It’s only a day and some hours left before CES starts. CNN does something totally awesome. They talk about one of my Favorite Podcasts. GNC or Geek News Central on there website. Some of the major hitters Engadget, InTune Network, SlashGear, and Chip Chick. Which is a lot for these blogs. Means there will be people who read CNN and they will click these other Sites. I am so glad for Todd and these other sites because there will be more people to share the joy of podcasting and have them come our way. As you know Todd is the major contributor for Techpodcasts.com, which all the podcasters that I know are from that site. So more people will find more podcasts to listen. I am so overjoyed in this little adventure. It means Todd’s site is going to be busy the next few weeks. I hope we all help support his little endeavor and show our support for what he does. Good for you, Todd. You sure are setting a good example for podcasters.
Ultimate list of Gmail Tools & Plugins!
An extensive list of gmail tools, scripts and addons compiled to really jazz up your favorite email app “Gmail”.
- Official Gmail Notifier from Google – Downloadable Windows/Mac application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages.
- GMNotifier – More configurable notifier based on .NET (Via here)
- GTray – Another configurable Windows notifier includes XP welcome screen integration
- Google Toolbar with Gmail search – Official IE toolbar featuring one-click Gmail search
- Gmail Search Extension – Search your Gmail account from the Firefox search bar
- Gmail Tray – A search box for the Windows taskbar
- Gmail Notifier – Firefox extension, installs an icon on your toolbar that displays the amount of new messages in your inbox (previous post)
- Gmail-to – Associate all mailto: links with Gmail as opposed to Outlook
- Gmail-to Bookmarklet – Compose messages from your Gmail account from any page (previous post)
- Gmailit – Bookmarklet to send the current page you’re viewing to someone through Gmail
[Via TechnoCruch]
I enjoy using Gmail so much I thought people would like this posting about all the good stuff you can do with it. The list on the site is to big for me so I’ve only gave you a sample. I do know they are well worth checking out. They can even make your day.
Please remember you help make this site better by either commenting or telling people about the site.
How To Move Your Firefox Saved Passwords
There is a free add-on available for Firefox called Password Exporter. Taken right from site:
This extension allows you to export and import your saved passwords and rejected sites between computers. Your passwords will be exported to an XML or CSV file and can be encrypted.
It works super well, too. You install it just like any other add-on. You can then use it to export your password list from the old browser installation and then import it into the new one.
The only catch I found was that where the site SAYS you can access it is not exactly where I found it. The site says “Tools -> Options -> Privacy (or Security) pane -> Import/Export Password button”. After installing this add-on, I did not have any button in that location. Now, I am using a Mac here and it is unknown whether that has something to do with it. Either way, you can still get to the same window by pulling up your add-ons list, highlighting Password Exporter and choosing “Preferences”.
Thanks go out to the add-on’s author, Justin Scott, for this fantastic time saver.
[Via Pc Mechanic]
This is a great article on how to move your saved password, but also can be dangerous if you have someone who wants to take your passwords that is why I’d not install it on my system without quickly removing that from my system afterwards. This is what you call a bad IDEA to keep on your system, but it has a good idea for people who need to migrate over to another system.
WirelessHD version 1.0 is complete
WirelessHD (WiHD) is back, originally announced in late 2006, the 1.0 spec has been pronounced fit for consumption and will be released later this year. What’s changed in the last 14 months? HD dream team Intel, LG, Matsushita (Panasonic), NEC, Samsung, SiBEAM, Sony and Toshiba have added 40 other companies as well as approval from DRM watchdogs MPAA and DTLA for their 60Ghz-based standard. Move over cable vs. satellite, downloads vs. disc and HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, with UWB-equipped HDTVs already on the way, a battle to replace the still-tricky HDMI connection is the new HD battleground for 2008.
[Via Engadget]
Well guys, they seem to of made of Headway into the Wireless market with the HD. So does that mean there will be a wirelesss blueray? Just some interesting questions to consider, you know they are at a stalemate right now, or are they? HD just made some big advances in telling people they now can do wireless.
You can do more with Steam and Half-Life 2 now!!
So I’ve been Playing Half-Life 2 and Enjoying it so much. I’ve had a problem with Vista popping up and saying “The igfx video driver has stopped responding and has recovered!”. Which means this, that the game goes black and stops being played. It’s an annoying Vista flaw, I am thinking that if it wasn’t Vista it wouldn’t of happened. I’ve got the Minimum system specs for the game. DirectX 7.0 Compatible, 512 Megabytes of Ram, 128 megabytes Video Ram Card(some supported cards here but I don’t have one of those cards!), and Windows NT/XP/2000/98.
I did a little research and found out that the game was only using 256 megabytes of ram. How do I know? I went into the Taskmanager Manager and looked at hl2.exe (it was around 254 megs of memory!). So that got me thinking, I have 1024 megabytes(1 gigabyte memory) and I was using 256 megabytes of that for video. Well I still had over 700 megabytes of memory to use.
I did some digging and found this great article about Steam and Commands that I could put in to force Half-Life 2 to co-operate. The article is from the Linux Community and using the WINE engine to help people to play Half-Life 2 with Linux. This little option is available to most of the Steam community. To use these commands, one must do some stuff check farther down for details. These commands are:
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Command Line Commands
-heapsize [Kilobytes]: This command tells Half Life 2 to allocate more RAM to the game system heap, where it can be accessed by the game to improve performance by storing more game information in RAM and hence reducing loading pauses. The default heapsize is 64MB, however you can safely allocate around 128MB (i.e. -heapsize 128000) for most systems. You can use higher values if you have more RAM, but I don’t recommend exceeding half your physical RAM (e.g. for 1GB RAM, set heapsize of 512000).
-console: Speeds up the loading of Half Life 2 at startup by not loading up the background 3D graphics on the main menu and instead loading up a blurry background picture and the Half Life 2 console open. Note you can close this console using the ‘~’ key.
-width [pixels] -height [pixels]: Using these two commands you can set a custom resolution in Pixel Width x Pixel Height (e.g. -width 640 height 480 starts HL2 with 640×480 resolution). Make sure you choose a resolution supported by your monitor and with the correct ratio of width to height (usually 4:3).
-dxlevel [version]: Using this command allows you to force Half Life into only using the specified DirectX version for shaders. For example, use -dxlevel 70 to force Hardware DirectX7.0 level support for shaders. This means a reduction in image quality but an increase in performance. Other values include -dxlevel 80 -dxlevel 81 and -dxlevel90. Note that this only works if you choose a DirectX version which is lower than the current one supported by your graphics card. See the Hardware DirectX Version option under the In-Game settings for more details.
-refresh [Hz]: Specifies the refresh rate the game will use upon loading. This is normally not required as your system should already use the optimal refresh rate at your chosen resolution. However if this is not the case you can force it to a specific refresh rate (e.g. -rate 85). Make absolutely certain that the rate you are trying to apply does not exceed your monitor’s capabilities otherwise you may damage your monitor – especially if you change resolutions and forget to change this option.
-novid: Disables the intro video so that Half-Life 2 loads a bit faster.
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Now what I used to make Half-Life 2 a more enjoyable game was to go into steam program and Right click Half-Life 2 and select properties Then select : “Select launch options” and I added this:
“-console -heapsize 512000 -dxlevel 70“
Now let’s clarify some of this:
the heapsize I set that to add more memory for Half-Life 2 to make it around 512 megabytes. I then told it to Use only DirectX 7.0. Now when Direct X 7.0 was out you could only have 128 megabytes of Video so that was fine. I’ve got 256 megabytes of shared video memory, I Just told it to use only 128 so it actually helped out the game performance. I Got a more stable game to where I could play for hours without any annoying glitches and got to see the story line. I will say you shouldn’t use this particular setting unless you have enough memory. I think Vista is having trouble with Direct X 10.0 because the change of the game was surprisingly smoother. I am not sure why it works I just know it does. I hope this helps other gamers out with this little problem, I’ve had with Vista and all.
If you like this an other posts I’ve done please show your support by telling people to come here or just click the links at the bottom and let people know you like what I’ve written, this is the only way the blog will grow!! Thanks
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