Terminating crashed Applications quick will not make you wait until the it closes by itself, you can change the wait time in system registry. To do this, Open Regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktopand change the value of "HungAppTimeout" key to 500 or 1000500 = .5 seconds
Keep your windows updated to the latest service pack available. Current windows XP Service Pack available is 3 and can be found on below link.http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/sp3/default.mspx
There are some computers that does not Turn off completely when you shutdown windows. If your computer is one of them, Try this tweak, it works on some computers.Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktopand edit the key PowerOffActive and give it a value of 1, do the same inHKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
Here are a few additional switches that can be used with FDISK: /Status - Give the status of the partitions. Similar to option #4 /FPRMT - FAT32 in drivers smaller than 512 MB /MBR - Fix master boot record /PRI:xx - Primary partition of size XX in megs /EXT:xx - Extended partition/LOG:xx - Logical drive in extended partition
If the windows on your computer are hung and gone irresponsive Press CRTL+ALT+DEL, go to the 'processes' tab and right-click explorer.exe and then click 'end process. After explorer.exe is gone in the task manager click New Task in the File menu of Task Manager and then type explorer.exe and enter This method is useful only when explorer is frozen.Note: This applies only for explorer.
You can greatly reduce the amount of viruses you might get through e-mail attachments by simply installing the free Outlook E-mail Attachment Security Update from Microsoft. You should also have a good virus protection program installed. This update strips out any attachments where, if you click on them, they will automatically run on their own. Examples of restricted extensions are: .exe, .com, .bat, .vbs, .scr This will work for Outlook98 and Outlook2000. OutlookXP has it already built in as part of the product.
If the desktop or folders on your computer does not retain their settings, follow the below steps to fix it:Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Program Manager\RestrictionsCreate or edit the DWORD value NoSaveSettings and give it a value of 0.
If you want to see a list of installed drivers, you can run the driverquery program in windows XP There are a lot of available switches to view different types of information. One use can be to export to a CSV file for viewing in Excel An example would then be: Driverquery /v /fo csv > drivers.csv
If you're not a big fan of Windows Messenger, simply delete the following Registry Key after closing Messenger completely: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\MSMSGS
One of the most full featured Windows XP configuration tools available is hidden right there in your system, but most people don't even know it exists. It's called the Local Group Policy Editor, or gpedit for short. To invoke this editor, select Start and then Run, then type gpedit.msc, after you hit ENTER, wait for Group Policy Editor, here you can change the entire behavior of your Windows XP.
You can start browsing internet without opening browser, windows will automatically open your default web browser and open your web page. You can do this if you put an Address Bar on your Taskbar. Right click on your system taskbar -> Toolbars and then click on "Address" option ("Address" should be checked). After this a Address Bar will appear on your system Taskbar, you can open any web page by typing URL name here and press Enter, Windows will automatically open your web page in be default set browser. You can also browse files and folders on your computer by using the Address Bar. simply type drive letter like C:\ , D:\ in Address Bar and Press Enter.
miShare is a smart little gadget for sharing files and playlists between iPods. No computer or cable is needed, and it's easy to use. Just attach the two iPods to miShare and press button to start the transfer.
If you are always getting Access Denied errors when trying to connect to a XP computer in the network, and you know you have the correct user names and passwords on the computer, the solution may be a simple registry edit. Start Regedit and navigate toHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/LsaChange the value of a key named "restrictanonymous" to 0 instead of 1 Don't change "restrictanonymoussam" value. Reboot computer for the changes to take effect.
If you are having problems with lockups, blue screens, or can only get to safe mode, often the problem is due to a faulty device driver. One way to help identify them is through the use of the Verfier program Run "Verifier" in the start - > Run and follow the steps.Keep the default of Create Standard SettingsSelect the type of drivers you want to confirm A list of drivers to be verified on the next boot will be shown. Reboot If your computer stops with a blue screen, you should get an error message with the problem driver To turn off the Verifier, run verifier /reset at start - > Run
Defragmentation pushes all commonly used programs and boot files to the edge of the hard drive for faster access. Windows XP normally schedules this every three days when it is idle, however you can force it to do this by using the b switch anytime Ex:- defrag C: -b
Ipconfig is small utility that come with Windows XP. This utility provides you with diagnostic information related to TCP/IP network configuration. Ipconfig also accepts various Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) commands, allowing a system to update or release its TCP/IP network configuration, and so on.
To run the Ipconfig.exe utility, at a command prompt, type ipconfig, and then add any appropriate options.
ipconfig /all - Display full configuration information. ipconfig /release - Release the IP Address for the specified adapter. ipconfig /renew - Renew the IP address for the specified adapter. ipconfig /flushdns - Purges the DNS Resolver cache. ipconfig /registerdns - Refreshes all DHCP leases and re-registers DNS names ipconfig /displaydns - Display the contents of DNS Resolver Cache. ipconfig /showclassid - Display all the DHCP class IDs allowed for adapter. ipconfig /setclassid - Modifies the DHCP class id
If you want to save an image that is being displayed on the website or an application that is protected from being copied, Press the "Print Screen" button on you keyboard, now the entire screen of your computer will be copied to the clipboard, you can now paste the content of the clipboard (screenshot of your desktop) into paint or any image editing software and save it.
Normally when you use Windows95's Disk Defragmenter, this will not defrag the swap file. To defrag the swap file: Open the System Properties dialog box (right click on My Computer and select Properties) Click on the Performance tab Click on the Virtual Memory button Check Let me specify my own virtual memory settings Check Disable virtual memory (Note: This will cause the system not to use a swap file) Click on the OK button Answer Yes to the warning, Click on the Close button Reboot when prompted You system will reboot. Check to see that there is no swap file. If one still remains (WIN386.SWP), you can safely delete it. Defrag your system as you usually do Now reset the swap file to your previous setting and reboot. (Note: Do not leave your system running without a swap file)
If your mouse has a wheel for scrolling, you can change font size or the entire web page in your web browser. To do this, hold the Control key on your keyboard and then roll the wheel forth to zoom in and back to zoom out. Almost all the web browsers have this option.
Turn of CD Auto Play Open My Computer Right click on your CD ROM and choose Properties Click on the Auto Play tab In the drop down box you can choose the Action for each choice shown in the drop down box or Go to Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc Computer Config -> Administrative Template -> System Double click Turn off Autoplay Enable it.
If your monitor is not big enough to provide enough space on the taskbar, you can free some space by hiding the icons in the notification area that you don't use frequently. To to this : Right-click on your taskbar -> Properties -> and then check the "Hide inactive icons" checkbox, you can also which icon to hide or show by clicking on the customize button.
If you are annoyed by the Balloon tips that are shown in the tray area of the taskbar, you can turn it off by following the below steps :Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Create a DWORD value of EnableBalloonTips and give it a value of 0 to disableGive it a value of 1 to enable.
If you want to show or hide the version of your Windows XP on the desktop, follow the below steps:Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\DesktopEdit or Create a DWORD entry PaintDesktopVersion. Give it a value 1 to show the version on desktop or give it a value 0 will hide.Note: Logoff or Reboot for the changes to take effect.
To save a document with an extension other than the one a program wants to use, enclose the entire name in quotation marks. For example, if you run Notepad and save a file under the name file1.dba, it will actually be saved under the name file1.dba.txt. But if you type "file1.dba" (with quotes) then the document will be saved under the name file1.dba. Note that a document so-named cannot be opened via double-clicking since the extension is no longer ".txt"
It is possible to disable right clicking on the taskbar. Start regedit and navigate toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorerand Modify/Create DWORD Value of Data type REG_DWORD Named "NoTrayContextMenu" Setting for Value Data: 0 or 1 (0 = Enabled / 1 = Disabled) Close regedit and reboot computer.
To enable or disable Task Manager, follow the below steps :Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\SystemCreate a DWORD value DisableTaskMgr and give it a value of 0 to enable itGive it a value of 1 to disable.
It is possible to rename more than one file at a time in windows XP, to do this, select all the files that you want to rename and right-click on any one file and rename it, all other files you selected will be renamed to the same name that you renamed with an incremental number added to it.
It is possible to retrieve your personal through the pagefile.sys file located in system drive (usually C:\Pagefile.sys). This file can only be accessed in DOS mode or a different operating system. It's safe to clear pagefile when you shutdown your computer, to do this navigate toHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Managementand then change the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 1 ie:- dword:00000001
If a particular user cannot add or remove programs, there might be a simple registry edit to be done. Open Registry Editor and Navigate toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Uninstalland change the DWORD NoAddRemovePrograms to 0 disable it.
One handy utility that everyone needs nowadays is a software program that can extract audio, sound, or background music from home movies, YouTube videos, or any other video file. In this article, I’m going to give step-by-step instructions on how to use a free program called AoA Audio Extractor. Using this nifty little application, you can extract audio from AVI, MPEG, MPG, FLV, DAT, WMV, MOV, MP4, and 3GP and save them into MP3 format or WAV and AC3 format also!
The program is extremely simply to use with the ability to drag and drop files right onto the interface. AoA Audio Extractor also includes a media player, so you can preview the video files from the program itself, saving you the hassle of making sure it’s the right video by playing it in Windows Media Player, etc. It also allows you to control the audio bit rate, audio sample rate and the channel type (mono or stero) for the output file.
However, one of the nicest features of the program that I really thought was quite useful is the ability to extract audio from only a portion of the video clip, instead of the entire file. This is a very basic editing feature, but it’s really helpful because you don’t have to download any sound editing software if you want only some parts of the audio.
To get started using AoA Audio Extractor, download and install the program. Open the program and click the Add Files button to select the video files. You can add more files if you want and they will be processed in a batch.
The videos will show up in the main window along with basic information such as the Start, End, Source Format, and Output Format. You can change the output format under the Output Options section below the main list. Select a video and click on Movie Clip if you want to extract audio from a specific time segment in the video. Before clicking Start, click on Browse and choose the location for the output MP3 file.
Now, go ahead and click Start and the extraction process will begin. The program is pretty fast, it took only 1 minute to extract audio from a 19 minute video clip.
You should now see your audio file at the location specified! I checked the sound quality between the video and the audio file and they were exactly the same, so you’re not going to lose any quality in the extraction process.
Clippings won’t damage the lawn. In fact, mulching the grass clippings are good for lawns. And avoiding those bags of grass clippings will reduce the amount of trash that gets dumped in landfills.
Did you know that you can buy toilet paper, paper towels and stationery made from recycled paper, tile from crushed light bulbs, garden hoses from used tires and yard furniture from recycled plastic bottles? Look for the recycle symbol and buy smart.
Pick a corner that’s out of the way and start your own “garbage garden.” Put fresh soil over grass clippings and food scraps (egg shells, apple cores, coffee grounds, etc.). Then, once or twice a week, turn the whole pile over with a shovel. This lets air into the soil to grow rich and healthy composting material for gardens and lawns.
These six-pack plastic rings are harmful to birds and other creatures that often get caught in the plastic loops. If you have a choice, buy soda six-packs made from biodegradable plastic.
Driving at posted speed limits is not only safer, it saves gas. Using less gas helps reduce air pollution, called carbon dioxide emissions. Try to drive at a constant speed; pumping the accelerator pumps more fuel into the engine.
One tiny leak can waste up to 50 gallons of water a day! Save water by taking short showers and washing only full loads of laundry.
When your family shops, avoid buying things with layers of packaging. Buy the largest sizes possible. You won’t have to shop as often, and you won’t have as much to throw away.
By hanging your clothes outside, instead of using gas or electric dryers, your clothes will last longer and you’ll save energy that is costly and difficult to produce.
Bring nature’s beauty to your yard and get rid of insects by caring for the birds. Make birdfeeders from recycled milk cartons and plastic food containers. Once you start feeding them, feed the birds all winter long because they’ll come to rely on you.
You can learn more, work toward helping the planet and sometimes make new friends in an environmental club. Look in the library for a list of groups.
Only open it to take food in and out. Close the door while you’re filling ice cube trays and while you’re unpacking all your groceries.
By turning the heat down just a few degrees, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil a day. If you’re chilly, put on a sweater instead of turning up the heat!
Hang this A-to-Z checklist in your home to remind you of what you can do to help save the planet. There are way more than 26 ways to get involved, but this list is a great start.
Things like paint, household cleaners, and motor oil need special disposal. Call 1-800-CLEANUP or visit Earth 911 to learn where special disposal sites are located.
Suggest that your classroom, scout troop, Sunday school class, or neighborhood friends host a neighborhood clean-up day to pick up litter. It’s a great opportunity to promote recycling in your community.
Remind the drivers in your house to “check the air” each time they fill up with gas. Driving on under-inflated tires wastes gas and wears out tires.
Used batteries from toys, tools and appliances leak dangerous chemicals into our water supply. Buy a battery recharger and rechargeable batteries and feel like a hero.
Remember the three R’s and you’ll have all the information you need to help the environment. Reduce your use of things like water and energy, reuse products before you throw them away and make sure you’re recycling as much as you can.
Turn off the water when you aren’t using it! Take short showers instead of baths (showers use less H2O), brush your teeth with the water off, and buy a “flush saver” for your toilet (or put a brick in the tank).
Save valuable energy by keeping AC above 75 degrees in your house. Turning off the AC in your car will increase gas mileage and save valuable energy.
Instead of carrying groceries in paper or plastic bags that get thrown away, take your own cloth bags to the store. Even paper or plastic bags can be used several times, and some stores offer a discount for re-using their grocery bags.
The library has many books that are full of valuable information on the environment. Or check the World Wide Web. Once you’ve read about the environment, spread the word!
Use the Sunday comics, samples from old wallpaper books, fabric remnants or recycled wrapping paper so you’ll get more than one use out of this paper.
The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees all Americans the “freedom of speech.” If you see something that is harming our planet, speak out. It is not only your right, it’s your duty. Make phone calls and write letters.
Anything you do can help. You can help prevent air and water pollution by recycling your soda pop cans. It takes less energy to recycle a product than to create one from scratch.
See who else lives on the planet! Animals have needs and rights too, so learn more about them and then spread the word about endangered species, the rain forests, and the importance of our friends in the animal kingdom.
I just ran across an article in the Guardian (UK) in which GNU creator (and founder of the Free Software Foundation) Richard Stallman minces no words about the cloud computing phenomenon, calling it a “trap.” TechRepublic bloggers have written skeptically about the concept, especially where it concerns privacy and security issues, and others have reported on particular cloud initiatives such as those of Google and Amazon.
Stallman’s comments to the Guardian go beyond merely skeptical, however: “‘It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign.’”
The article also quotes the equally underwhelmed Oracle founder Larry Ellison:
“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” he said. “The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”
Maybe it’s just the effect of the U.S. election season on me, but I find it so refreshing when people just say what they really think, in no uncertain terms. What a concept! Here is Stallman’s advice for the computing public, which for anyone who is feeling a little mistrustful of the powers-that-be these days, is bracing:
“One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”
Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard, and search for the following line (or similar):
Immediatly after this line, paste the following section of code:
Then preview your template. If installed correctly, you should see the tag cloud appear in your sidebar. Then you are free to save your template, edit the colors and dimensions as required, or move it to a different location. That's all!
Actually, it goes into config.sys.
Type at the DOS prompt:
CD\
EDIT CONFIG.SYS
at the end of the lines of commands, in about the same order, you can put:
LASTDRIVE=Z
That should do it.
LASTDRIVE=Z equals to LASTDRIVE=26
LASTDRIVE=32 is the maxDrive 1: A:
Drive 2: B:
...
Drive 25: Y:
Drive 26: Z:
Drive 27: [:
Drive 28: \:
Drive 29: ]:
Drive 30: ^:
Drive 31: _:
Drive 32: `:
Note: This only works in DR-DOS 7+ &
When you develop your game or application you should target to develop 3 separate versions – one for low end phones (known as 40 series - smaller screen size less power phones), one for higher end phones (60 series - larger screen size, more power) and one for very high end phones (known as a QVGA version - very high end phones with high graphics (320 x 240) and power, top of the line). These 3 versions will be your base reference builds that you will submit to a Publisher or 3rd party that you contact to help you put your game into the market.
The Publisher will be the one who picks up the tab to “port” your game into all the popular (500 to 1000) handsets available in the global market. They will also attach a brand to the game – if it fits in. Getting signed up with a good Publisher is not easy and your content needs to be of stellar quality. Publishers put a lot of money in packaging, branding, deploying and marketing your game at a global level through Wireless Carriers located in countless countries – so they need to be sure they invest and risk in a game that is of very high quality. Wouldn’t you do the same?
Prior to submitting your game to a Publisher, make sure you have the following ready to submit -
(a) Three versions of your game - as mentioned above
(b) A video of the game in play
(c) About 5 to 20 good screenshots of your game in play (include startup, splash screen, menu screen, help screens etc)
(d) A good one paragraph brief spiced up write up about the game, instructions and gameplay control key information.
Self Publishing
If you are deciding to self publish, then you are up against a mammoth task. You will have to invest a lot of money in porting your game or application to all the popular global handsets that carriers support.
You will also have to “build” a network of contacts at various Wireless Carriers located globally and this is just not feasible for one single title. Simple emailing does not work. You will have to travel globally to be present at the various Wireless Trechnology conferences and do a lot of business networking in an effort to meet the right people in these companiesin an effort to get a shot at putting your content on their content portals (”game decks”).
If you insist, and are determined to self-publish and believe you have the capacity, bandwidth, money and capability to achieve this - then a quick way to overcome the porting hurdle, would be to pick up the porting costs by approaching a well established porting company like The Porting Lab - and get a quote for devices you would like your game to be compatible with. Then decide if its in your budget, and if it isn’t try and narrow down and cut down to the popular devices or limit yourself to specific regions (eg. USA only or Europe only etc).
Going The Aggregator Way
Once your porting is done - you get all your ported builds and files from the porting company. If you find that the aproach to directly go to Wireless Carriers is just not working for you – you can approach mobile content “Aggregators”.
Aggregators are exactly what they sound like. They “aggregate” content from various people. They put them all together, and then supply their portfolio directly to Wireless Carriers, through a direct relationship wioth them. The Carriers ofcourse have the final word on which games to put on their “Game Decks”.
A “Game Deck” is essentially the digital mobile page a subscriber or customer of the Wireless Carrier sees in their phone browser when they want to download various games. The Game Deck shows up on the mobile screen exactly like a mini-browseable directory. So, for example, the first screen may display a list of clickable links like –
New Games
Popular Games
Action
Strategy
Adventure
Trial Games
…etc.
The user selects the appropriate category and clicks to access info listed in that category, and the list of games in that category are displayed.
Now, obviously the games on the top or higher up in the list are going to do better than the ones much lower down. This is exactly like the early days of the Yahoo! Web directory. Space higher up on the lists, are as important as prime physical shelf space in brick-and-mortar stores. Some Carriers are slowly moving into providing search boxes to cater to the large varied user preferences, and thus allow the The Long Tail phenomena to kick in and increase their VAS revenues. (Value Added Services - this is all services other than the basic voice and SMS services offered by Carriers. It includes ringtones, wallpapers, games, internet browsing etc. …anything that is not voice and SMS related - which is the primary service carriers offer).
Carriers often have an in-house team that evaluate your content and decide where to put it up on their Game Deck based on its quality and potential.
So, how does one get on top of your category on the Game Decks?
Many Carriers make additional money by charging you a fee to get “higher up - on top”. Yes – you need to pay them a monthly fee to get on top. This is a model that many Carriers are moving towards in an effort to squeeze out even more money from the system.
An Important Observation
Since users see only a few text based words prior to downloading – a branded game that shows a title like “Spiderman 3” or “Lord Of The Rings” is definitely going to be downloaded (and thus sell) higher than a game with a title like “Alien Attack”. This is the reason why most Carriers openly welcome branded content.
Different Revenue Models
The current model practiced by most Carreirs is a download and pay model. Users simply download payable versions and are billed for the download every month. All the billing and tracking is done by the Carriers.
Some Wireless Carriers are moving into the try-before-you-buy model - with some games only). With this model, users can download one free level of the game to “try” and get a feel of. Read this interview where I also speak about other alternate models adopted by Wireless Carriers.
Now back to marketing of your game…
There are other alternate ways to get your mobile game or application out in the market. D2C (Direct 2 Consumer) portals is one. These are rapidly springing up all over the Internet. They allow anyone to download games by browsing the site with a browser and then providing an SMS number to send the game to, after the purchase is made. Most of these portals allow mobile game develoeprs to submit their content for inclusion at no cost. This channel of game distribution is gradually gaining momentum (although, the Carrier Game Decks remain the most popular). The advantage with the web channel is that consumers can actually see the screenshots, videos and detail write up and reviews and ratings before spending $3 or however much to purchase and download the game. This automatically weeds out all the bad games and content. The web medium also gives wings to The Long Tail concept and surfers can conduct site searches for specific genres that they like and content they are looking for.
Many of these web browser based models also have WAP browsing systems by which users can directly fire up their cell phone browser like Mini-Opera and surf to wap.thegamesite.com .
Since this competes with content found of the users Wireless Carrier’s game deck, the Carriers are setting up “walled gardens” and blocking access to these sites and downloadable content. This however, is a very short term strategy and in the future Carriers will have to break these walls, and start being happy in making money on the ‘data – transfer” charges. They will be forced to allow anyone to make their content (sites, games, ringtones etc) available to all subscribers - in return for signing up more users rather than loosing them because of the Carrier blocking and limiting entertainment content offerings.
Imagine your local ISP blocking your favourite websites! Wouldn’t you sign up with someone else?
A few popular D2C websites
Handango.com is a very popular site for downloading applications for mobile devices. They have trial versions available for a lot of their content.
GameJump.com is a new site that provides free games – that are ad supported. The user sees a small graphical advertisement before the game starts up and on closing the game. Gamejump is basically of aggregated mobile games that developers have submitted to be listed. You can even submit your own game to GameJump catalogue through Greystripe, the company behind the system. They also have an interesting “white label” solution through which anyone can setup a website (exactly like GameJump.com) - and thus offer free mobile games to their community. In return webmasters stand to earn a % revenue share from Greystripe - for the in-game ads and wap portal ads.
There are other interesting ways of marketing mobile content to users, and you could approach some of the companies foraying into these alternate channels…
+ Mobile Kiosks in malls – doing direct bluetooth transfer of game into phones.
+ Off-the-shelf purchasable game packs in Retail Stores – these have scratch cards inside them with “pin keys” that can be SMS to a number in order to download the game(s)
Revenue Share… how much can you expect?
The amount of money and revenue share you can expect from Wireless Carriers varies a lot from Carrier-to-Carrier and geographical regions. In China, for example, developers and publishers can get as much as 90% of the game’s selling price. With some Carriers in India however, this is reversed, and developers and publishers get as little as 10%. Although there are other Carriers that give 40%, some 30%, some 50%. Remember this is the money they give to the party (aggregator, publisher) who supplies them the game and signs the contract. So if you go through another channel, your % revenue share deal with this in-between party, will be based on what they get. So, if you strike a 50-50 revenue share deal, you will essentially get 50% of the amount the Carrier gives your distributor. So if for example the game sells for $2 to the end user, and the Carrier gives 40% revenue share - you will get 50% of 40% of $2 which is - 50% of 80 cents, or 40 cents per sale.
Going Direct to Wireless Carriers with your content
Many Carriers are have stopped entertaining direct developers and small players – and prefer to deal with only the prominent publishers and aggregators that are reputed. This is naturally, because of the various overheads incurred to keep these channels open. They naturally prefer to deal with the larger companies and build a strong relationship through which quality games can be funneled. So, if you are just starting out – you can drop the idea of trying to approach a Carrier directly. You will have to go through a publisher or aggregator. Of course if you have $10 million in funding and in the bank, you can go out and pick up a handful of known global or local big brands (movies, celebs etc) and build stellar games around them, port them over to 500 handsets, sponsor the big global and local wireless trade shows and conferences (CTIA wireless, GSM, GDC etc), and buy a few full page centerfold advertisements in LINK – mobile-ent.biz Mobile Entertainment Magazine. Do all this to get your name out there and in front of the gatekeepers in charge of content acquisition at Wireless Carriers. And of course, if they still ask you for $1 million to be placed on the very top of their gamedeck for one month, heck why not do it?
Top Mobile Game Publishers (2007)
EA
Vivendi Games
Mobile
THQ Wireless
Gameloft
Hands-On
Oberon Media
Infospace
Glu Mobile
Real / MrGoodliving
Digital Chocolate
Eidos
Codemasters
Konami
Namco
Sega
Player One
In-Fusio
Twistbox
Indiagames
Superscape
Top Aggregators (2007)
PlayerX – 85 direct carrier deals
Selatra – Irish company in 50 countries
Airborne – Canadian company, well positioned in North American market
Telcogames – good with off-portal distribution, representing over 100 companies
Upstart – pushes Japanese games in Europe
First off, go to Tools, and then Options from the top menu. Click on the Main or General tab.
Now there are two ways you can setup multiple home pages in Firefox, an easy way and a more manual way. The manual way is to simply type bother URLs into the Home Page text box and separate them with the “|” or pipe symbol. The pipe symbol is usually above the Enter key on the keyboard.
So if I wanted to have Google.com and Yahoo.com both set as startup home pages, I would type in the following:
http://www.google.com|http://www.yahoo.com
So your screen should look like this with the multiple URLs in the Home Page box:
And that’s it! Now when you open a new instance of Firefox, both of the tabs will appear! Sweet! Now there’s also an easier method of doing the same thing and that is to Use Bookmark.
Basically, if you have a folder of bookmarks in Firefox and you want to set all of them as your startup home pages, just click the Use Bookmark button and select the entire folder.
Whichever bookmarks you have stored in that folder will automatically be placed into the Home Page text box separated by the pipe symbol. So you can use either method to get multiple start pages in Firefox!
Adding more than one site to your start up home pages in IE is also super easy! Basically, go to the site you want to add and then click on the down arrow next to the Home Page icon in IE that’s to the right hand side:
When you click on that, you’ll get the option to change your current home page to the new page or to simply add this webpage to your home page tabs.
Obviously, choose the second option and now you’ll get multiple tabs appear when you start up Internet Explorer also!
Have you ever visited a website and wished you could completely remove some annoying aspect of the site, such as an annoying image or a giant header, etc? Well if there’s any element of a webpage you want to hide permanently, you can do so using a Firefox add-on!
RIP, aka Remove It Permanently, can remove just about any HTML element from a webpage, including image, forms, headers, tables, flash content, videos, ads, and lots more.
So you can read the New York Times without the New York Times header across the top!
Now take a look at the New York Times web page without the top header:
Pretty sweet eh! Any other items you think clutter up the display of a web page or mess with the flow of the site? Well simple remove it using RIP! So how do you use it?
Well first go ahead and install it in Firefox and then restart Firefox. If you are using Firefox 3, the plugin will not install because it has not been updated. However, you can fix that by adding an entry into the Firefox configuration that ignores the compatibility check.
Open a new tab in Firefox and type in about:config. You’ll get a warning, just click I’ll be careful, I promise!
Now right click in anywhere in the white space and choose New and then Boolean.
Name the new config variable extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
Now restart Firefox and install the plugin. Now when you right click anywhere on a web page, two options appear, Remove This Permanently and RIP Advanced.
The first option will remove an item from only the current page. So if you remove the New York Times header off the front page by choosing Remove This Permanently, it will still show up on other pages. To remove something from all pages for an entire domain, you would go to RIP Advanced and choose from Remove From All Similar Pages, Remove From This Website, or Remove From This Domain.
Once you select the option, right click on the element again and choose Remove This Permanently. You can also remove similar items, the parent item, or all parent items. Finally, you can remove all IFrames or Google AdSense.
The only trouble removing items comes when trying to remove Flash items. When you right-click on a Flash box, a different menu appears and you can’t remove it. The only way to remove Flash is to click somewhere right next to it and remove that item. So if the Flash is within a DIV or in a table row element, you would need to remove that in order to remove the Flash.
Also, if you remove too much and the website no longer loads correctly (as I did with the New York Times!), don’t worry! Just right-click and go to RIP Advanced and choose RIP Options.
You’ll see a list of web sites on the left hand side. Click on that site and a list of “RIPS” will appear that are currently being applied to the site. Simply click on them and choose Remove XPath.
Just remove them all and start over until you get it right! Have fun with removing items from your favorite web pages. But before you decide to remove AdSense ads for everyone’s site, I would ask that you take into consideration that it is my income and it’s what pays for my work! I know those ads can be annoying, but it’s the only reason why there is so much free stuff on the web. Enjoy! Source: Ghacks
If you’re a big time gamer or like to play games on your PC sometimes, then you might want to check out CanYouRunIt.com before buying your next game. The way it works is that you pick a game and the website will inspect your computer’s hardware configuration and compare it the the system requirements of the particular game.
CanYouRunIt is quick and will give you a full summary and detailed analysis of your computer’s hardware system. Once it compares that to the minimum requirements of the game, it will determine whether your system can handle it or not.
Every once in a while, there is a Web 2.0 tool that really excites me because it’s something I have never seen before, never thought of and it’s cool. That’s exactly what Flowgram is, a cool new tool you can use to create a new type of screencast which includes live web pages, photos, voice, documents, RSS feeds, and lots more.
Flowgram is a great tool for creating a combination of a screencast and a Powerpoint presentation. It’s a mix of various types of content like I mentioned above linked in a chain along with your recorded voice and annotations.
For an example of what a Flowgram looks like and what you can do with it, check this out below:
Pretty cool eh!? It’s very easy to create a Flowgram and once you’ve made it, you can share it via email, on your own site, on social networking sites like Facebook, on YouTube, or anywhere else you can think of.
However, that is not what makes Flowgram interesting. When viewing a Flowgram, the web page is live and you can actually interact with the site while the narrator is speaking and while annotations are shown on the screen. In the background, Flowgram actually loads up the current site just like a web browser would bring up the page.
Flowgram excels for those who are frustrated or limited by the current methods of sharing information with people, i.e. Digg, Flickr, StumbleUpon, etc. If you want to explain a concept that require multiple sites, photos, documents, audio, and stuff to be pointed out with arrows or annotations, it’s possible with software such as Camtasia, but Flowgram not only makes it a hundred times easier, it also gives you more options.
When you sign up for an account, you can start creating your Flowgram by picking to add some content:
If I add a web page, for example, it will load up the live site and I can then record audio, add annotations, highlight text on the webpage, or add media, such as music, etc.
Flowgram is not complicated to use and even a person with very little technical knowledge can make a Flowgram. It’s a wonderful tool for those who really want to capture some sort of insight, make a commentary, or provide a viewpoint. It allows you to walk people through doing something online step by step.
The only downside to Flowgram is that you can interact with the live web page, but if you click on a link, etc, the browser will navigate away from the Flowgram and load the page instead. It would have been nice if the Flowgram simply continued and left the webpage in some kind of frame window so you can click on links, etc without navigating away from the current Flowgram.
Other than that one downside, I find creating a tutorial about a web site is much easier than using Camtasia. Unforunately, you cannot record your computer desktop screen with Flowgram yet, otherwise you would totally not need something like Camtasia Studio. You can also use Google Docs to create online presentations, and you can create interactive tutorials similar to Flowgram using Wink. Enjoy! Source: CNET
If you’re run the default Defragmenter program in Windows recently, you may have not realized that the program cannot defrag any file that is currently open, which includes all system files, the Windows page file, and the Windows registry.
However, if you truly want to optimize the speed and performance of your computer, defragging those three aspects of the operating system are the most important! If you think about it, the system files, the page file and the registry are constantly being accessed by Windows in order to complete any task.
So if Windows does not allow you to defrag these areas, then how do you go about doing it? Well, Microsoft has a free product called PageDefrag that will defrag your computer during the system boot up so as to avoid any files being locked up by Windows.
The program will even defrag your event logs! The list shows how fragmented the paging file is and all of the various registry hives (SAM, Software, System, etc).
Choose Defragment at next boot and then restart your computer. First CHKDSK will make sure there are no errors on your hard drive and then the defragment process will begin.
Overall, the program is very useful for increasing the smoothness and speed of your computer. I would recommended only running it once every month or two, not on every boot. Too much defragmenting can actually cause more problems.
There are also other freeware applications that do a great job of defragmenting your hard drive, such as SmartDefrag, a tool that lets you defrag multiple drives at once.You give your current position and salary and that gives you access to pay information that others have posted in the same way.
It’s really grown and now there is enough data to be of value. There are enough salaries posted in the major cities that you can get a good idea of what other people are making in your same position in your city! Here are a couple of graphs:
Median Salary by State or Province:
You can also narrow the results down on company size, city, experience, skills, and degree. So if you want to compare what small companies are paying for your position and compare that to what larger companies pay, you can do that very easily!
Here’s an example of Median Salary by Years Experience:
The one I liked the best is the Median Salary by Employer Type, so if you’re open to working for the Federal Government, etc, you might find it better for you.
PayScale.com also has a “Top Jobs” section which shows the jobs that it has the most amount of data on, so you can check these titles first to see if you fit into one becuase you’ll get a better idea since there’s more data.
Imagine this kind of situation: every few months, you transfer seldom used files onto digital media by burning them into CDs or DVDs. A year later, you need to recover one of the files from a pile of unmanaged CD collections. Can you find it quickly?
The normal way to solve this problem is to insert all of them one by one and try to search for the files. You may argue that you can solve this by carefully labeling your CDs but I bet that you can’t write all of the file names on its surface. A good way to proactively handle this hassle is to use digital catalog software such as Visual CD; where you can download and use free of charge.
Visual CD is a digital cataloging software that allows you to index all of your digital files. I find it most useful for cataloging removable medias such as CDROM and DVD ROM. How Visual CD works is pretty easy. Each time after you burn a media, open Visual CD to read the media and index its contents. You can also add comments or labels to your media that reflects its contents.
When the need arise in the future, you can search all your digital collection without having to insert/connect them physically to your computer; thus speeding the search for a particular file.
![new york times removed[5]](http://www.online-tech-tips.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/newyorktimesremoved5.png "new york times removed[5]")
