A Keyboard Which Acts Like A Mouse

If you’ve got your computer hooked up to your TV you’ll know that navigating through menus, typing emails, surfing the web and fiddling with your multimedia from the sofa can be a right pain. What’s more, balancing a mouse on your knee is nigh on impossible. That’s why you need the ingenious Air Keyboard.

Slightly bigger than a PSP, this compact wireless gizmo functions as an all-in-one HTPC keyboard and 3D motion-sensitive mouse, so you can type, surf and point with ease. It even works with the PS3. Think of it as a Wii controller with full-on keyboard functionality.

Air Keyboard

Control your computer with ease
With various hot keys, gaming-style shoulder buttons and a built-in accelerometer capable of interpreting tilts as up, down, left and right, the Air Keyboard is set to revolutionise the way you interact with your home theatre. You’ll even want to take it to work as it is ideal for controlling Powerpoint presentations and other business-based programs. Slick or what?

Mac and Windows compatible, the Air Keyboard boasts an impressive range of up to 100ft, so unless your screen is in the penthouse and your computer is in the basement, you’re laughing. Just grab it with both hands, joypad-styley, and you’re away.

Air Keyboard

Plug & Play USB Dongle
Set up is a breeze. Simply plug in the USB dongle, wait for the green light to confirm connection and boom – you’re good to go. No software, drivers or complex faffing. You won’t need to sweat over battery life because two AAs will juice the keyboard for over 50 hours of constant use. There’s even an auto hibernate mode.

Yes, you could use a regular keyboard and separate mouse to control things, but why clutter your living room with cumbersome accessories when an Air Keyboard fits neatly next to your other remotes. Besides, you can’t lose a full sized

Delhi, Mum 3G bids over 6 times 2G price

The 3G auction bids, by displaying a high degree of rational business behaviour, have shown that market-based, transparent allocation of scarce national resources is the only way to discover the real market price of spectrum. The evidence is overwhelming: While the government sold nationwide 2G spectrum in 2008 for Rs 1651 crore, the same operators bid about the same (Rs 1,645.21 crore) for just 2 circles Rs 1329.34 crore for Mumbai and Rs 315.87 crore for UP (West) on Tuesday.

Displaying clear circle preferences, Mumbai and Delhi have already received the highest bids at Rs 1329.34 crore and Rs 1284.04 crore respectively which, added together, is more than six times the price that was paid for 2G spectrum in the same circles Rs 170.7 crore for Delhi and Rs 203.66 crore for Mumbai.

The price for one block of pan-India 3G spectrum on Tuesday closed at Rs 8,662 crore, which is Rs 7,011 crore more than the price at which pan-India 2G spectrum was given away. The bidding activity level is still at just 80%, indicating that the real price will only emerge at a 100% activity level.

Now, the government is assured of Rs 35,018 crore from sale of 3G telephony spectrum, as bids for pan-India operations rose to Rs 8,662 crore on the 15th day of auction.

The government had estimated to raise Rs 35,000 crore from sale of spectrum for 3G telephony and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) services put together. But this target has been surpassed by 3G alone and the total mop up could be up to Rs 50,000-55,000 crore, telecom minister A Raja said on Tuesday. The auction of BWA spectrum would begin two days after the 3G bids close.

The 3G bids have exposed the massive losses that the government incurred by choosing to distribute 2G spectrum on a first-come-first-served basis over open, transparent auctions.

In terms of MHz, the government received Rs 1,651 crore for 96.8 MHz of 2G spectrum (4.4 MHz x 22 circles), while the same amount has been recovered from the auction of a mere 10 MHz of 3G (5 MHz x 2 circles).

Further, the 2G first come first served allocation had priced spectrum at roughly Rs 17 per MHz. In contrast, Mumbai alone has already fetched the government Rs 265.87 per MHz of 3G (Rs 1329.34 crore divided by 5 MHz). The 3G spectrum auctions are expected to last another week or so.

Solar Energy Can Resolve Telecom Tower Menace

India currently has around 300,000 telecom towers and would require another 150,000 within the next three years to keep up with the demand. Currently, the total carbon emissions from telecom towers in India is 11.76 billion pounds or 5.3 million tonnes, annually. The annual cost of diesel incurred in running the towers across India is estimated at Rs 64 billion.

These figures indicate that the telecom sector is emerging as the largest consumer of energy in India, highlighting the growing need to promote the adoption of renewable energy options for the Indian telecom sector.




Use of solar powered cellphone towers would reduce more than 5 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

Why renewable resources?

Alternative energy options including solar and wind energy can address the challenge of unavailability of reliable power supply in semi-urban, rural and remote areas, thus enabling telecom connectivity for the remote parts of the country. Renewable resources of energy will not only cut down the operational expenditure (OPEX) by around 15-20 per cent but also hold a viable alternative to the power crisis under rising fuel prices. If we make an estimate considering around 120,000 telecom towers in rural areas that run on diesel gensets for almost 12 hours a day consuming 24 litres of diesel, the cost of running these towers will work out to around Rs 3 billion per month. Thus, it has become imperative for the telecom operators to look for alternative sources of fuel to run these stations, such as solar power, wind power, biodiseal, biogas, etc., which may provide feasible solutions to the problem and also contribute towards a greener environment with zero emissions.

Five ways to resolve it

Emphasising the need to take green steps in this direction to convert diesel genset powered telecom towers into solar powered towers, CMAI, an integrated association for IT and telecom companies in India, had organised a round table on renewable energy to discuss renewable energy options for the telecom industry. The conference was inaugurated by Thiru A Raja, Union Minister of Communication & IT and Dr Farooq Abdhullah, Union Minister of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE).

Ravi Sharma, executive chairman, CMAI, proposed five recommendations to tackle this menace.

Firstly, considering the sensitivities of the environment and the ill effects of carbon emissions on people, the government should make solar power mandatory for every new telecom tower coming up.

Secondly, the government should start an initiative to convert the power setup of all existing telecom towers to solar power within a reasonable timeframe or within three years.

Thirdly, the changeover policy should be financially viable, and this can be possible by forming a high powered committee including officials of both telecom and MNRE.

Fourthly, the association wants that the ministry should generously utilise the United States oil (USO) fund for this activity, so that telecom operators will be willing to convert from traditional to solar powered towers.

Fifthly, the association wants some amendments regarding the draft guidelines for selection of new grid connected solar projects under phase I of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. Instead of selection of developers on the basis of giving the highest discounts on price, it recommends that the selection should on based on technical and financial criteria.

While appreciating and acknowledging the recommendations of CMAI, Dr Abdullah and A Raja announced that both the ministries will jointly form a core committee, with participation from telecom, and environment and forests ministries as well.

How to download a torrent when there is no seeders ?

It happen many time with me whenever I am in my middle of my torrent
download the seeders fall to zero & my download speed come down to
zero & many time I got frustrated with these kinds of thing until
now. Now I found a way through which we can speed up our torrent
download even there are no seeders lefts for us. So friends in order to
accomplish this we have to follow these following steps :-

1. Download the torrent file ( *.torrent
) & don't start the download rite now.

2. Go to http://btreannouncer.net/btRea…..nounce.php
.

3. Upload the torrent file ( *.torrent ) you just downloaded.

4. Now you will see all the related tracker of that torrent file.

5. Select the tracker of your wish & hit enter on ReAnnounce.

6. It will represent Download ReAnnounced
metafile, download it & load it into your torrent client
software & enjoy the download again of a zero seeders torrent file.

Note: This works very poorly on private torrents as the trackers
are within the private trackers.

How to Change Integrated Product Key in Visual Studio Installer

When installing Visual Studio of any versions – Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010, the setup installer does not prompt for any input of product key, serial number or registration code. The bypass of asking for a product key during installation may bring some inconvenience to certain users.

Some users may have purchase a new license for Visual Studio, with a new unique serial key number. Some system administrators may also want to have a single setup installer of Visual Studio which integrates with corporate-specific product key code for installing Visual Studio for easy management. There may be case where users want to install Visual Studio in another language version while using back the existing product key of another language edition.

Microsoft provides free download of Visual Studio trial versions. User can easily enter the product key and upgrade or convert the trial version to full version product. However, entering the product key upfront during installation eliminates this step. Regardless of whether it’s a Visual Studio trial ISO or MSDN ISO, the product key integrated and embedded inside the installer can be changed easily.

1. Unpack and extract Visual Studio ISO to a folder.
2. Go into the Setup folder.
3. Edit setup.sdb file with any text editor such as Notepad.
4. Locate a section named [Product Key].
5. Replace the line (serial code) below [Product Key] (if any) with the new product key to be used to install Visual Studio. If there is no product key pre-defined, just type in manually. No dash between 5-character blocks is required. For example:

Visual Studio setup.sdb
6. Save the setup.sdb file.
7. Run the setup installer from the parent directory. If an ISO is required, just use a DVD burning program such as Ashampoo Burning Studio 2010 to create a new data disc with all the files inside the extracted Visual Studio ISO folder, with the changed setup.sdb file.

Workaround to Install Broadcom BCM2045A USB Bluetooth Dongle On Windows XP or Vista

When installing Broadcom BCM2054A USB Bluetooth dongle in Windows XP or Windows Vista, Windows may display error message saying that installing the new hardware has failed, and attempt to search and retrieve available device drive from Windows Update
has failed. And, the Bluetooth dongle may be flagged as unknown device or other device in Device Manager.

The problem is common issue for device that Windows cannot find or locate a proper or correct required device driver. For users who cannot find the driver CD that comes with Broadcom BCM2045A Bluetooth dongle or unable to download driver software from manufacturer, or intend to use built-in Windows Bluetooth dongle driver instead, here’s a workaround to install Broadcom BCM2045A USB Bluetooth dongle on Windows XP or Windows Vista.

1. Plug in and connect the Broadcom BCM2045A device to the computer
via USB.
2. Go to Control Panel -> System to open System Properties.
3. Go to Hardware tab.
4. Open Device Manager.
5. Locate BCM2045A in the Device Manager, typically under Other Devices, then right click on it and select Properties.
6. Go to Details tab.
7. Select Hardware ID from the drop-down menu.

You should see something likes

USB\Vid_0a5c&Pid_2045&Rev_0112
USB\Vid_0a5c&Pid_2045

8. Right click on the second line (without Rev*), and copy the string.
9. Open Windows Explorer.
10. Go to the following folder:

%SystemDrive%\Windows\INF
11. Using any text editor such as NotePad, open and edit bth.inf file.
12. Find the line of Device Section Start.
13. After the line, locate the name of Broadcom, where a device with the name starts with BCM2033 or similar with a different Hardware ID from BCM2045A can be found. Typically, the original device name in bth.inf is “BCM2033 Bluetooth 2.4 GHz Single Chip Transceiver”.
14. Replace BCM203 Bluetooth 2.4 GHz Single Chip Transceiver with BCM2045A Bluetooth 2.4 GHz Single Chip Transceiver.
15. At the end of the line, replace Hardware ID identifier to reflect the new device, by replacing USB\VID_0A5C&PID_2033 or USB\VID_0A5C&PID_200A or similar with Hardware ID string copied in step above (e.g. USB\VID_0A5C&PID_2045 or USB\VID_0A5C&PID_2101).
16. Save the file.
17. Go back to Device Manager.
18. Right click on BCM2045A and choose Update Driver.
19. Windows will offer to search for driver. Choose Install the software automatically. The device should be found, installed and configured automatically.

Alternatively, opt to display a list of known hardware to choose manually. Then select Bluetooth Radio devices and then select Broadcom. Under Broadcom, select the device that contains the string of BCM2045A (note: some system may still list as BCM2033, and if not found, unselect “Select only compatible devices” option) and press Next button to install the driver.

Wait for the configuration to be completed, and Bluetooth Dongle should be able to work properly. The trick above may also work for other BT dongle, especially the one based on Broadcom BCM2045 chip, such as MSI BT dongle which has bcm92045b3 chip.

How to Associate or Add Multiple (Additional More Than One) Email Addresses in Facebook

Facebook is probably the most popular social networking site in the world currently, with millions of people logging in to connect with friends, colleagues, school mates, buddies and other contacts everyday. While many features of Facebook are addicting, Facebook registration only allow one email address to be entered.

Over the life, one person may have or had used one, two, three, four, five or more and many e-mail addresses. For example, schoolmates, college mates or university mates may have known or contact with you with email address which supplied by the high school, college or university. Workers and employees may have company or office email addresses used to communicated with business associates, vendors, customers, partners and colleagues. To make matter worse, there are plenty of free email addresses available, especially emails that registered and associated with instant messaging programs such as Windows Live Messenger with Hotmail, Yahoo! Messenger with Yahoo! Mail, AIM with AOL Mail, Google Talk with Gmail and etc.

With a person can be reached with so many email accounts, it’s highly likely that one may receive invitation to join Facebook in order to connect with a person at some obscured or age-old email address that you may not even remember. Or the Facebook invites may go to more than one or multiple email accounts, while only one main email address is been registered and associated with Facebook.

The problem with been contacted at multiple email addresses through Facebook is that user cannot add the new friend directly into his or her existing Facebook account by just clicking on the link in the invitation email, without manually searching and adding as friend in Facebook again. When existing user sign in or login on the Facebook joining web page, it will load the Facebook homepage instead.

It’s more troublesome and impractical to sign up for multiple Facebook accounts just to accept invitations that arrived at lesser used email addresses. Unknowingly to many Facebook users, Facebook actually allows more than 1 email address to be added to user’s account. By registering and associating all email addresses that a user has or ever used, any people who search for any email address can automatically and instantly request for confirmation to add as friend, instead of sending out invitation to join Facebook to connect with friend mail message.

Here’s the steps on how to add additional or multiple email addresses in Facebook:

1. Log in to Facebook account.
2. Click on Account menu, and click on Account Settings in the drop-down menu.

Change Facebook Account Settings
3. Click on Change link on the Email section to expand the Email options.
4. In the text box next to New Email:, enter the new email address that user wants to associate and register in the Facebook account. Then, click on Add New Email button.

Add More Than One (Multiple) Email to Facebook
5. In the “Change Email” dialog box, enter the password for the Facebook account, and click Confirm button.

Confirm Password to Edit Facebook Settings
6. A message “A confirmation email has been sent to your new contact email address” should be displayed on top of the web page. The email is to make sure that it is a valid address. Check the mailbox for the email, and click on the confirmation link inside the email.

Tip: Look for spam or bulk folder if there is no mail from Facebook with @facebookmail.com domain. Else, it’s possible to resend confirmation email or cancel request from the same option page.
7. Once the email address is confirmed, all existing pending friend requests to the just registered new email address will be automatically retrieved to the Facebook account and shown to the user. User can then choose to confirm or ignore the friend requests.

In addition, the new email address will be set as default Contact Email. The existing email address is not deleted nor removed. For user who wants to use the original email address as Contact Email, just click on the email address’ radio button, and click on Change Contact Email button.

Facebook can accept multiple email addresses by following instructions above. By adding all email addresses that one ever used to Facebook, users can ensure that they never miss a single friend requests, and easily get back all pending friend requests sent to previously not-registered email addresses.

How To Flash or Format Dreambox DM500s Satellite Decoder

Dreambox DM500s is one of the famous Linux based decoders that can be used to decode satellite signals from the sky. And if for any reason you would like to reflash your Receiver DM500s either due to software instability, unable to access the setting due to password locked or simply want to get a newer version of firmware, here is a simple step that you can follow to get it done.



For the start, make sure you have Ethernet cable connecting between your PC and DM500s. Then, go to access the Menu option on your decoder. Enter Menu, followed by Setup -> Expert Setup -> Factory Reset and click ‘Yes’ will reboot the system. After rebooted, again go to Menu-> Setup -> Expert Setup -> Communication Setup. This will read and display the Dreambox IP Address that you will be using it when trying to flash the decoder later.

On your PC, launch FlashWizard Pro (assuming that you have download it and save in local PC), a powerful firmware installer that can be used to reflash any Dreambox systems. For the start, go to ‘Configuration and Utilities’, key in the IP address of the Dreambox with default Login and Password as ‘root’ and ‘dreambox’. After that, click on ‘Install a firmware into FLASH memory’ button will open another new interface and over here, users can browse for the firmware file (.fw2 format) by opening the yellow folder button and double clicking on the firmware file and click yes will load and flash the new firmware into it.

It may take few seconds to minute for the flashing process and once a successful message is pop up, just reboot the DM500s for it to be effective. Hopefully these simple steps will help you recover your Dreambox system without the need to send it back to repair center which could be time and cost consuming especially for those that are out of warranty period.

How To Organize Favorites or Bookmarks In Alphabetical Order In IE and Firefox Browser

When you add an interesting site to your Favorite list (for Internet Explorer) or Bookmarks list (for Firefox), the new site will always appear as the last item in both the Favorite or Bookmarks lists. The same will happens if you add it into a particular folder in the Favorite or Bookmarks list. When they are more and more collection of sites added into the Favorite or Bookmark list, you will find it very difficult to locate some of the bookmarked sites if the sites in the list are not organized and sorted accordingly.

In fact both Internet Explorer and Firefox allow users to sort their bookmarked sites in alphabetical order. The sorting process is pretty simple. However, many users might not know this simple trick. If you want to sort your Favorites list (for IE) or Bookmarks list (for Firefox), just click the Favorites/Bookmarks menu, move your mouse to any empty space in Favorites/Bookmarks lists, right click to show the shortcut menu. Choose “Sort By Name”. You will see your Favourites/Bookmarks items are in alphabetical order now.

Remove Traces From Firefox Browser Via Close and Forget Plugin

You might have stumbled onto some adult websites either by accident or intentionally. Don’t be naïve and think that by clearing the history or emptying your cache file, you can prevent your boss, your colleague, your parent, from knowing your secret. Your computer is smart enough to track all your “dirty” actions and store these evidences into your hard drive. Some smart alecks can easily detect where have you been or what you have seen on internet. They can trace your cookies, cache & history, location bar history, autocomplete memory, index.dat, temp files, etc. To get these traces removed can be a hassle. If you are using Firefox browser, there is a good helper you can use to remove traces from the websites you have visited. Get this add-on, Close and Forget, to be installed to your Firefox.

Close and Forget can be downloaded via the link here. Once you have installed this plugin, a bit of configuration need to be done to make this tool work. You need to add in a dedicated icon to the Firefox toolbars. What you need to do is just right click at any space on the toolbar and select “Personalize” command. Once you have added it in, you can start using the cleansing tool by just clicking on the button. The Close and Forget application will do the cleaning task for you. It will remove any cookies as well as Firefox history from the computer.

Visually Locate Visited Site in Firefox Via ThumbStrip

Firefox users can review a complete browsing history by opening the History sidebar. The History sidebar can be opened by going to Firefox Menu>View>Sidebar>History or press keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+H” (Windows and Linux) or “Cmd+Shift+H” (Mac OS). By opening up the History sidebar, users can check back a list of recently visited web pages. Users can sort the visited pages by date and site, by site, by date, by most visited and by last visited. In case users have visited some interesting websites and forgot to do bookmarking, users can easily browse the history and retrieve the relevant information using this interesting function.

Even though the built-in History sidebar feature is quite useful and helpful, there is a downside to this feature. Since the browsing history only shows the website name or url, you probably can’t relocate the interesting website you are looking for if you can’t remember the name,. To help you trace back your browsing history, there is a cool Firefox addon, Thumbstrip that allows you to trace the visited site visually.

Thumbstrip will record your browsing history and create a filmstrip of thumbnails to show the visited sites visually. You can then easily locate the visited webpage that you are looking for. To add this Thumbstrip plugin to your browser, you can download it via the link here. After installing, a new ThumbStrips icon will automatically appear in your browser’s toolbar. You can click on the ThumbStrip to view the browsing history.

Change Hard Disk Partition or Volume Label Name in DOS Command Prompt

In modern advanced Windows operating system, renaming the name or label of the hard disk drive, partition or volume is an easy task, just like how user renames a file or folder. Normally when formatting a hard disk drive or partition volume, user can enter a label for the volume. And, for user who need to perform the renaming in command prompt DOS environment, the old good “label” utility comes to help.

Label, label.exe is a command-line utility to view or change the label or name of the computer disk drives that is available in most Microsoft MS-DOS and Windows operating system including Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and likely all future versions of Windows OSes.

To use label.exe to create, change, or delete the volume label of a disk, use the following syntax:

LABEL [drive:][label]

For example,

label c: myvolume

Above command will label the C: drive to “myvolume”. Note that the label command only work if the disk is not write protected.

User can also simply enter “label” command to view current label on the working drive, and when doing so, automatically get a prompt to enter new label if wanted to change the name of the partition.

Be careful when label a volume with ASCII or other extended characters, as ScanDisk in MS-DOS 6.0 or lower cannot recognize the characters, hence assume the label is corrupt or incorrent data, and will attempt to fix the label. If scandisk attempts to fix the harddisk’s label, it may remove all information and place it into a CHK file.

Besides, fdisk utility also cannot delete the partition with unrecognizable characters. However, user can always use label utility to rename and change the name of volume for deletion in fdisk to work.

Restore Missing or Deleted Favorite Links Shell Folder

In Windows Vista Explorer window, there are “Favorite Links” section in the navigation pane on the top left corner that display frequently used shortcut links. Users can add and remove the shortcuts and links in “Favorite Links” in their respective personal folder, which usually resides in “C:\Users\username\Links\” folder. However, the Links folder is not protected and set as read-only, and users can delete the Links folder away if they’re not in used or accidentally erased the folder.

Empty Favorite Links
When the Links folder is deleted and removed, the Favorite Links will simply show “(Empty)” text. However, the Links folder is already gone and deleted.

To restore back the Links folder which will be recognized and detected as shell folder for Favorite Links in navigation pane, and thus allowing users to manage the shortcuts or URLs in the “Favorite Links” pane again, type shell:links in Start Search box in Start Menu, or in the Run command. “shell:links” will re-create the valid folder again in appropriate user location again. Users cannot simply recreate a new “Links” folder as it’s not linked or associated with Favorite Links. And if you’re already create a new folder named as “Links” manually, remove it else the command will not overwrite the existing non-shell Links folder, but will create a “New Folder” shell folder for Favorite Links instead.

Add Open Command Window Here to XP Folder with PowerToy

Open Command Prompt
Here” or “Open Command Window Here” provides an easy way to directly open command prompt window at the browsed location without having to using command line to change directory, especially to deep nested folder. Windows Vista has “Open Command Prompt Here” built-in but hidden, which will reveal when key sequence is pressed.

Open Command Window HereIn Windows XP, to get Open Command Prompt Here on folder’s right click contextual menu, download and install Open Command Window Here PowerToy (CmdHerePowertoySetup.exe).

Open Command Prompt Here PowerToy adds an “Open Command Window Here” context menu option on file system folders in Windows XP, giving users a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing directly at the selected folder. Unlike Windows Vista, the “Open Command Window Here” option will permanently display on right click menu in XP.

Comprehensive List of Command Prompt Keyboard Accelerators (Shortcut Keys)

Windows command prompt shell window does not support use of mouse click to access its various functions. For programmers or developers or advanced users who frequently use command prompt to do their works, the following list of keyboard accelerators also known as keyboard shortcuts or hot keys will be handy to speed up their task. The shortcut keys work in command prompt window or DOS prompt, works in almost every version of Windows including Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and etc, not to be confused with keyboard accelerator in Windows.

Left/right arrow
Move cursor backward/forward one character.

Ctrl + left/right arrow
Move cursor backward/forward one word.

Home/End
Move cursor to beginning/end of line.

Up/down arrow
Scroll up (and back) through list of stored commands (called the Command Buffer or History). Each press of the up key recalls the previous command and displays it on the command line.

Page Up/Down
Recall oldest/most recent command in buffer.

Insert
Toggle insert/overtype mode (block cursor implies overtype mode).

Esc
Erase current line.

F1
Repeat text typed in preceding line, one character at a time.

F2 + key
Repeat text typed in preceding line, up to first character matching key.

F3
Repeat text typed in preceding line.

F5
Change the template for F1, F2, and F3 (described earlier) so that earlier commands are used as the template; press F5 repeatedly to cycle through the entire command buffer.

F6
Place an end-of-file character (^Z) at current position of command line.

F7
Show all entries in Command Buffer (History).

Alt-F7
Clear all entries in Command Buffer (History).

chars + F8
Entering one or more characters chars followed by F8 will display the most recent entry in the Command Buffer beginning with chars. Pressing F8 again will display the next most recent matching command, and so on. If no characters are specified, F8 simply cycles through existing commands in buffer.

F9 + command#
Display designated command on command line; use F7 to obtain numbers.

Ctrl-C
Interrupt the output of most Command Prompt applications.

Remove and Delete Some URL Entries from Address Bar History of FireFox and Internet Explorer

When you type in a website’s URL or link location directly into address bar of the FireFox and Internet Explorer web browser, the typed URLs or the web addresses will be saved as history entries. The URL and link history is good if you frequently revisit the web page but don’t want to save it as bookmark or favorite. With the saved typed URL, you can just pull down the URL history enty listing and select the applicable URL or link, or IE or FireFox will auto-complete the URL address when you are typing. The problem is, the list of typed URLs entries history is accessible and viewable to everyone who can access the computer when they pull down the list from address bar.

For privacy and security purpose, you might want to remove, clear or delete the URL link entries that appear in the web browser address bar history. You can easily do so by clicking on “Clear History (IE) or “Clear Browsing History” (FireFox) at the Options window. However, once you clear browsing history, history of all URLs and links that you have visited, including the typed URLs and links saved in address bar cache, will be deleted, cleared and removed. So if you just want to remove and delete certain or some specific URLs and links from the browser address bar, you have to use a trick and tip.

FireFox Address Bar Typed URLs History Removal Guide

Pull down the address bar typed URLs history list, use cursor or mouse to point the URL or link that you want to delete, and then press SHIFT-DELETE keys (pressing SHIFT and DELETE keys simulatenously). The URL or link will be removed from the address bar history.

Internet Explorer Address Bar Typed URLs or Web Address History Removal Guide

In Internet Explorer 6 and 7 (IE6 and IE7), it’s not possible to simply press delete key to remove a typed URL or web addresses, contrary to this convenient feature available for saved AutoComplete entries for forms. You will need to follow a trick to delete or remove a specific URL from IE address bar history. Visit this article for guide on how to delete and clear URL entry from address bar of Internet Explorer.

Delete Browsing History for IE7 By Using Command Prompt

If you want to create a batch file to clean up your computer
by clearing your browsing history, temporary internet files, computer tracks, unused files, or password saved, you might probably find the commands below useful. Add them to your batch files if you want to create one and you can speed up your cleansing process with it even though you are not running Internet Explorer.

Delete Cookies Code:
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 8

Delete History Code:
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 2

Delete Data Code
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 1

Delete Passwords Code
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 16

Delete All Code
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 32

Delete All – “Also delete files and settings stored by add-ons” Code
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 255

Sony PS3 GPU Planned With 40nm Technology For Cost and Power Savings

Technology is moving fast with more and more power efficient silicon being designed and manufactured as a benefit to both manufacturers and end consumers. Especially for gaming segment that requires intensive graphics processing with tendency of overheating, it is crucial to have a thermally efficient processor in place to further enhance its reliability. Good news for Sony’s gaming console fans now, the famous Japanese console maker has recently announced a new GPU redesign with fabrication technology of 40nm targeted for next generation gaming console.



As compared to current PS3 Slim console’s processor that stays at 65nm, this is no doubt a huge improvement with obvious benefits for all. First of all, a 40nm process technology RSX GPU will be much thermally and power efficient as compared to previous, which will definitely able to simplify the thermal design with less cooling mechanism, fanless and potentially slimmer form factor design. The new board, codenamed as CECH-2100A has been spotted with few changes as compared to CECH-2000A (PS3 Slim version with 65nm GPU), particularly surrounding heat sink design as well as lighter power supply requirement. More importantly, the smaller process technology design contributes to much cheaper processor cost, not to mention about lesser discrete components which results in total BOM (Bill of Material) cost reduction significantly while still prolong the end product life time and reliability.

Even though its thermal dissipation is still far high especially when comparing to Nintendo Wii due to more powerful and sophisticated GPU, but this transition will be able to at least reduce PS3 slim cost to continue stay competitively in gaming segment.

Sharp Refreshes Freescale i.MX515 based NetWalker PC-T1 Tablet PC

Apple newly released iPad has created a new wave of keyboard-less tablet PC among consumer space. And in order to follow the trend, there are some handheld makers that actually refreshed and came out with new series of tablet PC, hoping to compete and gain some market shares in this competitive world. Similarly to Sharp, the famous Japanese handheld device maker has just added a new product under NetWalker family and named as PC-T1, it is powered by Freescale i.MX515 CPU running at 800MHz preloaded with Ubuntu Linux Operating System.



Unlike its predecessor, NetWalker PC-Z1 that comes with QWERTY hard keyboard, the new PC-T1 will be featured with five-inch resistive touch screen to simplify the input method even including handwriting recognition, while still maintaining similar optical pointing device as per PC-Z1. In terms of hardware specifications, it is still powered by Freescale i.MX515 ARM Cortex based architecture supported with internal 512MB RAM, as well as commonly available USB 2.0 host and expandable microSD slot for external storage. But one thing worth to mentioned is the new refreshed PC-T1 will have 8GB internal flash memory instead of only 4GB in its predecessor PC-Z1. Other features include 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 and many more that makes it a powerful mobile tablet PC companion for frequent travelers, especially with its lightweight of merely 280g and battery life of approximately 6 hours.

Preloaded with customized Ubuntu Linux version 9.04 with applications like OpenOffice.org 3.0, Flash Lite, Firefox, e-reader software and etc, Netwalker PC-T1 will be available by end of May this year but with no pricing availability at this moment.

Fix Unable to Pin App to Taskbar and Start Menu (Missing Context Menu and Jump Lists) Error in Windows 7

In Windows 7, there may be occasional error where user cannot drag and drop an application program to Windows Taskbar (Superbar) and Start Menu anymore, with the icon shows a red cross when user attempts to place it on Taskbar or Start Menu. When right click on a program icon or shortcut, the “Pin to Taskbar” and “Pin to Start Menu” context menu is missing and not showing too.

Unable to Pin to TaskBar and Start Menu

Other symptom that may affect users facing these errors in Windows 7 including no Jump List been popped up when right clicking on icons in Taskbar.

The cause of the problem is because users have made the shortcut in Windows 7 to be ‘not a shortcut’ by removing the shortcut arrow on icons (including desktop icons) by removing IsShortcut registry key.

Thus, to fix the issue that application programs unable to pin to Taskbar and Start Menu, just re-add the IsShortcut registry key back to .lnk (and other extensions if applicable) shortcut to reset and restore back original state.

For user who insists on removing the shortcut arrow, the proper way to remove shortcut arrow yet still allowing pin to Taskbar.

How to Make the Windows 7 SuperBar (Taskbar) Icons Smaller (Small Size)

Windows 7 has introduced a completely new concept of Taskbar (also known as Superbar or Awesome Bar) which has undergone drastic visual changes. The Quick Launch bar has been integrated and merged with the ordinary Taskbar buttons to create an enhanced Taskbar which is commonly known as Superbar, or Awesome Bar. The Superbar features prominently icons, as in Quick Launch bar, replacing the buttons used in previous operating system.

However, the size of the icon on Windows 7 Taskbar or Superbar may not be to the liking of some users. The size of the Windows 7 Taskbar icons is big or large, and taking up too much screen estate. Luckily, it’s possible to make the icons in the Windows 7 Superbar smaller in size. Here’s how to do it.

Just right click on any blank space on the Taskbar, and then select Properties from context menu. On the “Task Bar and Start Menu Properties” dialog, go to “Taskbar” tab, and then tick or check the checkbox for “Use small icons” option.

Small Icons on Windows 7 Taskbar

Now, users will have small icons on Windows 7 Taskbar.

How to Speed Up Taskbar Thumbnails Preview in Windows 7

Windows 7 has provided a cool feature with ability to preview taskbar thumbnails whenever the mouse is hovered on the program icon. However, you may notice that it does have some latency to display the preview after mouse over the icon. To speed up
the thumbnails preview, you can change the delay time with simple steps.

The delay time can be change via registry key. Please follow below steps to change it:

1. Go to Start -> Run, then type regedit.

2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse.
mousehovertimereg

3. On the right panel, look for MouseHoverTime and double click on it. Change the value to 0 (in millisecond) then click OK button to save the changes.
mousehovertimevalue

4. Close the registry editor and restart your computer in order to take the effect of the changes.

Once you have completed above steps, you can verify the delay time taken to display the thumbnail preview if it is faster than the previous.

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

1) Just Enter Your Email Address as the SMS Recipient

Okay, so this method is actually dead simple, and from what our commenters are saying, it appears to work with most carriers:

Fire up SMS on your phone, but instead of entering in a number you want to text, enter an email address. Any email address. Compose your text like normal, hit Send, and your carrier will convert the message to an email. When it's delivered.Simple, right? I was completely unaware that this was even an option before our readers pointed it out (Lifehacker readers are awesome), and it works like a charm. I've got three other methods for you to try out below, and since you're interested in using your text messages as a to-do list, I particularly like method #3 below, since it adds a to-do-specific subject to the email. But if the above method works for you, you can stop there.
2) Google Voice

If you're able to get your hands on a Google Voice invitation (we've got a dedicated thread here for handing out extras if you've got one and you're feeling kind), Voice has a very simple solution to your problem:

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

If you're logged into your Google account, just point your browser to the Voicemail and SMS settings page and tick the checkbox below Alert me when I have new voicemails and pick the address you'd like to email the message to. (See the screenshot above.) Once enabled, you can email anything to yourself via SMS by simply texting your Google Voice number from any phone. Your text message will end up in your inbox and look similar to the email you see below.

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

But Google Voice SMS-to-email forwarding may be overkill if you're only interested in sending email to yourself, since any text messages other people send to your Voice number will also end up in your inbox. That may be more inbox clutter than you're interested in. You could always set up filters, but that starts to get rather convoluted. Instead, consider the following solution:
3) Text yourself via email, then reply to that to email via SMS

Okay, this one may sound a little bit complicated, but overall it's actually really simple and effective. As you may or may not know, you can send text messages to most phones from your email account, provided you know the right email address for your carrier. For example, to send a text message to an AT&T phone via email, you'd simply append the 10-digit phone number to @txt.att.net (e.g., 5551234567@txt.att.net). We've highlighted this before, but as a quick reminder, some of the most popular carriers' email-to-SMS addresses are:

* Alltel: phonenumber@message.alltel.com
* AT&T: phonenumber@txt.att.net
* T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
* Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
* Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
* Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
* Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
* US Cellular: phonenumber@mms.uscc.net

To use this method, compose a message in your email account to the proper email address for your phone and carrier (it should work with any email provider) with a subject like Mobile To-Do List, then send the message.

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

In a few seconds, you should get a text message from a strange number (for AT&T, the number is 1010100001 for the first email you send to your phone); the message will look something like the image below:

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

Once you've sent the initial text message via email, you can now reply to that number from your phone any time you want, and the reply will end up in your email inbox with the same subject you used in the original email.

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

As far as I can tell, this method works for quite some time, though I could imagine that it varies from carrier to carrier. If your replies stop going back to your email address, just send another text from your email to refresh the replies.
4) Twitter

If you use Twitter, you can set up your account to notify you of direct messages via email (point your browser to the notifications page and tick the checkbox next to Direct Text Emails).

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

Since Twitter is built specifically so you can update your account via SMS, just send a text message to 40404 with d yourusername Item you want to add to your to-do list in the message ('d' stands for direct, and you'd naturally replace yourusername with your actual username and add your to-do text after that.

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

In a few seconds, the message will end up in your inbox:

How Can I Send an Email via Text Message?

At the end of the day, the first method will probably best satisfy most people's SMS-to-email needs. While the latter three methods aren't necessarily perfect, any of these methods should work.

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive

Whether you're looking to free up gigabytes worth of hard drive space or you just want to clear out the extra cruft because you're serious about a clean hard drive, we'll highlight how to find and remove the biggest space hogging files on your drive, remove unnecessary files hiding deep in your filesystem, and offer a few tips for keeping things clean. The main focus of this guide is on Windows, but I'll offer up Mac alternatives where available. (Mac users, you may also want to check out our previous guide to cleaning up and reviving your bloated, sluggish Mac.)
Hunt Down and Remove Large Files

We've featured tons of free hard drive analyzers over the years, but my current favorite is the recently mentioned Disk Space Fan, so that's what I'll use first here. Then I'll move on to the classic WinDirStat. (Mac users, check out Disk Inventory X or GrandPerspective.)

Analyze Your Drive with Disk Space Fan: To get started, download Disk Space Fan and let's get started. When you first launch Disk Space Fan, the app simply displays drives on your system; click on a disk in the sidebar and you'll see what kind of space is available in pie-chart form.

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive
We want a lot more from the app than that, so pick the drive you want to clean up and click the Scan for Details button. The app will quickly analyze your hard drive, and when it's done, you'll be presented with a cool visualization like this:

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive

What you're looking at is a pretty cool graphical representation of your hard drive usage by folders. At the center of the graphic is your hard drive; each concentric circle moving out from the center represents a folder. (For example, when Disk Space Fan completes its first scan, the center may represent your C:\ drive. One of the larger arcs directly outside the center may represent C:\Windows. The further you go from the center circle, the further you've drilled down into the file system. If you go several levels out, you'll end up looking at something further into the file system at something like C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore.

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard DriveAll you have to do to determine what an arc represents on your hard drive is hover over it with your mouse and you'll see not only what file and folder it represents, but also how much space it's eating on your hard drive. You can drill down into any folder by simply clicking on any arc. When you do, you'll get a new graphical representation, this time with the folder you just clicked on at the center and its sub-folders and files surrounding it.

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard DriveSo how do you go from this fancy graphic to cleaning up your hard drive? It's actually pretty simple. The larger an arc, the more disk space it takes up. Drill down on the big arcs and you'll find the big files. Right click file or folder from the app to view it, browse to it, see its properties, or delete it altogether.

Find Hard Drive Hogs with WinDirStat: Disk Space Fan may win out on eye candy, but we'll always have a special place in our hearts for the classic, open source WinDirStat. If you've drilled through Disk Space Fan but want to take a second pass through your drive with a different lens, download WinDirStat, point it at the drive you want analyzed, and click OK. Once it's finished chomping through your drive, you'll see something like this:

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive

Again, it's a graphical representation of the files and folders on your drive, but with a different spin from Disk Space Fan. WinDirStat displays every file and folder on your drive represented by size, so you can quickly examine the largest rectangles (the larger the rectangle, the larger the file on your drive), click it to see what it is, or right-click and select Explorer Here if you want to see the file in Explorer and delete it. WinDirStat color codes popular file types so you can quickly identify videos or MP3s, for example, and clicking on a file type in the file type panel will highlight those file types in the graphical representation no matter where they are on your drive. (See below.)

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive

Awfully handy, huh?
Clean Out the Unneeded Crap

The above methods will help you hunt down those common files, large and small, eating up your precious hard drive space, but when it comes to the little stuff that fills up your computer with crap a little at a time, you can't go wrong with the beloved CCleaner (the first "C" is for Crap). CCleaner runs through common Windows spots where unnecessary files build up (IE, Windows Explorer, temporary files, etc.), as well as common applications (think Firefox, Chrome, etc.), finds the stuff that isn't necessary to run and that you may want to get rid of, and cleans it out.

So download it, install it if you don't already have it (make sure to untick the checkbox asking to install the Yahoo Toolbar), and fire it up. Before you run it the first time, you may want to look at everything CCleaner wants to clean up, and if you see anything you're not so sure you want cleaned, untick its corresponding checkbox. Once you're ready to give it a first run, click the Analyze button.

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive

CCleaner will analyze the files your current settings will remove and tell you how much space you'll clean out along with more specific numbers from each place it cleans. If you're happy with the way things are looking, click the Run Cleaner button and let CCleaner vacuum up and remove those files you just analyzed. (As CCleaner notes when you click Run, it will permanently delete these files, so make sure it's not cleaning anything you don't want it to.)

The only setback with CCleaner is that it doesn't have any scheduling feature to allow you to run it regularly without manually running through this process every time, but luckily our crafty friend the How-To Geek has detailed how to set up CCleaner to run on a schedule, so if you'd prefer setting it and forgetting it, check out his instructions.
Automatically Clean Out Your Downloads Folder

If there's one folder on my hard drive that quickly fills up with junk that I only need temporarily, and for a relatively short time, it's my Downloads folder. If I downloaded something from the internet that I wanted to use, I've either installed it or moved it into more useful folders. Whatever's left in my Downloads folder for a couple of weeks is more likely than not junk.

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive

Earlier this week I showed you how to automatically clean and organize your Downloads folder along with other folders on your desktop using Belvedere for Windows and Hazel for Macs. If you're serious about automation and desktop organization, you can do all sorts of cool stuff with those tools, but if keeping your hard drive clean and freeing up space is your concern, let's focus on your Downloads folder. Check out the step-by-step post for details, but creating a Belvedere rule to send files in your Downloads folder to your Recycle Bin after they're X weeks old is a great way to keep that folder clean and free up a little extra space on your hard drive.

If you don't want to constantly run yet another system tray application, you can run Belvedere as a scheduled task—similar to how you scheduled CCleaner above—with the -r command line switch. This defines how many times you want Belvedere to run before the app silently exits. If you wanted Belvedere to silently run through its rules one time, for example, you'd schedule a command like:

%programfiles%\Belvedere\Belvedere.exe -r 1

...as a Windows Scheduled Task. If you'd set up a rule like the one above, Belvedere would run once when you scheduled it to, send old downloads to your Recycle Bin, then quit.
Install a New Hard Drive

Let's face it: We could go on all day finding system files that are safe to delete, and we could get ruthless about what gets to stay on your hard drive, but if you find yourself constantly bumping up against the limits of your hard drive despite following some of the strategies above, you may just need more hard drive space.

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard DriveSure it's a bit of a cop out, but hard drive space really is cheap, and rather than spend too much time obsessing over every little file on your computer, you may want to evaluate your situation and determine whether or not you're better off with a new drive altogether. You can snag a 1TB+ drive on NewEgg for around $100, and installing a new hard drive is probably much easier than you think.

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Connecting an external hard drive to your Wii to back up and play your games is a simple way to keep expensive discs out of harms way, decrease game load times, and organize your collection with swanky cover art. Here's how it works.

Last year we shared two guides with you that other people had written—the original and a revision—on how to back up and play your Wii games from an external hard drive. Unfortunately, like many things on the internet, the guides faded into the digital night (read: they were taken down). Setting up your Wii with an external hard drive is a wildly popular topic, however, and since the old guides went offline, we've received daily emails on the topic. In response to the demand, here's our own complete guide to setting up your Wii to play games from a USB hard drive.

When laid out screen-by-screen this guide is quite lengthy, but the process itself only takes about 10 minutes start to finish—if you're not stopping to take lots of screenshots and write a tutorial along the way! This guide will show you how to activate an exploit on your Wii to allow more advanced Homebrew software to run, how to set up and format an external USB hard drive to play nice with your Wii, and how to manage the process of backing up your games and displaying them in cover-flow inspired style. When you're done, your games will load fast, be immune from scratches and mishandling, and be displayed in a way that will make your friends envious.
Precautions and the Necessary Hardware:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive
Before we get started, let's review some necessary cautions and the tools we'll need. Anytime you mess around with a piece of closed hardware like a Wii and start monkeying with the guts, you risk bricking your toy. Have we ever bricked a Wii? No, despite modding Wiis and all sorts of consumer electronics, we've never bricked anything. Is it possible to brick your Wii? Yes, the risk is always there and you should proceed with appropriate caution and respect for the process. Every step and every tool used in this entire guide can easily be looked up on Google if you want to read more about it.

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Precautions provided, let's take a look at the tools you'll need:

* An SD card (this is a perfect job for an old 512MB or 1GB SD card)
* An external USB hard drive (Wii games take up around 2GB on average, so select a drive according to your collection)
* A Wii with the Homebrew channel installed (We're not going to recap how to install the Homebrew channel in this tutorial, so check out our step-by-step guide to installing Homebrew on the Wii without Twilight Princess if you need to Homebrew your Wii.)

Getting Started by Softening up Your Wii's Defenses:

If you have an older Wii with an out-of-date menu system (3.2 or lower), you can skip this section about the Trucha Bug since your system still has it. (If you're not sure what version you have, click on the Options button in the lower left corner of your Wii's main menu and then on the Wii Settings icon on the right hand side of the screen; the version number is displayed in the top-right corner of this screen.) If you have a newer menu system, you'll need to read this section.

The Trucha Bug is just a code vulnerability that existed on early versions of the Wii operating system (referred to in Wii-hacking documentation as IOS). As of the 4.0 Wii menu update, the Trucha Bug was eradicated; luckily for our hacking purposes, you can easily reintroduce it in order to exploit it.

Download DOP-Mii v12 and extract the zip file onto your SD card keeping the folder structure intact. Pop the SD card back in your Wii and launch the Homebrew channel.

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Run DOP-Mii and select Install I0S36 (v3351) w/FakeSign from the menu:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

The next series of screens look similar to the above screenshot. On those screens you will apply—press A to say yes to—the ES_Identity patch, the NAND Permissions patch, and then you will download the patches through your Wii's internet connection like so:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

After the screen above, DOP-Mii will ask you if you want to restore IOS15 to v523. Again, click A to confirm that you would. DOP-Mii will complete the modification and kick you back to the Homebrew channel. Note: In some instances this tweak can invert the Homebrew screen, a strange quirk. You can fix it easily by reloading the Homebrew installer.

The next step is to introduce a new IOS to your system. Download the cIOS installer here. Extract the zip file, again keeping the folder structure intact, to the /Apps/ folder on your Wii SD card. Pop the SD card back in the Wii and launch the Homebrew Channel:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Launch the cIOS installer. On the initial screen, use the right and left Wiimote directional pad to switch the ISO number to ISO36. Press A to confirm:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

On the next screen, use the keypad to select Network Installation. Press A to confirm. The cIOS Installer will churn away for a minute or so and then confirm a successful installation. Press any button to reboot the Wii.
Prepare Your External Hard Drive and Install the Boot Loader

At this point your Wii is ready for all the fun Homebrew antics you can throw at it—Homebrew by itself is really awesome, but Homebrew with a custom IOS under it is even better. At this point we're going to explain how to prepare your external hard drive to work with your Wii, so grab that external drive, plug it into your computer, and let's get cracking.

We need to go grab copies of the USB loader and WBFS manager we'll be using. For this tutorial (and on our personal Wii consoles) we're using USB Loader GX—a great USB loader packed with features and eye candy. We'll also be using WBFS Manager. WBFS Manager is Windows-only, but don't be discouraged if you're running Mac OS X or Linux. Visit this list of WBFS managers to pick out a WBFS manager for your operating system.

WBFS stands for Wii Backup File System. It's possible to use some of the more advanced loaders with NTFS formatted disks, but it's dicey and not worth the headache. Stick with the Wii's native file system for maximum stability. You'll want to plug your USB drive into your computer and fire up your WBFS tool of choice at this point—for the tutorial we're using WBFS Manager. Select your USB drive from the pull down menu and click the format button. Just like using the regular format tool, this is serious business. Make sure you pick the right drive.

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Although WBFS Manager is packed with features, we don't need it right now for anything but formatting. You can revisit it later to back up your backup drive and other nifty tricks, but for now you can shut it down and unplug your USB drive from the computer and plug it into the bottom USB port—the one closest to edge of the Wii and the little rubber foot (the other port is reserved for games that require USB accessories like Rock Band).

Head back to your computer and point your browser to the download section of the USB Loader GX site. If you're on a Windows machine, scroll down to the bottom of the file list and grab a copy of USBLoaderGX_1.0_Installer.exe—it's a simple application that will update and install the USB Loader GX files on your Wii SD card for you.

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

If you are grabbing them manually, go to the top of the list and grab the most current .DOL and .WAD files.—as of this writing that would be r929.dol and r929.wad. Place the .DOL file on your SD card at /apps/usbloader_gx/ and rename it to boot.dol and put the .WAD file in /wads/. While you're at it, download the USB Loader GX Forwarder here and put it in /wads/ also. You'll need it later for the extra credit portion of the tutorial. Put the SD card in your Wii and boot back into the Homebrew Channel.

Launch USB Loader GX:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Looks lonely in there. Pop in a game and click "Install". Depending on the game it can take anywhere from a minute to several to rip a game. Wii Sports, for example, is only 0.31GB in size, whereas Super Smash Bros. Brawl is 6.93GB. The average Wii game is around 2GB or so—though you'll be surprised to see how many games are really tiny. After you've ripped one, you might as well work your way through the stack in front of you. Soon your loader screen will look like this:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

It's not lonely anymore but it sure is boring looking. Press 1 on your Wiimote. This menu will pop up:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Cover downloads? Yes ma'am! The covers will download automatically—they're stored on your SD card, if you're curious. After you've downloaded the covers, your default interface should look like this:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Clicking along the bar at the top of the screen gives you new layouts like the one at the top of this article and this one:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Not only is USB Loader GX a beautiful loader to look at, it has tons of features under the hood. You can favorite games to make a "Best Of" list or sort them by number of plays so your most frequently played games rise to the top. You can even set a parental lock so that children playing games on your Wii can't load the Mature rated titles—do you really want to explain why your nephew is playing No More Heroes instead of Super Paper Mario?

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive
Extra Credit: Put Your Loader on the Front Page

So far things are looking pretty good. You're rocking Homebrew, you've got a USB hard drive with all your games hooked up to your Wii, and it's all controlled by a beautiful cover-style loader. What could be better? Not having to launch the Homebrew Channel and then launch the loader, just to get to your games. Let's put the loader front and center.

We're going to need a few more tools, so grab that SD card. We need a WAD manager, essentially a file manager for the Wii that handles installation bundles. You can't go wrong downloading Waninkoko's Wad Manager; you'll find a copy here. Extract the zip file to /apps/wad manager/ and remember to rename the .DOL file to boot.dol. Throw it back into your Wii and boot into the Homebrew Channel. Run the Wad Manager. You should see a screen that looks like this:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Select IOS249 as the IOS version—it should already be selected. On the next screen select "Wii SD Slot" as the source device. The next screen should look like this:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

Select the USB Loader GX-UNEO_Forwarder.wad, click A to install it. After the installation is complete, hit the home button on your Wiimote to boot back into the Wii. Exit the Homebrew Channel and on the main screen you should be greeted by the addition of the USB Loader_GX icon:

How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive

From now on, whenever you boot up your Wii you'll be one click away from your awesome collection in all its cover-flow glory.

How Do You Know If Your Download Really Has a Virus?

On a regular basis, we get email from readers saying that some download we posted contains a virus, and we assure them that said download is clean. (Over the past five years, our track record in this arena is next to spotless.) So how do you know if a download really has a virus or not?

There's no exact science when it comes to figuring out if a file has a virus or is just being detected as a false positive, but today we'll share a little background and some tips that will help you figure out whether a file really contains a virus or not.
What Is a False Positive Exactly?

How Do You Know If Your Download Really Has a Virus?A false positive is when your virus scanner detects a file as a virus, even when it really isn't a virus, and then tries to quarantine or delete that file. If you've read about the recent McAfee fiasco, you'll begin to see the problem—they released a virus definition update that detected internal Windows files as a false positive, deleted them, and then suddenly Windows couldn't boot anymore. Antivirus software is not perfect.

Some virus scanners also employ an additional line of defense called heuristic analysis, which attempts to identify new forms of malware right away by scanning for smaller sections of code that might indicate some bad behavior, even if the virus has never been detected before. Unfortunately, because this method is not exact, it also will detect a lot of files as viruses incorrectly.
Use VirusTotal to Check for False Positives

Whenever there's a possibility that a file you've downloaded might contain a virus, the first thing you should do is upload it to online virus scanning service VirusTotal, which instantly scans the file against 40 different antivirus engines at the same time, and gives you the results.

You can use the VirusTotal Uploader to instantly scan any file via your right-click context menu. (We'd highly recommend installing this small utility.) VirusTotal Uploader will upload any file you choose directly to the VirusTotal web site and run the scan without you having to hassle with annoying web upload forms. Even better, most of the time you don't even have to wait for the file to upload, since before uploading, the app checks your file's hash (a unique identifier, sort of like a fingerprint for files) against their database, so if they've already checked that file, you'll get instant results.
How Do You Know If Your Download Really Has a Virus?

You'll sometimes find that files are caught as viruses by just a single virus scanner out of the 40, which is a good sign that you're dealing with a false positive from one of the more aggressive virus scanners. It should be noted that VirusTotal is not a replacement for using your favorite antivirus application, which offers real-time protection against a variety of attack vectors—but it is a strong supplement.
AutoHotkey and Overly Aggressive Virus Scanners

We're huge fans of the AutoHotkey scripting language around here, because it helps you simplify your life by turning any action into a hotkey. Many of the small utilities that we link to, like our own Lifehacker Code projects, are also written in AutoHotkey, or are provided as both a script and a compiled version.

Since the AutoHotkey language provides the ability to monitor keystrokes and mouse movements, it is often detected by heuristic virus scanners incorrectly as a keylogger or trojan—because those are the same type of internal Windows functions that a trojan might take advantage of to steal your password. This doesn't mean that the file necessarily has a virus.

How Do You Know If Your Download Really Has a Virus?

The great thing about most AutoHotkey applications that we link to is that the source code is usually provided, so you can just open up the .ahk file yourself and see what exactly is going on. In fact, if you have AutoHotkey installed, you can run any .ahk file instead of the provided executable file.
Ask the Developer

You'd be surprised to find out just how easy it is to get in touch with some developers. People email us all the time asking about the false-positive AutoHotkey apps we host on the site, and we do our best to reply. Other developers—who aren't also sorting through hundreds of other tips emails every day—are probably even easier to get a hold of, and if they're legit, they care a great deal about what antivirus apps are saying about their software and will do whatever it takes to help. Again, you shouldn't necessarily trust everything said developer has to say, but if a developer is easy to contact, chances are they're making legit apps. It's the developers who are impossible to get a hold of (because it's in their best interest not to be found) that are a little more worrisome.
Use Your Judgment

If your antivirus software is telling you that a file contains a virus, you shouldn't blindly assume that you're dealing with a false positive; use that opportunity to ask yourself if you really need to install that application. If you do, make sure to check with VirusTotal first, make sure the download is from a reputable place, and then make that judgment call on your own.

Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console

We love XBMC media centers for watching movies and TV, but if you like video games, they can do so much more. With a simple plug-in, some configuration, and a USB gamepad, you can play video games straight from your set-top box.

As if your media center wasn't cool enough on its own, you can turn it into an all-in-one game console with just a bit of tweaking. After setting it all up, you'll be able to scroll through your XBMC library just as you would movies and pick out a video game to play right there on your TV, whether it's as old as the NES (using emulators) or as new as the Xbox 360 (using PC versions of popular console games).

If you don't have an XBMC-based media center yet, then what are you waiting for? Check out our guide to building a silent, standalone XBMC media center on the cheap and how to customize XBMC to your liking. Note that this guide is written for Windows computers, but should be able to work just as well on Linux and OS X (though you'll be able to play fewer games, due to there being a lack of games released for those platforms). If you're having trouble setting it up on your Linux or Mac machine, be sure to check out the XBMC forums for advice.
Setting Up the Launcher Plug-in

In order to play games from XBMC, you'll need to install a quick plug-in. The Launcher plug-in is no longer being developed, and thus the last official version doesn't work too well with XBMC 9.11—luckily, JustSomeUser of the XBMC forums has patched the launcher to fix these bugs as well as add a few new features. You can download the zip file directly here.

Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console

After downloading the archive, unzip it to your XBMC plug-ins folder for programs—in Windows, this will either be in %AppData%\Roaming\XBMC\plugins\programs or %Program Files%\XBMC\plugins\programs, depending on if you're running the installed or portable version, respectively. If you haven't installed the programs menu for XBMC, you'll have to download and re-run the XBMC installer to add it. Also note that not all themes contain the programs menu, so if you don't see it in XBMC, check your theme to make sure it is included (or that you don't have to turn it on in the settings). If everything goes right, you should be able to see the Launcher plug-in in XBMC under Programs > Program plugins.
Importing Your PC Games into XBMC

Many newer console games have PC equivalents, so if you don't have the newest systems (or would rather play everything from your set-top box), you can install the PC version of a game and get pretty close to the same experience with a gamepad plugged in. First, make sure you have the game in question installed and that you have the play disc inserted (or at least have it on hand for when you do want to play it). If you navigate to the Launcher plug-in in XBMC and select it, it should prompt you to add a launcher (if it's your first time accessing the menu). It will give you two choices: standalone, which we'll use to launch PC games, and file launcher, which we'll use to launch ROMs (more on this later).

Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console

Choose standalone and navigate to the .exe file of the game you want to add (likely in your Program Files folder). It will prompt you for application arguments, which you probably don't need (so just click "done"), and then ask you for the name of the game. This is the name that will be displayed on the menu, so delete the prepopulated application title (usually an abbreviation) and type in the actual name of the game (e.g., USM.exe becomes Ultimate Spider-Man). You should then see it in the menu.

Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console

To add a thumb to this entry, open up the context menu for it (by highlighting it and pressing c on your keyboard or right-clicking it) and choose "get thumb". XBMC will search Yahoo for the game's title and give you the first 10 results—if you're lucky, a picture of the game packaging will show up and you can pick that. If it finds nothing, it will let you tweak the search terms and try again. If it comes back with results, but not the ones you want, rename the game (through the same context menu) and try the search again—once you find the right thumb, you can rename the game again to its actual title as opposed to search terms.

That's it! If you want to play the game, just select it in the menu and the game will launch. When you quit the game, you will return to XBMC automatically. To import more games, select one of the games you have and bring up the context menu—there'll be an option to add another launcher (see the picture below). Note that for most PC games, you'll have to have the disc inserted if you want to play, so keep them handy.

Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console

Note: For some reason, on the main launcher menu, I couldn't get thumbnails to show up if they were of the actual packaging, but I could get thumbs of smaller dimensions. I do not know why this is or how to fix it—I could get it working for my emulators, though, just not the main launcher menu. Your mileage may very well vary.
Importing Your Emulators and ROMs into XBMC

ROMs and their respective emulators take a few more steps to import. Bring up the context menu on one of the games you've imported and hit "add new launcher", but this time choose "file launcher". You'll go through the same process as before, but twice—the first time, you need to navigate to the emulator's executable (say, Jnes.exe for NES games), and the second time you'll have to specify the folder in which your ROMs are stored. After you pick your ROM folder, it will ask you for your ROMs' file extensions. Enter the extensions of the ROMs compatible with that emulator, without periods. It will then ask you what you would like to call that section of your games menu (your ROMs will be organized by platform), so instead of the emulator filename, type something like "NES" or "NES Games".

Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console

After you're done setting up the emulator, you should be able to view your games by clicking on that emulator's folder—it will ask you if you want to import files from path; choose yes. Now you can view all your ROMs and give them thumbs in the same way you did your PC games. You only need to add a new launcher for each emulator you have, not every game—if you add new ROMs to your ROM folder, all you need to do is select the emulator's folder in XBMC (the aforementioned "NES" or "NES Games" folder), bring up the context menu, and choose "import files from path". This will re-scan the folder for any newly added ROMs.

Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console

You'll probably need to edit a few preferences in your emulator of choice, like making it start in full screen automatically, since you won't want to have your keyboard and mouse out to play games. In addition, I've found that it takes a bit of trial and error to find which emulators work with XBMC and which ones don't—so if your favorite one is having trouble, try another one for that platform and see if it fares any better.
Set Up Your Gamepad

Of course, the whole point of this is to turn your media center into a game console—you don't want to sit and play games on your TV with a keyboard (or maybe you do, in which case you can skip this section). If you have a gamepad already, you can configure that—if not, though, I highly recommend an Xbox 360 controller, which is USB and has drivers available for Windows direct from Microsoft. For Mac and Linux users, I know this third party driver worked well on my Mac in the past, and the xpad kernel driver or this third party Linux driver should work in Linux (though I have not tested either myself).

Most PC games and emulators have built-in support for gamepads, but this isn't ideal here, especially since since most games (and emulators) may require a little movement of the mouse. So, instead of configuring your controller in the game, I highly suggest you use something like AutoHotKey (if you're proficient with it) or, much simpler, free keymapper JoyToKey, to map your controller to specific keyboard keys. This way, you can map your controller's buttons to keys and then set up your game or emulator using the keyboard (for example, you could map the controller's start button to the spacebar on your keyboard, and then map the pause function to the spacebar in your game's settings, allowing you to pause the game by pressing the start button on your controller).

Looking up the Xbox controls for the game (if an Xbox version exists) will help you map the controls for specific games correctly. Usually, the PC version of a game does things a bit differently, but you can usually map it closely enough to get a similar experience. In addition, you can map the mouse to one of the joysticks (and one of the mouse buttons to one of your gamepad's buttons) so you have full mouse control to navigate menus and such. I also recommend setting an unpopular button on your gamepad (such as select), or, preferably, an unpopular button on the remote with which you control your media center, to the Alt+F4 combination so you can easily quit emulators when you're done playing and go back into XBMC.
That's all it takes. Once you finish installing your games, you'll have a good-looking, functional digital library for video games (of all consoles) just like you do for your movies and TV shows—certainly enough to re-impress your friends that by now have become accustomed to the media center you put so much work into.