Awesome Techs

For troubleshooting purposes it is the best idea to boot into Safemode. In Mac you can boot into safemode by pressing and holding the shift key while the system is booting up. It will turn off all nonessential system-software nubbins in an effort to get a sick machine at least powered up.

It can come in handy when you’ve just installed some new piece of software and find that you can’t even start up the machine, or when one of your fonts is corrupted, or when something you’ve designated as a Login Item turns out to be gumming up the works. With this trick, you can at least turn on the computer so that you can uninstall the cranky program.The trick is to press the Shift key as the machine is starting up. Hold it down from the startup chime until you see the words “Safe Boot,” in red lettering, on the login screen.

Apple has confirmed that there are chances that hard drives may fail which were used in MacBook systems, sold between approximately May 2006 and December 2007. So if you bought your MacBooks between 2006 and 2007 could be eligible for a free hard drive replacement.

Apple says,

If your MacBook was purchased in the date range listed above and shows a flashing question mark on the screen, please take it to Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider and they will examine the hard drive to confirm if it is eligible for a replacement, free of charge, under this program.

The offer is open until August the 15th of this year, or three years after the MacBook was purchased.

via: [LifeHacker]

The first reason for any normal computer user to use Windows 7 is its cooler look and faster performance. Extended support for themes, desktop gadgets, sidebar etc are helping windows 7 to look nice. The people who uses linux for every day use is increasing day by day, but still its not even close to the numbers of windows users. The main reason is being the ugly user interface, which is not the truth but what most people think.

Now in a KDE desktop, for example Kubuntu, all these effects which windows 7 boasts to have, are there. But what about the Gnome Lovers, so thats why I am writing this blog post today. Gnome can be made lot more cooler than even windows 7 with the use of some tools. Cairo-Dock/Glx-Dock is on of this kind application.

With Cairo Dock we can make the Gnome desktop look like anything we want. The best feature of this cairo-dock is, it is customizable to very high extend. Cairo-Dock is a bar to launch applications hosted (or dock, to the way Mac OS X) incorporating in its latest versions, management of plugins as desklets (or widgets) directly displayed on the desktop of user icons such “interactive”. Incorporated by Fabrice Rey (aka Fabounet) and developed on Ubuntu (also works on other distributions and desktop environments Linux in 32 or 64 bit) it allows quick launching favorite applications directly from the user’s desktop.  A manager of transparency as Compiz Fusion, Beryl, Compiz or Metacity associated with xcompmgr is necessary.  The dock also works under XFCE (with the composite manager xfwm4 or Compiz), and normally with KDE since Kwin manages the composition display.

You can find the installation instruction HERE. Information for Ubuntu Users are available HERE.

PS: If you are experiencing any issues after the install, just right click and quit the application and then launch it by using the -c switch. like cairo-dock -c.

Also if you are using Radeon cards, you may want to add the boot parameter radeon.modeset=1.

If you got any doubts ask me, through he comments. Here are some desktops which uses Cairo-Dock.

Step 1. Install the VNC server.

Windows users: TightVNC is free Windows VNC server and client software. TightVNC is a nice choice because it also allows for file transfers and high compression levels for slow connections. Download TightVNC from here and run the installation on your home computer. Start the server, and set a password for incoming connections.

TightVNC can be set to run as a Windows service, which means your Windows usernames and passwords can be used to authenticate on the VNC server connection. Be sure all your Windows passwords are set and strong, and that any passwordless guest accounts are disabled.

Mac users: OSXvnc is a free Mac VNC server. Download, install, set up a password and start the server.

If your VNC server is connected directly to the Internet, it is now listening for Internet requests on port 5900, VNC’s default port (which is also configurable). Visit WhatIsMyIP from your home computer to determine its IP address and write it down.

Step 2. Install the VNC client.

On the remote Windows computer, also download and install TightVNC, but this time, start the viewer, NOT the server. If you’re on a Mac, download the free Chicken of the VNC Mac viewer to connect to your home PC. Enter your home computer’s IP address and password to connect.

Here’s a screengrab of a VNC connection to my Windows PC from my Mac. Click on the image to see a larger version.

And that’s that! You’re virtually sitting at your home desktop from anywhere in the world.

A few extra VNC tips to chew on:

• For slower network connections, set the compression to “best.” The window image quality will be lower, but the connection response will be snappier.
• Bring a VNC viewer with you on a USB memory stick so you don’t have to download and install on every computer you want to use to connect to your server.
• Avoid having to install a server on Mom’s computer; email her the 166K self-extracting SingleClick UltraVNC server for your next tech support phone session. More on SingleClick in an upcoming Lifehacker feature.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] LogMeIn is a web-based application that also provides this remote desktop control and may be a better option for some folks. I prefer VNC because it’s more of a challenge and doesn’t require third party intervention.

[2] If your home computer is behind a home network router with a firewall, remote computers will not be able to connect. You must open up a port on your router’s firewall and forward requests to it to your computer.

[3] Alternately, you can enter your home computer’s domain name. For setting Up a Hostname For your computer You can use the free service of DynDNS.

Credits:[LifeHacker]

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

Supported Sources:

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (unencrypted–protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries), and some .VOB and .TS files
• Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.

Outputs:

• File format: MP4 and MKV
• Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora
• Audio: AAC, CoreAudio AAC (OS X Only), MP3, or Vorbis. AC-3 pass-through, DTS pass-thorugh (MKV only)

Misc features:

• Chapter selection
• Subtitles
• Integrated bitrate calculator
• Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
• Live Video Preivew

Mac OS
	Mac OS X 10.5 / 10.6 – GUI Download (32bit Intel) Download (64bit Intel) Download (Power PC)	Mac OS X 10.5 / 10.6 – CLI Download (32bit Intel) Download (64bit Intel) Download (Power PC)
	Intel based Macs: If you have an Intel Core 2 Duo / Core i5 or i7, you can download the “64bit Intel” release. If you have the older “Core Duo” or “Core Solo” processors, you should download the “32bit Intel” release.
Windows
	Windows XP/Vista/7 – GUI Download	Windows XP/Vista/7 – CLI Download
Linux
	Ubuntu 9.10 deb – GUI Download (32bit) Download (64bit)	Ubuntu 9.10 deb – CLI Download (32bit) Download (64bit)
	Fedora 12 rpm – GUI Download (32bit) Download (64bit)	Fedora 12 rpm – CLI Download (32bit) Download (64bit)
Other
	Useful Links Checksums Source Code

Google Chrome developer’s build for Mac egts an update with a number of stability fixes along with an update which includes a trackpad gesture that allows users to open the previous and next pages in a new tab using the CMD-three finger swipe.

Hold the CMD key and swipe with three fingers left or right, and you’ll open a new tab with the page found going back or forward. There’s also crude bookmark and cookie managers in this release.

The Windows and Linux versions of Chrome dev also updated to version 4.0.295.0, although with different changes.

via – LifeHacker