Awesome Techs

BBC News reported that, Microsoft has launched the latest iteration of its mobile phone operating system, called Windows phone 7 series.

The software has a redesigned user interface and incorporates many Microsoft services such as Xbox LIVE games and the Zune music service.

The software was introduced at an event at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

BBC News Said.

The new version have lots of new features. Phone Windows 7 will have a completely new user interface that resembles that of the Zune. The software use a new interface called ‘live tiles’. But the sad news is it does not support Adobe Flash at the initial launch.

“Microsoft and Adobe are working closely together. While the newest version of Windows Phone won’t support Flash at initial availability, both companies are working to include a browser plug-in for the full Flash player in future versions of Windows Phone. More details will be shared at Microsoft MIX next month,”

Adobe said about the issue.

Having more than one person using your computer? If you do, you can create user accounts for everyone so that they can customize their favorites, colors, wallpaper, and private files. Default ‘Windows XP User Accounts’.

Sometimes you might need to fine tune the user accounts. You can do this with a hidden ‘User Account 2’ interface by running control userpasswords2.

This ‘Windows 2000’ style ‘User Accounts’ might be useful for those users that are very familiar with Windows 2000.

So, now you might want to add this shortcut permanently to the ‘Control Panel’. The only way is to add some lines into the ‘Windows Registry’.

It is recommended to use *.reg script below to add ‘User Accounts 2’ shortcut to your control panel rather than entering it manually. Copy lines below to a new file and called add_ua2.reg. Note that the extension must be reg. Just right click the file and Merge it. Your computer must be restarted for these to take effect.

Just incase you don’t like it, you can also remove it using *.reg file below. Copy lines below to a new file and called delete_ua2.reg. Note that the extension must be reg. Just right click the file and Merge it. Your computer must be restarted for these to take effect.

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]

Google’s Chrome gained browser market share in January at the expense of both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and IE’s biggest rival, Mozilla’s Firefox, according to data published by netmarketshare.Google Chrome got a share of 5.2% by the end of January. This is around 0.6% increase from last month. Both IE and Firefox Loast its share.

IE fell to 62.18 percent from 62.69 in December and Firefox fell from 24.61 to 24.41. Chrome moved from 4.64 percent to 5.20. Notably, Firefox has fallen for two months straight, a fact that hasn’t occurred in years.

According to what Video game industry analyst Michael Pachter said, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to receive price cuts again this year.

He said,

“The Wii enjoyed a $350 price advantage over the PS3 at launch, and a $150 advantage until September. Now, the gap has narrowed to $100, with the feature-laden PS3 a tempting purchase for prospective console households,” says Pachter.

“The holiday Wii sales boost was primarily attributable to a $50 gift card promotion offered by Wal-Mart; while we expect similar promotions at holiday next year, we expect the other consoles to be lower-priced by then, further eroding the Wii’s competitive price advantage.”

“It appears that piracy in Europe and some substitution of iPod Touch games has impacted DS software sales more than we expected, and we have adjusted our estimates for FY:11 to account for further pressure.”

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)
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