can preset your favorite radio stations on one of its 31 presets. The reception is as good as a normal radio, meaning it comes in clearly in my basement, or driving down the highway. Its touch pad control in the center is nice as well, because unlike Apple’s you can tap it once or slide your finger on it to get to the next song or menu. This makes it easier to get to specific menus without over shooting it.
The physical size of the mp3 player is a bit big, and it feels slightly bulky in your hand. The menu controls can be somewhat confusing sometimes, especially configuring the FM tuner. When you’re listening to a song, and want to go back to the main menu, the song you’re currently playing will shut off. I consider this a major downside because you can’t search through your music while listening to a song. The ear buds that come with it are slightly more comfortable for your ears, but still hurt after a long period of time. I’m not sure which types of ear buds you can buy that don’t hurt. For now I’ll stick with older ones.
Overall this is a great mp3/video player. It has all the features of the iPod, with only a few downsides. Even the price at $200 is a great deal. The downsides are minimal and easily overcome. I think the FM tuner is a great addition if you’re sick of the same old music as well.
Using a few tools such as Mp3 My Mp3 which I previously demonstrated could easily record Skype calls, you can turn PDF and text files into an mp3 file. Mp3 My Mp3 records sound directly from the sound card, so it should be noted that you can’t have any music or any other sounds playing at the time of the recording. On a positive note, this also means that you can turn your speakers off during the process.
Firstly you’ll need open Adobe’s PDF reader, and go to View > Read Out Loud, and turn it on. Scroll down to the page or part you’d like recorded, and open up Mp3 My Mp3. Select the proper sound card you wish to record from. It works with USB head phones, and integrated sound cards. Click the record button to start recording, and open Adobe back up. Again go to View > Read Out Load, and then choose which part you wish to read. When it’s done you’ll need to export the audio file in Mp3 My Mp3 in the audio format you want.
To record text documents such as office files, simply copy and paste the text into a text file on your desktop. Open up the new text file in Opera, and follow the previous steps and configure Mp3 My Mp3 to start recording. Select the text you wish to record in Opera, right click and click Speak. After it’s done export it into the audio format you want, and save it.
Keep in mind text to speech software isn’t the best of quality, but it gets the job done. If however it does get better in the future, this will be a superb technique for the lazy people. With whole books coming out as eBooks, this is an absolutely brilliant idea.
Required tools: Mp3 My Mp3, Opera, and Adobe Acrobat.
Other thoughts
If you are using bluehost, you can go ahead with your cingular wireless connection. You can download software of any category safely as long as you have zone alarm. Bluehost also offers inmotion hosting and supports javascript as well, so that is another issue solved. If you are using verizon wireless, it comes with its own version of firewall.