Category Archives: software

force to use Google.com, not any local search

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Google is a smart ass when it comes to serve what people want. However, most of the time you find yourself aboard, they just assume you are one of local folks. That’s painful when you are searching something. You are likely to get most of local search results than what you are familiar with. So? what can we do with it? It’s varied by how you do things.

1. If you used to open browser, type “google.com” then find things from there. You will have to type a bit more than usual. Try “google.com/ncr” This time you will see same old buddy you saw/expected.

NCR – is likely to be an abbreviation of No Country Redirection.

2. If you are using Firefox, you will have to find new search engine. Lucky us, portugesemike did this for us all. You can just use this instead of regular Google one.

3. If you are using Chrome, you have to go through setting a bit as following.

UPDATE 2011/08/10:
Preference –> Manage Search Engines

Add new search engine by using
Search Engine: Google.com
keyword: google.com/
URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=%s

Customize and Control >> Options >> Basic tab >> click at manage in default search section

Chrome search setting NO country redirection

You have to add *ncr* to keyword, then magic will happen.

Have fun with real Google.com search!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Wireless XBOX controller keeps turning off

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Symptom: your XBOX controller keeps turning off while you are playing; although it can be turned on instantly, but the mood is gone.

Cause: Firstly, check if batteries are empty or not. If not, it can be assumed that a contact in the battery compartment is moving. Thus your controller will shut off when the contact surface doesn’t touch the battery. It’s all about hardware, nothing is related to software or driver at all.

Solution: don’t try to bend the metal contact since it will be weaken the metal. What you need is something to put in underneath the metal contact and make sure of the contact will stay close to the battery at all time. Below figures are a dirty way to do so; it doesn’t look nice, but works nicely =)

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Popularity: 6% [?]

AT&T Nexus One to Froyo

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It’s been a while after T-mobile one got Frozen Yogurt. However, it’s time to end since Google started pushing Froyo OTA update since last week. I got 2 OTA updates, but they both failed to complete the update. Why? because I rooted my EPE54B. Thus, OTA will not do the job nicely.

How? you can do all manual update =) As of now, Google released FRF85B. For whom you might not understand, all T-mobile and AT&T, which have their own build number, will have to same build, FRFxx. When Google first released Froyo to T-mobile Nexus One, it’s like FRF50. However, not it’s FRF85B which is official.

Update procedure: it will be 2 path for rooted N1 and unrooted N1.

1. For unrooted N1, EPE54B, you just grab images of your build below.

2. Rename the file to update.zip and copy to root directory of SD.

3. Reboot your N1 to recovery mode by holding volume down + power. You will get into HBoot/Fastboot mode.

4. Use volume up/down to select menu and power to select “recovery.” N1 will reboot again to /!\ page. That’s fine. Then, you have to get into recovery mode by holding power and press volume up.

5. You will see Android system recovery;you now can use your trackball to select any option. Choose apply sdcard:update.zip

6. Wait until reboot and have fun with Frozen Yogurt.

 

For rooted N1, you will have to take rougher route. You actually have many ways to do so. Custom ROM like Modaco or else, for example. However, I just prefer to have original ROM with root access. You can follow these steps to do so:

1. go back to original image.

2. update as unrooted N1 steps above

3. root FRF85B

For the first step, you need to download original image, here. Please check md5 too. Then you have to extract boot.img, recovery.img out to your android-sdk tools directory (c:\android-sdk\tools for me) Now you are ready to copy old image to replace superboot one by fastbooting. You have to get to Fastboot mode and check if it’s Fastbook USB which is indicated connection between N1 and computer.

c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot devices  // to check if computer sees N1
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot erase userdata
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot erase cache

This 2 steps above are optional and if you use Amon_RA’s recovery, you will have to get into recovery mode to wipe those.

c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot flash boot boot.img
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot reboot

That would be all set for returning back to original image =) (well, not exactly true since we didn’t care about system.img and userdata.img which the update doesn’t bother.)

For the last step, download superboot image here. Then rename to update.zip and apply sdcard:update.zip in recovery mode like when you did with updating Froyo image.

Now you will be very happy AT&T Froyo Nexus One like I am.

 

Note: FRF85B root update.zip didn’t do the trick for me since it’s error while updating. If you face the same situation, just ask. You can do a manual way also =)

Popularity: 6% [?]

How to automatically share calendar to all users in Google apps

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Answer: none, AFAIK. You might argue that you can just add user manually or share calendar by XML, iCal, or even HTML link. That’s just like the way regular Google account can do. What is good about Google apps then?

1. You can set your accout’s calendar to share with everyone in the organization. That would work too and it’s pretty easy to for others to add since that calendar has a name as your email account. But I bet you wouldn’t want to share what is yours to others, would you?

2. Add new calendar, then set share to everyone and share the link. It’s a bit harder then the first option, but that works.

What is a drawback of these two options? It’s pain in the ass if you want everyone that shares the calendar to add/edit too. You have to add each of the manually individually. In short, if you want then to just see, either of these is OK, but not for collaborate.

How? You think Google leave this out really, huh? No, they have a way for that.

[yourdomainname]_@domain.calendar.google.com

That’s the only one calendar ID that anybody can add, and everyone has full permissions! Anyone in the Google Apps can just put this ID to “add a coworker’s calendar” then simply “enter.” It will go to your calendar easily. For the sake of privacy? people outside your Google apps won’t be able to even see.

I would love to have more choices, but so far I have yet to find other ways. If you know any other, please share =)

Added [the day later]

The easier way, and probably better way, is using group. You have to create group then add users or add all. When you want to share, just add team email to the calendar. Google will send out invitation email to anyone in the group automatically. The calendar ID will be like [domain]_[calendar.ID]@group.domain.calendar.google.com and this works similar to domain.calendar.google.com—outsider can’t access in any way.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Live: sign in with a single-use code

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single-use codeMicrosoft might not be trend setter anymore these days, but they are working hard to be back. That’s for sure. Live Mail or hotmail is one of popular email in the world, regardless of how good it is. Once in a while I get in my account to check if there is any of my mail, besides loads of junk. Then I noticed something new, single-use code ??

 

It’s just like one-time password; use it and throw away. That’s for anyone who are concerned about leaking password on public network/computer. Yes, it’s pretty good idea, but is it practical? So I tried.

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Above is what I got. My Google Voice number might be the cause of the issue, but if that’s the case, Microsoft should give up this option also.

Moreover, I hope to see Microsoft back in the game, but so far, Live Mail? ie? Zune HD?, Windows Phone 7? Windows Embedded Compact 7? I still don’t see a bright future for those yet. Firstly, they should have easier & more consistency name LOL.

Popularity: 17% [?]

TeraCopy – the solution to slow multiple copies

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If you face situations, such as, very very slow copy files when you drag a file at a time to another drive or NAS, you might want to try this tool out. It does integrate to your regular work flow without an interrupt since you can just basically do the same—drag & drop again and again. Teracopy will catch that and put in the queue automatically.

TeraCopy - Queue

I dragged and dropped files twice, an above figure was what I got. TeraCopy put the second batch on queue waiting for the first batch to finish first. This way is the most efficient way to do so and I constantly got around 40MB/s over gigabit LAN while I practically couldn’t achieve this if using only Windows Explorer. As you might already notice, Explorer will share throughput for each, but, in practice, Windows couldn’t share that efficiently. The speed will decrease dramatically over the time.

Enough said, Teracopy is such a nice alternative to stock Windows Explorer copy handler. As of yet, I have no disadvantage of having Teracopy. It is that cool. oh better yet, free version is more than enough!

Note: There are quite a number of similar applications like this, such as, SuperCopier, FastCopy, etc. If I have a chance to try them and they are better, I’ll surely update. Also, if you have experienced them, I would love to hear too.

SuperCopier2.2: People claimed that it gives better performance than Teracopy, but for me, it lacks of a queue feature. Therefore, it doesn’t qualify for me. As shown below, overall transfer speed over gigabit LAN is <10MB/s which is what we normally get with stock copy handler.

supercopier22

Popularity: 25% [?]

Windows or Mac or any OS – they all are the same

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Mac OS X crashes

 

Regardless of OS  we choose, it’s always giving us problems and also pleasures. No more arguing since you probably have seen tons of BSOD or error dialog from Windows; Mac OS is the same story. They all are ‘”garbage in, garbage out.” Nothing is perfect in the world. Just choose what you like and get the best out of it.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Must have – Flash w/ video hardware acceleration

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Flash Player 10.1

Flash, these days, is just an evitable plug-in to the world of the Internet; no one can avoid using that although some, like me, don’t prefer to use this resource hog app that much.While Flash never had any hardware acceleration involved, all HD content pushed Flash into limit. Even some Intel Core 2 Duo might not get smooth Youtube or Hulu HD videos or even flash games.

Now Adobe decided to help us a little bit by putting effort on video hardware acceleration too. Yeah, it’s been a while people asking for this, ARM and x64 support are another highly requested. Although this release is a beta one, as for myself, I have tried and it works way better than Flash 10. I don’t get any few seconds pause in any HD video anymore. Also, games like Farmville, Fishville, that sort of stuffs, won’t make a problem like they did before. I bet Netbook would get the real benefit of this release for sure. Try for self; you will like Flash content better.

Grab it @Adobe labs. Plus, if you use Adobe AIR too, there is AIR 2.0 coming out. Check it out!

note: I still hope that Silverlight would be more widespread use than this. We need competition to get moving forward faster.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Change Login Screen background in Windows 7

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login screen win7 If you are sick of vanilla login screen background, there is a way to change =) You have to tweak in registry a bit though, Microsoft just made it easy for OEM partner only :-P

First of all, you have to prepare your new background. Crop your image to 1:1 to your screen resolution. The catch is you should save your image not to be larger than 256kB. You might think it turns to crap one, but believe me that’s good enough =)

After getting an image you want, rename it to “backgroundDefault.jpg”. Then copy to the folder

%windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds

in case it doesn’t exist, create your own.

Secondly, enable the background in Registry, by getting into “regedit”

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

regedit - OEMBackground

Create new key DWORD 32-bit, value 1 (1 as enable, 0 as disable) Also, if any of these doesn’t exist, create your own =)

That is it!, you may lock the computer and appreciate your personal login screen. Make your PC personal again!! lol

Popularity: 1% [?]

Free Windows 7 themes

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I’m not a big fan of customized desktop since I regularly clean up my OS every now and then. This is much easier way to spice up the feeling a bit =) Yeah, it’s free.

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Also, it has a lot of interesting wallpapers which, of course, are nice. It’s like looking through Flickr with rotating desktop wallpaper, a feature which Microsoft eventually get after Apple has for many years :-P

Check it out @ Personalized Gallery

Popularity: 3% [?]