Justin

Increase bit rate for WMA ripping

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:46:00 +0000

I came across this on an article online. I doubt most of us rip CDs using WMA format. But, if you happen to do that and 192kbps is not enough, the tip below might do the trick. If you rip in MP3 format, you can go as far as 320kbps that costs around 10MB per song track. (I do that anyway now that disk space is cheap.)

How to increase the maximum bit rate for WMA files in Media Player

The bit rate of an audio file refers to the number of bits that are processed per second. In the Windows Media Player, you can set the bit rate but you'll find that the maximum available for WMA files is 192 Kbps. If you want to set a higher rate, you can edit the registry. As always, be sure to make a backup before you make changes to the registry. Here's how to do it:

Open the registry editor and navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences

In the right pane, double click the item WMARecordRate

Choose Decimal and enter the bit rate you want to use, in bits. For example, 320 Kbps is entered as 320000.

Close the registry editor.

Now your tracks will be stored at the higher bit rate.

Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:22:00 +0000

Google Apps targets the biz users, but these users are so ingrained in using Microsoft Outlook that when they HAVE to use the Google web interfaces for email, calendar and contacts, the adoption is kind of "too slow".

With this took, Google has done just right to solve the user interface issue (and effectively reduced to zero the learning curve of the new Google Apps users). Perhaps, if the administrator is clever, the users of Google Apps would probably not even know their mail and calendar are supported in the back-end by Google Apps instead of the (expensive) Exchange Server.

Firefox 3.5 Video Handling

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:04:00 +0000

That really amazes me! Take a look at how video can be manipulated in Firefox 3.5! Great!!!

Bing Image Archive

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:36:00 +0000

Long Zheng from istartedsomething set up an archive for Bing search engine home page background images. The archive can be found at this link: http://www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/. Quite cool that he did it. =)

There are two images for each day: one for US and the other for International version. There are two types of direct link to an image on a particular day: for example, http://www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/#20090526-us is a link to an image on 26 May 2009 US version; for international version, use au in place of us. (Please note Long Zheng is from Australia.) The link above will show in the background the calendar for the current month.

If you want to show the calendar for a particular month, use this link: http://www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/?m=5&y=2009#20090526-au. Actually there are two more parameters in the URL: m and y. The meaning of the parameters should be self-explanatory. If the two parameters are not provided (as in the first link), the PHP page defaults to the current year and month.

There are some really nice photos over there, especially if you like photography.

Create document from Gmail

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:40:00 +0000

A new lab feature in Gmail lets us create a Google document from within Gmail. At first I thought it wasn't very impressive, but after trying it with an HTML email, I was quite impressed by the new feature.

One way I could find it useful is when I want to have a PDF version of my email. I could simply just create a document out of the email and download it from Google Docs as a PDF file. I could have printed the email from Gmail but that's not how I want my PDF file looks like. So, I think this new feature is pretty useful. =)

YouTube HD Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:34:00 +0000

YouTube now streams HD videos. The quality is so damn good! Plus, the format is now 16:9.

That's how things should be in a few years from now. Love it!

Dell was confused?

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 05:08:00 +0000

Just saw a promotion for Studio XPS on Dell. It features Core i7, the recently released Quad Core processor. Intel introduced L3 cache in this line of processors but Dell seems to get confused. The Core i7 features 8MB L3 cache in fact.

Google Spreadsheet Pixel Art

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:26:00 +0000

Fun? Join the Pixel Art at this URL. =)

Hope you will like it.

Storms on Saturn

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:40:00 +0000

Just found this out while browsing the news. It looks so wonderful I just wanna share. :)

ChangeDotGov Channel on YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:37:00 +0000

President-elect Obama is using YouTube to deliver Saturday address in video. It's good that Obama is technology aware and utilizes the world's best video sharing website to address to the public which is far more reaching than the traditional ways.

The channel is the most subscribed channel of the month and the video is the most viewed of the day. =)

Speed Up Firefox Page Loading with Fasterfox Lite

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:49:00 +0000

Fasterfox was one of my favorite add-on's in Firefox 2. But, it is a while until a new version is released for Firefox 3.

In Fasterfox Lite, the pre-fetching of linked pages has been removed since this doesn't really translate to any significant improvement given the wasted network resources. Apart from this, Fasterfox Lite is a new release of Fasterfox for Firefox 3.

It is still an experimental stage, so if you want to install Fasterfox Lite, you will have to log in first before you are allowed to do so. I have tried it and so far am very pleased with the results.

Emoticons in Gmail

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:29:00 +0000

Just came back from school and found out that there is an extra icon in Gmail compose screen. Ah.finally the emoticons have arrived in Gmail! Actually, the number of emoticons in Gmail is much larger than those available in Gtalk.

Happy expressing emotions in Gmail.

"I'm a Mac" Has Gone Mad

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:09:00 +0000

The latest apple advertisement is now taking a very direct approach showing that Apple has gone mad at Microsoft's recent ad campaign.

I don't dislike Mac as an OS but I am not a fan of its ads though; I just can't buy the ethics when one advertises its products by saying others' are bad no matter how made-up these bad things may be.

Download YouTube Videos with DownThemAll

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:26:00 +0000

The RealPlayer plug-in that I used to download YouTube videos no longer works in Firefox 3. It has been quite some time I haven't been able to download videos from YouTube.

I just figured out that the latest version of DownThemAll can just do that right. When you visit the YouTube video page, if you have DownThemAll installed, the icon below will appear at the bottom right corner of Firefox.

Just click on it and you can download the video. You will need to remember to rename the video and give it an appropriate extension (.flv).

Update: The extension that enables this feature is not DownThemAll as mentioned above. I was thinking it was DTA, but in fact, the real extension is FlashGot. When you are on a page that contains media content, you can press Ctrl + F7 to activate it and use your download manager of choice to download the content.

Mobile Phone Dermatitis [Health]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:40:00 +0000

This is a news article taken from ZDNet News.

Abstract: Doctors baffled by an unexplained rash on people's ears or cheeks should be on alert for a skin allergy caused by too much mobile phone use, the British Association of Dermatologists said on Thursday.

"In mobile phone dermatitis, the rash would typically occur on the cheek or ear, depending on where the metal part of the phone comes into contact with the skin," the group said in a statement.

"In theory it could even occur on the fingers if you spend a lot of time texting on metal menu buttons."

Nickel allergy had been a cause for allergic rash on glasses-wearers. Now that most glasses frames are made of Titanium (Ti), the problem is not that very prevalent anymore; Titanium is inert in human body and has been used for outer coverings of permanent artificial pace-makers. But, with increased usage of mobiles whose metal parts contain Nickel, it's no wonder that the allergic reactions surface again.

More Information on Windows 7 [Windows]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:30:00 +0000

Windows 7, the next major Windows release after Windows Vista, has been scheduled for release in the second half of 2009. By now, there is so much information about Windows 7 on the Net. If you have been looking for a pretty complete information on Windows 7, you should take a look at Paul's Windows 7 FAQ.

Firefox 3.1 Portable App Released [Firefox]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:41:00 +0000

The portable version of Firefox 3.1 beta has been released.

There are a number of improvements. You can improve JavaScript performance by setting a "true" value for javascript.options.jit.content in about:config. The second notable new feature is the enhanced Ctrl + Tab switching which now resembles that of Windows Vista showing you the thumbnail preview of your tabs.

The third improvement has to do with the Location Bar search. In version 3.0.x, it will search all of history, non-tagged bookmarks and tagged bookmarks, in titles and in URLs. Now, you can use keywords to restrict the search: ^ for history, * for bookmarks, + for tagged pages, @ to only match in the URL, and # to only match titles or tags of the pages. How to use? Type "^ firefox" to search for Firefox in your browsing history.

You can download the portable version at this page. This is a portable version, so it will not break your primary installation of Firefox 3.0.x. You need not worry about it breaking your installed Add-on's as well. This is a completely safe way to try out the new beta of Firefox.

Norton User Account Control [Vista UAC]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:05:00 +0000

Norton released a free version of Norton User Account Control that can replace Windows Vista UAC. Many a user were annoyed by Vista's so-called intrusive UAC dialogs popping-up now and then.

Norton UAC totally replaces Windows UAC and it is made to be far less annoying by using features like remember me which "allows users to suppress future prompts from the same action."

You can download the utility free from Norton Labs.

YouTube Theatre View [YouTube]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:02:00 +0000

YouTube is now showing two viewing options for some long videos: Theatre View and Lights Off.

Lights Off simply turns everything but the video on the web page to a dark gray color while Theatre View also displays the video in a theatre-like-stage frame and turns off the lights.

.changes to

Personally, I find Lights Off option pretty useful since I can better focus on the video with minimum distraction. So, it would be nice if Google adds this option to videos other than the longer ones as well.

Good Textbook Figure [Opinion]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:32:00 +0000

I found this figure on an introductory Java textbook. A matching motherboard and a CPU shown. ;-)

(If you are wondering, the CPU and motherboard shown cannot go together. The motherboard has slots for P2 cartridge CPU while the CPU shown is probably a P3 or P4.)

Search the Web of Jan 2001 on Google [Google]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:13:00 +0000

Google made the index from January 2001 available for searching, just to compare how much the web has expanded since 2001. Google says it's the oldest available index; maybe the even older index was stored in an inefficient-to-retrieve data storage.

Try what web pages were there back in Jan 2001 at this special page.

{From Blogoscoped}

17 Years of Life in 2 Minutes [Fun - Video]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:49:00 +0000

Just how much dedication this would have taken is what amuses me watching this video!

"17 years worth of taking 2 photos a day as my head rotates in sync with the Earth around the Sun," the author says.

[Found via Google Blogoscoped]

Windows vs Mac [Opinion]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:42:00 +0000

Note: The post below contains the personal opinions of the author. If you are one who gets agitated by opinions that don't match yours, please skip it and save your heart. :)

I just came across this comment on InformationWeek website. Apparently, I like it.

I am a computer user.
I want an affordable, powerful, user-friendly computer that runs the software I want to run, at a competitive price.
My HP dual-core AMD 15-inch-screen laptop with a real video card set me back $800.
Apple's equivalent model with the same RAM and HD space would have cost close to $2K more.
I want to be able to run the software that gets the job done, and not hunt for proprietary software that is released late, with fewer features, at a higher price.
I value my money and want it to work for me, rather than line Apple's pockets.
I use a computer to do cool things, not as a way to brag about my social status or "coolness."
I spent less for my entire fast HP laptop, associated software (including Office 2007) and a high quality multifunction color printer than what my neighbor paid for his crappy Apple MacBook plastic machine which is already starting to fall apart.
I like the flexibility that a large software library provides.
I like the fact that my Windows cell phone can run any software I want it to, and I don't need Microsoft's "approval" to run the software.
I like the fact that Microsoft doesn't try to tell me what software I can run on my phone, and doesn't believe it has the right to access and disable software on my phone.
I like the fact that virtually every peripheral in the world will work on my computer out of the box, without "special drivers" or "converters."
I like the Windows Aero interface, and view it as a slick evolution of the dominant Windows paradigm that Apple rushed to copy in OS X (down to the "dock").
Finally, I like the fact that I can use my computer secure in the fact that what I do with it says more about me than the computer itself.
I am a PC. And people like me will always be the majority.

I would also like to add some more.

Those who say MAC or Mac does not get virus don't know what they are saying.

Those who say there is no driver issue in Mac, just ask Steve Jobs to have Mac OSX support a plethora of devices that Windows is currently supporting, and see what will happen.

Those who say Mac can run Windows and Windows can't run Mac do not know that it's Apple's EULA that prevents Windows users from running OSX on Windows (using virtualization). NOT that Windows is incapable of running OSX which one of the Apple Ads is trying to portray.

Those who say Mac is the coolest do not know how Windows users are enjoying the coolest of the coolest games on Windows.

Please also don't say "No Windows, No Mac, Ubuntu forever!" Before you say that out loud, please ask a neighbor if she can get a piece of software installed on Ubuntu OS. With all the pains of installing software and drivers, the Ubuntu experience is not one that average computer users will enjoy.

I have no hatred towards Mac or Apple. And, I do use Red Hat and Ubuntu on my system although I don't use them to do my daily stuffs like listening to music. I just do not like the way Apple is immorally and incorrectly portraying Windows. I just do not like the way some arrogant Apple fans are bashing Windows for reasons they don't even know the details of.

Google Desktop 5.8: Improved Performance [Desktop Search]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:17:00 +0000

Google released a new version (5.8) for Google Desktop which promises improved performance having gone through thorough performance analysis by Google engineers.

I wanted to give it a try after abandoning it for half a year, being satisfied by built-in Windows Desktop Search. Unfortunately, it doesn't support 64-bit Windows. Too bad!

View HDD Free Space in Percentage [Windows Vista]

noreply@blogger.com (Justin) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Windows Explorer in Vista doesn't by default show the Hard Disk free space in percentage. It only shows a graph and gives you the actual amount of disk space left.

Sometimes, it helps to view how much percent of the disk is free. You can ask the Windows Explorer to sort the disks by Free Space; for this, you just need to click on the Free Space tab or right-click > Sort > Free Space.