Ballmer egg attack! (Hungarian TV2)

Microsoft CEO Ballmer encountered what he called 'friendly disrupt'.

PDFCreator - convert into PDF format.

PDFCreator is a nice open source software which can covert into PDF's form from any Windows applications which have printing function. Sometimes you need to save your Microsoft Office Word file as PDF format. Some of nice features of PDFCreator are:
- protect the file with password and encrypt the file.
- combine multiple files into one PDF file.
- can save in other formats: JPEG, PNG, BMP, PCX and TIFF.

One-stop free text converting tools.

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01110011 01110100 01100001 01110010 01110100 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01110010 01101111 01110101 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01010100 01100101 01111000 01110100 01001111 01110000 01110101 01110011

Instructions: copy the above binary numbers and paste the code in 'Input data:' box and convert into text. You then will see the texts. Enjoy it!

Google ads are allowed to appear in Yahoo.

It is a complete surprise to read the news that Yahoo agrees to share its advertising space with Google during a 2 week experiment period. Of course, Microsoft did criticize Yahoo's short-term agreement with Google. In response to the situation, Steve Ballmer gave Yahoo 3 weeks to agree to the company's $44.6bn offer. It's interesting to see what the future will hold for the three giants.

Create a password reset disk in Vista.

This is one of new features in Vista which lets users reset the passwords if they forget their passwords when they log on. All you need is one removable disk. USB memory stick is very suitable to use as reset disk. Note that you don’t need a 1GB or larger USB stick coz the size of the file to be created is juz 2KB. To get started, go to Control Panel and then choose User Accounts. On the left side, click ‘Create a password reset disk’ link. The Wizard will pop up and follow the on-screen instructions. Remember that you need to insert USB stick to create reset disk. After successfully create the reset disk, it’s very important to pace this memory stick in a safe place becoz anyone can reset your password using this disk. When you can’t log on, all u need to do is to insert the disk and click the ‘Reset password’ link and follow the instructions to create new password. You also don’t need to update the reset disk again – you can use the same disk whenevry you can’t log in.

Google's Android Makes Its Public Debut

The Mobile World Congress became the coming-out party for Google's Android OS as four mobile processor vendors showed off pre-production devices running versions of Android. Continue reading from PC Magazine.

Microsoft purchased Danger.

In view of the future mobile market, Microsoft and Danger, the maker of smart phones, had merged. Read more!

Microsoft made an offer on Yahoo.

What an astonishing news! Microsoft has bid $44.6 billion for search engine company Yahoo. Microsoft is obviously taking the bold step of competing with the other giant - Google. At the moment, Yahoo is carefully considering the offer and it's likely that the two will be merged very soon. Read the analysis.

Pirate Bay came under fire.

Have you ever downloaded from so-called file-sharing sites? I'm sure almost every body have downloaded files without knowing that those files could be pirated files. Pirate Bay is the biggest hub in the world of piracy from a legal point of view. In fact, Pirate Bay doesn't host any pirated materials on it's server. Rather, it directs users to the places where they can grab pirated items. Now the four founders have been charged with the illegal act.

Millions of iPhones are missing.

iPhones hit the smartphones' market last year. I think that iPhones are not still marketed in Asia. But you can buy cracked or hacked iPhones in Asia's black markets. Surprisingly, the number of so-called cracked phones outnumber that of registered phones. Apple stated that it sold 3.7 million items till the end of 2007. But AT&T, the only one service provider for iPhones, reported that its users activated less than 2 million items last year. So, the big question mark hangs on those missing iPhones. Read related news here.

Qtrax's free music downloads.

I bet that everyone loves 'free-stuff' on the net. 'free to join', 'free membership', 'free trial', 'free sign up' and so on are not only frequently-seen words but also powerful words for marketing hype. That is evident to anyone that most social networking sites such as myspace, facebook, friendster etc. are real hits online.

Qtrax, as far as I noticed, is the first, 100% free and legal music application which lets you search and download music. Besides, you can read news and reviews, browse albums and view photos within the application ( which you need to download ). I've read in the news that Qtrax is trying to win affections of 'big four' - Warner, EMI, Universal and Sony BMG. But they are still in the process of discussing the deals. In conclusion, I'd like to remind you that 'there's no such thing as a free lunch'.

The Top 10 Gadgets of '07

Wow! to be honest, I wish i could grab all those gadgets of 2007. I'm just thinking about that human being is really tool-using creatures. They are now part and parcel of daily life.

Tweak processor and memory to enhance performance.

Actually you could not notice your PC’s performance until you are supposed to run multiple programs at the same time. At that time, processor and memory of your system are as busy as bee especially when resourse-intensive programs are running. The bottom line is that different programs need different amounts of processor and memory resources. So, by tweaking settings of CPU and memory helps enhance the performance.

Before tweaking, you need to understand how your PC allocates the system’s resources to the programs. Keep in mind that there are not only foreground programs ( which are running and appearing on the task bar ) but also background programs or services ( which are running on the background, auto-update program for example ). You get also physical memory ( which is called RAM inside your system ) and virtual memory ( which is temporary space on the hard disk and is used when physical RAM is under heavy burden ). Windows also loads frequently-used programs into the momory for faster retrieval. Keeping those facts in mind, you can now tweak your system. Right-click My Computer icon on desktop, choose properties then choose Advanced tab, click Settings under Performance and choose Advanced tab on Performance Options window. Get yourself familiar with different settings by clicking on question mark icon on the right corner and hovering ‘question mark’ on different setting. You will get a brief explanation of the setting you choose.

Net gridlock on the horizon.

We could suffer from net congestion by 2010 according to the news. No doubt, we will be stuck one day coz people are getting online more and more. Besides, those people online are likely to spend the time by using bandwidth-intensive applications such as watching and downloading movies. I think we need the demand of action to deal with ever-increasing bandwidth demand otherwise we will get back to the era of dial-up.

Do we have ‘virtual second life’?

We are inadvertently entering the virtual world filled with virtual things. As with the real world we are now living in, there are virtual society, virtual cash, virtual house and so on. But the virtual world could not exist without the real world – they are not mutually exclusive. In the real world, you are who you are. If you are football player, you can’t be gangster. The virtual world is , in my view, juz a complement to the real world. In the virtual world, you could be who you can’t be.
In fact, when you are playing FIFA football manager, you are acting as if you are real manager. Since the technology helped us take part in muliplayer-online-role games, the life of ‘virtual life’ is beginning to take shape. Your virtual life juz represents your another ‘self’. Nowadays, you are both ‘who you are’ and ‘who you are not’.

Read news about virtual world:
Making money from virtually nothing
Virtual theft leads to arrest