Web Talk

Yes, you got it right! After more than 600 articles written in a span of time of 8 months I am going on vacation. I will be back in a matter of 15 days with a lot of news including an article with a brief review and some pictures of my new Asus Eee 901. Right now I  am writing with  it and I can tell you that it is simply Cool! I think to deserve such a brief vacation. As a matter of fact I have worked hard with my real job and with Web Talk too. Don’t forget that I am the only editor here so far. During  these months I have managed to get a lot of visitors and, despite the fact that August is not  positive since a lot of people are on vacation, I can tell that around 750 unique readers visit my blog everyday! During these days of vacation I won’t write any articles, of course, but I will try to reply to the emails people write me asking to solve different kinds of issues. OK, time to relax, see you in September!

Transcend has just unveiled its digital frame called T.Photo 720. Despite it is a little unattractive because of its bulkiness, it’s quite full of features and, just by listing them, I feel like buying one of it right away! As a matter of fact here is what you can find embedded into its big case:

• 7′ TFT LCD screen in 800×400 resolution.
• 2Gb of inner memory.
• Stereo Speakers.
• Slot for microSD/SD/SDHC/MMC/MS/M2/CF.
• FM Radio tuner.
• You can also listen to MP3 and  watch video in 3GP/ AVI/ MOV/MJPEG/ MPG and MP4 format.
• Its software include a big watch and a calendar.

Well, one of its big disappointment  is the lack of a Wifi antenna. Lately the market has started showing a lot of devices, including digital frames, having Wifi antennas to connect to the Internet and display a lot of infos such as news, weather and such. A good example is the excellent PIXXA digital frame whose review can be read here. Anyway I like this frame because it shows  how companies such as Transcend are listening to clients more and more. The list of features included in the little device is a good example of what people really want namely devices capable of doing a variety of things. The new trend seems to respond to such a question: Why own many devices when you can have one with all the features you wish for?

As you know, or you should by now, when you open Windows Explorer in Windows Vista, you can get different previews of folders and files located in your operating system. As a matter of fact you can have the following views: extra large icons, large icons, medium icons, small icons, list, details, titles. Starting from medium icons and up Vista also gives you  the chance to preview the content by showing you a  preview thumbnail in the folder’s icon using the stuff contained inside it. If you want to change this preview thumbnail to show something more representative, here is a simple trick to follow.

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search Bar type: Windows Explorer and hit Enter.
3. Right click on the folder you want to change the preview thumbnail of.
4. Click Properties.
5. Click on the Customise tab.
6. Under Folder Picture click on Choose File.
7. Now choose the picture or the files  you want to be shown as preview thumbnail and click Open.
8. Done! You should be able to see the picture or the file in the preview thumbnail of the folder’s icon.

After the famous article of mine talking about the possibility for Nokia N810 Internet Tablet to emulate Palm operating system, now I want to talk about another big opportunity for those of you guys who own the famous Nokia device. As a matter of fact, did you know that you can run Android on N810 and that you can do it in a few easy steps? Don’t you believe me? OK, here is the step-by-step procedure.

1. The first thing to do is to download and save the android.img.bz2 image file on the N810 (internal memory or miniSD card; 110MB free space required).
2. After that download and install the android-installer.deb file (Settings -> Application manager -> Install from file).
3. Reboot your Nokia N810 and launch Android through the Extras menu.
4. Done. As you see the procedure to launch Android is very simple, so simple that even a  Linux dummy can do it! Enjoy!

Source: Pocketables.net

If you try to export your bookmark list from Firefox to Windows Internet Explorer you will face a nasty problem. As a matter of fact, due to an incompatibility issue between these two browsers you won’t be allowed to perform such an operation (export). Anyway, thanks to this simple trick you will be able to export incompatibility bookmarks files in a few easy steps. Here is the procedure to follow.

Firefox

1. Open the bookmarks menu and select Organize Bookmarks.
2. Click File menu and hit Export (if you use Firefox 2). If you are in Firefox 3, click Import and Backup and hit Export HTML.
3. Save the HTML file containing all of your saved bookmarks in a location of your choice.

Internet Explorer

1. In Internet Explorer 8, press the ALT key in order to display the classic menu bar.
2. Once the classic menu bar appears, click File and hit Import and Export…
3. A wizard windows will appear, click Next.
4. Now check the radio button or just select Import/Export form a File or Address. Click Next.
5. Now locate the Firefox HTML bookmark backup and click Next.
6. Select a Folder and click Next. At the end of the process just hit Finish and you are done.

After some period of quietness, it looks like the micro-pc world has started giving out some interesting news again. In fact, the computer company Shuttle has just unveiled its new tiny desktop called SN78SH7 (couldn’t they find a name easier to remember? I wonder!). The micro pc supports AMD AM2+ processors and is based on NVIDIA GeForce 8200 chip set. It is provided also with high quality 8-channel sound chip with DTS Connect and Dolby Digital Live! certification. Other features include:

• Shuttle I.C.E. (Integrated Cooling Engine) with advanced heat pipe technology.
• 4GB DDR2 RAM.
• Supports Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies.
• 7.1 channel High Definition Audio.
• 2x Serial-ATA II supporting various RAID configurations.

The Shuttle XPC SN78SH7 should cost around $450 and it is already available in shops. If you want to know mnore, visit the official website.

A few months ago I spoke about a nice piece of tool by the Dev Team which let you jailbreak your iPhone to load whatever firmware and unauthorized software you wished in your iPhone. During this lapse of time the Dev Team’s work has gone further and now, thanks to their new PwnageTool 2.0.1 you can  activate, jailbreak and unlock your iPhone 2G in order to  use whatever SIM you wish, and jailbreak your iPod to run whatever unauthorized third party and nor supported application software you want. As far as iPhone 3G, the Dev Team Tool doesn’t support such a phone yet( edit: the tool to jailbreak the 3G iPhone should be ready. To know more visit the Dev Team’s website). I have already spoken about this tool when it was in its 2.0 version. Here is the link to read the article of mine and watch a brief video by the Dev Team, explaining how to pwn the iPhone firmware 2.0 and iPhone 3G. Anyway, since the tool was a little buggy, a version 2.0.1 has been recently released for everybody to download and use. This new release, as stated in the Dev Team blog, fixes several bugs and contains a lot of enhancements. Here is the complete list of changes:

• It auto-finds the bl39 and bl46 files better, if they’re on your computer.
• It creates the ~/Library/iTunes/Device Support/ folder if not present, which should help with some 1600 errors people have been having.
• Many people have reported the PwnageTool not starting up at all (the icon never stops bouncing). This issue should be resolved now.
• The Sparkle AppCast URL is fixed in this version, so automatic updates should work for future releases.

If you wish to download the PwnageTool v2.0 and v2.0.1, here are the links:

• As far as the PwnageTool 2.0.1, you can download the files  on this server here at _BigBoss_’s repository, or also at Hackint0sh.
• If you wish to download the PwnageTool 2.0, just follow these links: PwnageTool_2.0.zip (mirror)

The official PwnageTool works on Mac OS X only. (But there is also a nice tool which works on Windows only. If you want to know more infos, read the complete instructions and download the tool, here is the link to the WinPwn.com website). What follows instead is a complete list of errors you might face while using the tool:

• Error 1600 from iTunes or “failure to prepare x12220000_4_Recovery.ipsw” in the log. Fix the error or problem by creating the Device Support directory using mkdir ~/Library/iTunes/”Device Support” command. If the directory already exists, remove any files in it. Then re-run PwnageTool.
• If DFU restores are giving you trouble, another route to pwned 2.0 for 1G owners is to use our first pwnage at 1.1.4. Once you are pwned there, you can do a normal recovery-mode restore to your custom 2.0 ipsw. BTW the iPhone does *not* need to be pre-pwned to be able to DFU-restore into a pwned ipsw — it needs to be pre-pwned only for normal recovery-mode restores of custom ipsw’s.
• Mail application not working at 2.0? Please restore to your custom ipsw (you don’t need to DFU restore if you are pwned, normal restore will work now too) but then select “Set up as a new iPhone” when iTunes asks. Your first sync will bring back all of your settings anyway.

If you are a web writer, of if you happen to write a lot while in the Internet, then you may find this trick quite interesting. As a matter of fact, Firefox 3 (and Firefox 2 also) has got a nice Spellchecker among its features. To enable it, just follow this simple procedure.

1. Type about:config in the Address bar and press Enter.
2. A message followed by a button saying “I’ll be carefull. I promise!” should appear. Click on it.
3. Type layout.spellcheckDefault in the Filter field.
4. Under the Filter field the preference layout.spellcheckDefault should appear. Click on it.
5. Set the value equal to 2 to enable spell checking in single-line line controls.