Have you heard about Google’s upcoming operating system ChromeOS and are willing to test it on your computer? Then follow this guide to make it working! ChromeOS is intended to include only the Chrome browser and is only able to run web applications, thus targeting users who spend most of their time in the internet.
Test and use ChromeOS without installing it:
Download a compiled release of ChromeOS. This is the easiest way, you may of course compile it on your own, but that is not part of this tutorial. Use the torrent mirror for fastest downloads. Once it’s done, unpack the image file (ChromeOS-Cherry.img)
Connect a USB memory stick (at least 1GB) to your computer
Download and unpack Win32DiskImager and launch Win32DiskImager.exe. Click on the little folder symbol and select your image file unpacked in step 1. Select the proper drive letter of your USB memory stick in the Device section. Then click Write and confirm the window warning your about a potential physical corruption on your device.
Once it finished writing, unplug your USB device and plug it into the computer you want to test ChromeOS on. Make sure your computer is configured to boot from USB devices as first priority. If your computer is a netbook (e.g. Asus Eee PC), try the steps under Prepare the Asus Eee PC to boot from USB devices in my tutorial on Windows 7 on the Eee PC. Most other computers will have a similar BIOS configuration, though.
Boot from the USB device and wait a few seconds. ChromeOS shouldn’t take long to boot (around 5 seconds on my Eee PC 900).
Login using facepunch as both username and password.
There should be three symbols at the top right corner. The first is showing your battery status (in running ChromeOS on a laptop), the second your WiFi and Ethernet configuration and the third some menus. Click the second one and connect to your WiFi/Ethernet network. This is really necessary since all applications in ChromeOS are web-based!
Enjoy ChromeOS!
Troubleshooting:
I am connected via WiFi/Ethernet but can’t open websites. This may be due to a misconfiguration in your network settings. Sadly, ChromeOS currently has no GUI to configure it, but you can try to do it with the terminal. Press CTRL + ALT + T to open terminal, and go on using Linux commands (e.g. ip addr to see your network configuration, ping to ping other network devices, sudo bash for root user, …)
My screen resolution is not at its maximum. I had this problem a few times and there was no way of fixing it (xrandr in terminal didn’t work and told me that VGA1 was disconnected). Probably ChromeOS has some problems with the display drivers, but restarting the computer always helped.
Flash/YouTube videos are lagging. This happens probably also due to bad/missing video drivers. I don’t think there is a solution for it except finding and installing fitting display drivers for your device and Linux on your own. Hopefully Google will fix this in the final release.
Since Google keeps providing me with new invitations for Google Wave and all my friends have it already, I don’t know what to do with my invites. If you’re interested, just post a comment and I will send an invitation to the E-Mail address provided in the comment form.
If you don’t know what Google Wave actually is, check out my post about the Google Wave Preview!
On 26th November 2009, the ”World’s Largest Digital Festival” DreamHack Winter started in Jönköping in Sweden. I was lucky and won the journey to Sweden as well as the ticket, sponsored by Razer. Razer even chartered a bus and painted it with the Razer logo just for the DreamHack festival:
The official website describes DreamHack as “the word’s largest LAN-party and computer festival” with more than 12,000 participants. DreamHack is focused on everything one can do with computers: gaming, communication, programming, designing, music and so on. Moreover, there were many gaming tournaments with famous teams from all over the world in games such as Counter-Strike, Quake, Warcraft 3 and Street Fighter.
Participants had to bring their own computers and equipment, but got a quite nice Gigabit Ethernet and an extremely powerful internet infrastructure in return. Speed-Tests I did on DreamHack certified downstreams of almost 100MB/sec and upstreams of almost 50MB/sec. In actual downloads, I was able to reach 7.5MB/s downloading and 8.7MB/s uploading.
In addition to gaming events, there was also a Dream Expo of different hardware and software companies showing products and doing overclocking competitions or giving away products. Furthermore, live bands and singers, games and events on stage and movie screening during night added to the fun. There were also lots of really powerful computers (the best featuring Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition, 12GB DDR3 RAM, 4xGTX 295) with many games installed (Modern Warfare 2, Couter-Strike, Left 4 Dead 2) provided by different hardware and software vendors (Razer, Fujitsu, R.U.S.E). Thus even persons visiting DreamHack without a computer or any hardware had enough to see and enjoy.
Surprisingly, 10% of all participants were female and some were even competing in the tournaments. I will add some pictures and a video in hope of giving you an idea about DreamHack!
If you have used Google Translate earlier, you will have recognized that the translations were mostly awful and that bad that it was hard to understand them at all. This new version improves the quality of translations significantly; now you can actually use it to read websites or texts in foreign languages.
It also adds a dictionary function: Just type in the word you need and it will give you different meanings. Moreover, by clicking on “detailed dictionary”, you have the possibility to see examples of how to use this word in a phrase and listen to the translations.
The real-time translation is also a quite nice feature: You can just type in a sentence, and as you type, it will try to translate it. This reminds me of the live translation called Rosy used in a promotional video for Google Wave. Rosy currently isn’t available for Google Wave users, but the new Google Translate may actually be a testing ground.
Today I received my invitation to the Google Wave Preview! Google Wave is “what E-Mail would look like if it was invented today”, according to one of the creators. If you don’t really know what Wave is about or how it works, better check out this video:
Currently, I only have a few contacts to wave with, but it’s already enough to test the features. When somebody starts a Wave with one person like a mail, you can respond to single paragraphs, sentences or words inside that wave (like threaded comments). Other’s can be invited to that Wave and answer, too. You can embed Flash, YouTube videos, images, polls and much more directly into the wave. Moreover, to save time when directly communicating, a Wave can work like a chat, allowing you directly to see what the other person types even before the message is sent.
All in all, Wave looks very promising and I hope that more people will be invited so I can test all the features!
Have you got an iPod touch or iPhone and want to play cool games like FIFA10 or Assassin’s Creed, but don’t want to spend money on buying them? Then this tutorial will definitely help you.
Warning: Jailbreaking your iPod/iPhone will void your warranty. Downloading cracked applications is illegal and may have legal consequences. It is not my intention to motivate people to do illegal things, everything you do will be on your own risk!
Notice: This will only work with the latest generation of iPods/iPhones with Firmware 3.1.2 or higher! The blackra1n jailbreak will probably not work with the MC models (iPod touch 3G with 8GB).
1. Jailbreak your iPod/iPhone
Before you will be able to install applications other than the ones from iTunes Store, you must jailbreak your iPod. Please consider the warning above before jailbreaking your iPod.
The easiest jailbreak for the 3.1.2 firmware is blackra1n. This tutorial will only focus on blackra1n.
Warning: blackra1n is a so-called “tethered jailbreak”, meaning that everytime you reboot your iPod (e.g. due to empty battery or after switching it completely off) you will have to run blackra1n again. Running blackra1n again won’t install or uninstall any applications but just enable the iPod to start again.
Make sure you have installed at least firmware version 3.1.2 in iTunes.
Close iTunes but keep the iPod connected to your computer via USB.
Open the downloaded blackra1n.exe file and click the “make it ra1n” button
Your iPod will go into recovery mode now and reboot. You should see this on your computer: And this image on your iPod:
Now wait for the iPod to reboot, shouldn’t take longer than a few seconds. Once done, launch the “blackra1n” application that appeared and install Cydia and Rock.
2. Enable the installation of cracked application
Open Rock, the application you just installed with blackra1n.
Go to Manage -> Manage Sources -> Edit -> Add and enter http://cydia.hackulo.us to enable downloads from hackulo.us, then click Add Source
Go to Search, search for AppSync and install “AppSync for OS 3.1″
That’s it, your iPod is now able to install cracked applications. For the case that cracked apps won’t work, try installing AppSync again with Cydia instead of Rock.
3. Download and install cracked applications
The biggest cracked application repository out there is Appulo.us, so you should try getting your desired application there first. The website is quite slow and sometimes offline, so be patient.
If Appulo.us doesn’t find the application you want or is offline, you may use downloadipa.info, apps.su or search torrents and rapidshare for “<app name> ipa” (ipa is the extension of cracked apps).
If the downloaded app came in a zip file (which is the case with most apps downloaded from Appulo.us), rename it to .ipa
Double-click your ipa files to add them to iTunes
Sync the iTunes applications with your iPod
Launch the application on your iPod!
I hope this tutorial was helpful. If you encounter any errors, please comment to tell me about it!
Today I tested and installed the Technical Preview of the upcoming office suite Microsoft Office 2010. It seems to be version v14.0.4417.1000 (according to the About tab) or Beta 1 (according to the shortcuts created). If you want to try it yourself, you may download it from here (torrent) and select the 32bit or 64bit version. Warning: If you have already installed a 32bit version of Office 2007 or earlier, you won’t be able to install Office 2010 64bit. Uninstall the old Office in this case.
The installation was as smooth as 2007’s, just agree to the license and click “Install now”. After a few minutes, you will be able to enjoy your Office 2010!
At first startup, you will see a screen like this for a few secods. The second startup is already that fast that I wasn’t able to take a screenshot of Word.
For testing purposes, I just created a short document with text copied from Wikipedia to try the new features. At first glance, nothing much seems to have changed. Office 2010 now includes the Aero interface, enabling you to see through the top bar of the window, but since this style of Aero is different from all the others used in Windows 7 or Vista, it looks quite odd and ugly. Ribbon is still there, but the Office-button disappeared and was replaced by a big blue File-button.
The File tab shows information about the document you’re just writing and contains buttons to upgrade, protect or share the document.
The printing window shows a preview of the pages that are going to be printed, but at least in this version, changes to the layout won’t be shown immediately in the preview. So when I select “2 Pages Per Sheet”, the preview will still show only one. I hope the guys at Microsoft are going to change that.
There are a few new features, but I’m not going to write much about them. Just to show an example, there is a feature enabling you to directly paste screenshots of other windows into your word document.
I didn’t test any of the other products included in this Office 2010 release, but looking at the variety of applications (Access, Excel, InfoPath Designer, InfoPath Filler, SharePoint Designer, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Workspace, Visio and Word), there are probably many features to be explored. Check it out yourself!
One day, I received a mail from Microsoft inviting me to host a Windows 7 Launch Party in order to promote the new Windows 7 operating system. I didn’t think much about it and just registered at houseparty.com.
After receiving a mail confirming me to be a Windows 7 Launch Party host, I uploaded some pics and information about the party, invited my friends and waited for the promised “special Windows 7 party package” that was said to contain a complete Windows 7 Ultimate version for the party host. This was actually too good to be true, an Ultimate version for free even before release date? Amazon listed it for 298€ (445US$)…
A few days later shipping of my party package was confirmed:
HOUSE PARTY FULFILLMENT CENTER is shipping you a package via DHL.
DHL strives to provide you with a great experience every time.
The following 1 piece(s) have been sent by Shipping of HOUSE PARTY FULFILLMENT CENTER via DHL Express on October 01, 2009 using Waybill 8788665xxx.
Then I finally received the package and between napkins, puzzles, posters and Windows 7 bags there was my Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition, including both 32bit and 64bit releases and a license key:
Thanks Microsoft for giving me this great operating system for free!
Risen is a single-player fantasy-themed action role-playing game released just a week ago. While the graphics is quite good in some parts (lighting, shadows, weather effects and environment), the developers didn’t manage to integrate Anti-Aliasing due to the HDR (High Dynamic Range) effects. Here is a way how you can enable Anti-Aliasing anyway, working only for nVidia graphics card though.
1. Download and install nHancer
nHancer is an Advanced Control Panel and Profile Editor for nVidia graphics cards, enabling you to optimize the display of games and customizing driver settings. This will allow you to force the nVidia driver to activate Anti-Aliasing, no matter what the game wants. Download and install the latest version of nHancer from the official website or from the local server.
2. Rename the Risen executable to Vanguard
Go to the binary folder of your Risen installation, probably C:\Program Files (x86)\Deep Silver\Risen\bin and rename Risen.exe to Vanguard.exe. This will force the nVidia driver to apply Anti-Aliasing settings usually applied for the game Vanguard which are also working for Risen.
3. Enable Anti-Aliasing settings with nHancer
Now launch nHancer and let it search for all profiles if this is the first time you start the application. Once the list in on the left side is populated, search for Vanguard and select the according profile. Once you selected it, tick “Anti-Aliasing” in the “Enhancements” tab on the right side and select the Anti-Aliasing mode you prefer. You will probably have to do some experimenting to find the right setting for your hardware, but I suggest to use “Multisampling” and then the 8x or 16x setting.
My GTX 260 can easily run Multisampling 8x and 16x without big performance losses, but using Supersampling or Combined 16x will kill the performance to around 2-3 FPS. Try various options for your graphics card and select the one which looks best without losing too many FPS.
Then make sure “Anti-Aliasing compability” is checked under the “Compability” tab and “Vanguard” is selected in the drop-down menu below.
4. Launch Risen and have fun with smoother edges and less aliasing
Now you can just launch Vanguard.exe (your Desktop shortcut may not be working any more) and enjoy the better graphics! I took some comparison screenshots for you to see which Anti-Aliasing setting has which effect and how big the performance losses are. Graphics settings:
Resolution: 1920×1080
Details: Everything “High”, Depth of Field deactivated (looks ugly), Config tweaks: ViewRange set to 16000
Anti-Aliasing off, 55 FPS
Multisampling 8x, 35 FPS
Combined 16xS, 3 FPS
As you can see, there is not much difference in the image quality between Multisampling 8x and Combined 16xS, but the performance differences are huge. I recommend to use Multisampling and not Supersampling or Combined.
Since October 1st, 2009, this website is hosted on a new and hopefully faster and more reliable server. Hostmonster is providing the hardware, and since their computing centre is located in the USA, the website should be faster when being accessed from the United States. Moreover, I got a new domain multimolti.com and all traffic to multimolti.de is redirected to the new domain.
If you find any links still pointing to the old .de-domain, please notify me so I can change it. Thank you!
