Announcement

Hey, I’ve made it back to home now. Unfortunately, I am leaving again on Sunday and will be gone for two weeks. I cannot prepare for posting that many blogs while I’m absent.

So, your posts won’t be comming for a while.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

July Announcement

Well, when your reading this, I’ll be returning to my city of origin. So no posts for a couple days… Now you’ll be as bored as I am when I’m traveling.

iPhone vs Samsung Instinct

Crunchgear ran a comparison on the two and summarized the features in this table:

Feature	iPhone	Instinct
Virtual QWERTY	x	x
Visual voicemail	x	x
Video recording		x
Camera	x	x
Web browser	x	x
Voice navigation		x
3G		x
WiFi	x
Bluetooth	x	x
Expandable memory		x
Streaming multimedia		x
Email	x	x
SMS	x	x
MMS		x
True GPS		x
Music	x	x
Maps	x	x
Mobile TV		x
YouTube	x
Live home view		x

The iPhone in the comparison was the 2G version.  The new 3G iPhone picks up 3G and GPS to bring the hardware feature comparison into a near draw.

Of course, the iPhone is about user interface and software.  It is essentially a portable computer with a strong OS, a great development framework, and through the developer program and App store, the potential to become a very feature rich tool.

The Instinct on the other hand is about basics and price.  Phone, Email, and Web.  The primary applications on the iPhone are well represented on the Instinct.  At $149 on contract, it costs less than the iPhone and most importantly, on Bell, you can add unlimited data on an Instinct for $10/month.  The unlimited aspect balances out most of the wifi advantage of the iPhone.  Over a 3 year contract, the Bell data plan is at least $720 better than the Rogers option.   A detailed Instinct review here on CNET.

We are still split here but now that Rogers has positioned a better data plan at $30/month for 6GB and given the upside application/tool potential of the iPhone, we’re leaning towards the iPhone.

It’s all about the App store.  Is the innovation that may come through the App store worth an extra $20/month.

Xbox Motion Controller Announced

Shhhh .  . . In a recent IGN video clip Ken Lobb (Creative director of Microsoft game studios) showed the world game play footage of the latest Banjo- Kazooie installment. With all this talk about a motion controller coming to the Xbox 360, could it actually be happening? Apparently so!

In the IGN video clip it clearly shows Ken Lobb playing through the hub world of Nuts and Bolts. Whilst playing the game he moves Banjo up close to a crane. He then states that Kazooie has a special wrench that is used on certain items. He continued saying “you basically grab with the wrench, and then you twist the controller around and it will move different things in the game”. So he basically confirmed a motion censored controller right?

I hope that if this statement is correct and that the “Newton” controller is finally confirmed at E3 that Microsoft use it wisely. We’ve seen in several Wii and PS3 games that the standard of motion controls in some games are not up to scratch. i.e. Lair and Motor Storm. If  Microsoft decide to utilize this new controller lets hope it doesn’t turn into a laughable gimmick by making games awkward to control and that it actually makes game more enjoyable to play.

the picture above is from an article done by Xbox360World (issue #66 pg 16) magazine covering the Newton recently, showing the prototype beingheld in a users hand. Propably one of two items ? The source confirmed to Xbox360World that the project is well underway with motion controller company Motus regarding their new “Darwin Project“, which you see pictured above.

Click on pick for breakdown view of controller from Motus, and no, it’s not Bogus:

Many thanks to Gamer4Life

This is far more accurate than the photoshopped design seen around the net of late and in one of our earlier articles on the Newton, and you can definitely see the distinctive MS 360 items included in the controller. While the Newton (aka Darwin) is not aimed at hardcore users, it is aimed at several new games headed for the 360, including the much anticipated Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts-N-Bolts which will be shown at the upcoming E3 on July 14th – 17th.

Expect MS to come out swinging, no pun intended, on their opening volley come opening hour on the 14th, as they head the show, and no doubt have some dark horses under wraps for stirring up the hornets rest which is, “The Net”.

Announced

Wii Has a Keyboard on the Way!

If your arms are in dire need of rest after continuously pointing at the screen whilst trying to type coherent messages, then this Wii Keyboard could be right up your street. The unofficial device which retails for a reasonable £14.99 ($30) is all set to retail in the United Kingdom, July 18th.

10 steps to a prettier, more useful and secure USB pen drive

USB thumb drives are one of the most commonly used ways to transfer data if you happen to work across multiple computers. Lets just make the USB drives prettier, useful and secure.

1. Add icons and labels to your drive.

Download an icon you would want to see appear when you plug in your thumb(pen) drive. Place the icon at the root of the drive. Next open notepad and type the following:

[autorun]

label = “<your name here>”

icon = “yourIcon.ico”

Save the file onto the root of your thumb drive and name it “autorun.inf”, be sure to put the quotes or else it will be saved as a text file. Now Safely remove your USB drive and plug back in, the icon and name should appear in Windows Explorer if your did everything right. You can also automatically launch an application. If this is not the way you prefer to work use this neat application to generate the autorun.inf file automatically

2. Add a Start Menu to your USB drive

Download and install the Portable Apps Suite on your USB drive, it not only gives you a nice start menu for your USB drive but also gives you the ability to run some of the most popular applications (like Firefox, Putty, OpenOffice, SumatraPDF, notepad++ and many more) right from your USB drive. A must have for your USB drive

3. Use Mojopac

Mojopac gives you your operating environment right on your USB drive. You can be rest assured that you will find a familiar interface with Mojopac on any pc you plug your USB drive into, all the customization will be preserved from computer to computer. Moreover it lets you operate without leaving any trace what so ever on the computer, so you can be rest assured about your privacy and data

4. Write Protect your Drive

My USB drive has a write protect notch that prevents it from being written onto when plugged on a computer, this is important because if the computer you are plugging into is infected than it can readily infect your USB drive. However if your drive cannot be write protected then you can use thumbscrew. It makes anything connected to the USB non writeable until you are sure and want to make it writeable.

5. Make Autorun.inf read only and system file

Thumbscrew may prevent writing on USB devices but it has to be already present on the computer you want to plug your USB drive into, so if its not possible for one reason or the other then you should make sure that you have a custom autorun.inf file and that its read only and has the system file attribute set. This prevents malicious code from writing entries to your autorun.inf and thus even if your USB drive may have a virus it won’t actually run it automatically. So a little bit more protection but not fool proof by any means.

6. Hold down the shift key

If you suspect your USB drive may be infected but still you have to plug it in to scan and remove the infections, then when you plug it in hold down the shift key to prevent autorun if its not already disabled.

7. Encrypt your drive using Truecrypt

You can encrypt all the data on your USB drive using Truecrypt. This fives you added security if you have some sensitive data on your USB drive. Simply run it and choose your USB device to encrypt. TrueCrypt is free, Open Source and efficient and gives you extra security, download it here.

8. Sync your drive.

Microsoft offers an excellent application specially to address all your syncing needs. Its called the SyncToy. If you have to work on the same files on two different computers than you want to have the latest version of all files all the time, this can be easily done with synctoy. It offers both oneway and twoway synching. Its also free to download. Download it here

9. Backup your drive

Backing up is always a nice thing to do, specially when you have to use it on different computers. There is a portable app to make this very easy. Its toucan, you can install it on your USB drive and back up, sync and encrypt your data as and when you want. Or else there is this the USB Image Tool that creates an image of everything you have on your drive and saves it as one file.

10. Make it bootable

You can install and run Linux from your USB thumb drive, this is an excellent way to recover systems that won’t boot, or to just plug it into another computer and do all of your work using linux applications and surf the net without leaving any history on the host computer. For this try pendrivelinux

How to install Ubuntu into a Virtual Machine

As some people might feel awkward switching from Windows to Linux, Vmware is the perfect solution. It’s a virtual machine, which means you can run Ubuntu, or any Linux distrubution for that matter, inside Windows, without partitioning, or changing your hard-drive in any way.

First:

Download VMware Player HERE or HERE.

Download Ubuntu HERE

Done! Simply extract the files somewhere, and load them up with the VMware player.

If you want other OS’s (OpenBsd, Solaris, etc.) visit www.vmware.com/appliances/

or HERE

What’s Happening with Windows?

As we all know some people like Windows Vista, some don’t. Vista at its launch had many major problems, such as targeting higher system requirements that some people couldn’t afford, lack of compatibility with several key pre-vista software and permission restriction that hardly did its job at all. All these reasons and more contributed to Vista’s temporary “downfall”. Later Service Pack 1 was released (February 4th) which solved much bug but still left some areas of Vista undesirable.

This is why some of us still hangs with XP. It is more enjoyable and workable than Vista and have less issues. It is also faster due to low system requirements and an architecture that everyone is familiar with. BUT the end of XP was due soon, and here it is. As of today June 30 Windows XP will not be pre-loaded on sold machines and will not be sold in retail stores. Windows XP Professional thought will be given with the purchase of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate as part of the “Downgrade Rights”. XP will continue to be updated until April 2014. Lets hope that Microsoft will see to it that Vista gets as stable as XP.

The next installment of the popular OS will be Windows 7. Microsoft announced that it will be “modular”. Let me explain: you buy the core of the OS, then you buy other pieces that adds functions to your computer. If I want to make audio edition, I will buy the core AND the audio suite of Windows. Due to this we expect the prices to be lower because you won’t have to buy modules that are not useful for you. Bill Gates said that Windows 7 will also focus on performance improvement

“We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don’t have a lot of work to move that data back and forth.”

That said, we can expect promises from Microsoft right away. “Windows 7 will be in all points more productive than Vista” – “The change from Vista to 7 will not be drastic” – ” No bugs will be present”. And so on. Only Jesus can make those kind of promises and he’s not working for Microsoft at the moment.

Castlevania for Wii, a Little Weird

The news has been out for awhile on the newest Castlevania game on the Nintendo Wii, it appears that the newest entry of Castlevania will be a one-on-one fighting game, a’la Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat.  The game will be called, Castlevania Judgement, and will pit you up against the series most notable figures in combat.  The picture above shows two of the series most notable characters, Simon Belmont, the main character from the first game and Alucard, Draculas son.

The game will take use of the Wii, with motion controls while in combat.  How this will work has yet to be seen or heard.  The characters will also use support weapons just like the old Castlevania’s, things like daggers, holy water or axe’s.

This interesting twist comes as quite a surprise to me and most likely others.  The Wii seems like a good fit for some sort of platforming, action adventure game with motion controls to maneuver your weapons…but I guess I was mistaken.  We will most likely hear a lot more on this game in the coming weeks asE3 is upon us.  I hope for the best for this game, there has yet to be any real good fighter on the Wii.

Free Security Software

Now as many of us know, the top security programs are expensive. But if you don’t use security software your computer will get infected with viruses and spyware and all that stuff. I have made a list of some of the free security programs out there that work well. Note: one of the big problems with free security software is that you have to manually update your virus definitions, because if you don’t update them they will be out of date and your software will be useless against newer viruses.

Security Software:

AVG Anti-Virus Free Editon – http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html?tag=txt

Windows Defender – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=435BFCE7-DA2B-4A6A-AFA4-F7F14E605A0D&displaylang=en&mg_id=10134

HijackThis – http://www.download.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html?tag=txt&cdlPid=10781312

Spyware Blaster – http://www.download.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_4-10196637.html

ZoneAlarm Firewall – http://www.download.com/ZoneAlarm-Firewall-Windows-2000-XP-/3000-10435_4-10039884.html