Friday, March 20, 2009

Simple Home Remedies To Save Your Expensive Gadgets!

Gadgets

Our life is full of gadgets. We can’t live without them.  There are times when your gadgets stop working because of some faults. Ever thought of some ideas that can help you repair these gadgets with the use of simple home remedies? Well, here are some, but, mind you, none of them come with 100% scientific guarantee. But they work! Take a look!

 

 

Rescue your cell from water

Cell Phone slashing into water

You always try to protect your cell from not going into water, but atleast once in its lifetime, it finds its way into water. That’s a very sad moment. But does this mean that it’s time to abandon your cell phone? No! Especially not if you try this home remedy.

  • First of all, take out the phone battery from the cell immediately. This will prevent electrical short circuits within the cell which can even burn the internal parts of your cell.
  • Cell Phone in Uncooked Rice

    Next, gently wipe your cell with a tissue, and bury it into a jar full of uncooked rice. Yes, rice! Remember that the coconut is kept in dry rice to keep moisture away? It’s the same logic that works here too. It has been found that rice has a high chemical affinity for water. In simple words, it attracts water. So, water doesn’t stick to the cold metal of your cell, instead it is soaked by the rice, thus leaving your cell dry (well, almost dry). That’s awesome remedy, isn’t it?

Extend laptop battery

Most common problem with laptops is that that its battery runs out when you need it. So these are simple tricks to improve your laptop’s battery life.

  • Remove the battery from your laptop when you are using the AC power. This reduces the constant re-charging of the battery. Maintaining the battery at full charge for extended periods can shorten its life.
  • It’s a good idea to remove the charger cord frequently if you are lazy to remove the battery and fix it back into the laptop — at least once a week.
  • A similar trick  works for your iPod too. If your iPod’s battery refuses to charge completely, make the battery completely dry. Next, simply take out the battery from the iPod and leave it outside for 24 hours. Plug it back in and notice the difference.

Print with dried cartridge ink

Canon Printer

If your printer’s ink dries out just when you are in the middle of printing an important document, simply take out the cartridge from the printer and run a hair dryer for three to four minutes and place it back into the printer and print again while it is still warm. Experts say that the hair dryer melts the thick ink inside the cartridge, thus releasing some extra ink for a page or two. Another good one!

Revive your dead hard drive

Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

If you have been hit by the blue screen of death (on your computer) — and the hard drive just crashed — don’t panic! You might be able to retrieve your precious data. The trick is that simply freeze the hard drive for an entire night.
This might sound silly, but the logic is that, many hard drive failures are caused by worn parts that no longer fit with each other, making it impossible for the computer to read from the drive. If you freeze the drive for an entire night, lowering the temperature causes its metal and plastic internals to contract slightly. Thawing it will cause those parts to expand again, and possibly, they will bind with each other. This might not bring the drive back to its life essentially, but give you enough time to transfer your precious data to a safe place. Worth a try, right?

Source: TOI E-Paper

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Create Videos from your Photo Collection

Photo to Video Converter is a free application which helps you to create exciting photo slide show from your digital photo collection. You can create the photo slideshow with background music, subtitles and transition effects. The program’s simplified three-step process enables users of all levels to easily build custom slide shows to view, store and share your pictures.

Photo to Video

Settings

Key Features;

  • Supports BMP, EMF, GIF, J2K, JPEG, PCX, PNG, RAS, TGA, TIFF and WMF Image Files
  • Supports background music, with WMA,MP3,WAV,ADPCM,PCM,GSM,OGG audio files
  • Supports extracting audio from video files as background music.
  • Sets sub-title for each photo–you can define their location on the screen, choose a font size and color.
  • Choose from 142 transitional effects (fade, slide, wipe, etc.) for each individual slide.
  • Generate Real Media video files, then share your pictures on the Internet easily.
  • Generate DivX, XviD video files with high quality but small size.
  • Supports AVI, DivX, Xvid, MPEG, WMV and Real Media video files.

Download Photo to Video Converter

25+ Search Engines to Search Files on RapidShare

3292113614_60a41ea2e9_b

Rapidshare is undoubtedly one of the most popular file hosting service world wide. Anyone can upload files to Rapidshare, but downloading files is not an easy job as free users need to wait for sometime before they can get download URL. Since RapidShare is the most preferred service for uploading files, you get almost any type of files for downloading. The only problem with RapidShare is that there is no search feature available to find files. You can download any files only if you get the download URL.

rapidshare search

So here is a list of top Search Engines to search files on RapidShare.

1. RapidShare Searcher

2. RapidShare 1

3. Share Miner

4. Filez

5. One Click Files

6. Search Files

7. Rapid Share Search Engine

8. Rapidshare Link

9. Search Shared

10. Rapidoogle

11. Rapid O Search

12. RapidSearch

13. Rapid Library

14. Rapid All

15. Rapidor

16. Rapid Search

17. Rapid Share Search

18. RapidWolf

19. Sharing Rapid

20. Digg RapidShare

21. Quick Search

22. Sharing Engines

23. Rapid Burner

24. Rapid Share Data

25. File Crop

26. Files Hunt

27. File Search

28. Mega Download

There are many more search engines to do the searching and if you have any favorite ones, mention it on comments.

Windows 7 Customization Pack for XP

Ever since Windows 7 Beta was released to public, there has been lots of customization packs based on Windows 7 for Vista and XP. The looks and features of Windows 7 were widely accepted. Deviantart user has created a customization pack for Windows XP

which transforms it with the looks of Windows 7. The theme pack will run on Windows XP SP3 English versions only.

Windows_7_Customization_Pack_1

windows-7-customization-pack_2

Img Credit: Author of theme (Picassa243)

The pack has mostly the improved and revamped versions of my Mods for Windows7. The customization pack includes ;

  • Windows Vista System Properties (Sysdm.cpl)
  • Windows Automatic Updates Mod
  • Windows Security Center Mod
  • Windows 7 Gabriola Font for XP
  • Windows Seven Calculator for XP
  • Excellent Styler Skins from Win7 Build 7000.
  • Exclusive and official Windows-7 Wallpapers
  • Perfect theme for Windows-7 by Ernasco
  • Windows 7 and Vista Findexer Kit for XP

Note from the Author: The pack transforms the major system files bringing a change in the way the GUI looks. The sidebar however is not included in the pack.

Download Customization Pack for XP

Hotmail POP3 Access is Available to Users Worldwide

Previously Hotmail had made available POP3 access

to users in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Now Microsoft has made available

Hotmail POP3 access to users Worldwide. POP3 is a protocol that allows retrieval of your emails in almost any email program that you’ve installed on your mobile phone or PC.

Windows Live

To access Hotmail on your desktop email client or your phone use the configuration mentioned below;

POP server: pop3.live.com(Port 995)


POP SSL required? Yes


User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com


Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live


SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)


Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)


TLS/SSL required? Yes

This is indeed great news to all Hotmail users worldwide, they can now access Hotmail on Outlook without any additional plugins.