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!
This tutorial will show how to add programs to Startup so they will be launched automatically after a user logged in (like Skype or Anti-Virus programs do).
Using Windows XP, this was really easy: Just drag the application shortcut of your program to Start -> Programs – > Startup. Using Windows 7, Â this folder won’t be shown, but it still exists. Here is how to autostart any program:
Go to your Startup folder. You can access it by typing “shell:startup” into the search bar in your Start Menu:
Now create a shortcut to the application you want to autostart and put it into the Startup folder.
That’s it basically. Now the application you linked to in the Startup folder will start always after YOU logged in. Other computer users have to do the same thing again!
After you put the first shortcut into the Startup folder, it will be shown in the Start Menu, so you can easily remove the shortcuts again or place new ones there.
If you don’t want or can’t use the search, you can also access the folder by going to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup and replacing <username> with your actual username. Better enter it directly into your address bar since the AppData folder is hidden and you may not see it.
Using a few console commands, you can easily create giant screenshots of Crysis with resolutions of 28800×16200 or more megapixels, which corresponds with 225 times Full-HD resolution!
Here is how to create such enormous screenshots:
Launch Crysis, select any graphics settings you want and load a savegame
Open the console by pressing the ` key on English keyboards, ^ key on German ones (below Esc and to the left of 1)
Type con_restricted 0 and press Enter. This will unlock all the restricted console commands.
Now use e_screenshot_width and e_screenshot_height followed by the desired number of pixels, I used e_screenshot_width 28800 and e_screenshot_height 16200 for my huge image.
By default, your screenshot will be saved as TGA file, you can also change the filetype by entering e_screenshot_file_format followed by either jpg, tga or bmp
Select your fists as weapon by pressing “1″ twice
Enter cl_hud 0 to disable the HUD
Enter e_screenshot 1 to take a screenshot. This may take a while, Crysis will render many parts and put them together as one big image later on.
Your Screenshot will be located in Crysis/Game/ScreenShots/HiRes as a large TGA file. I recommend IrfanView for viewing the picture, most other programs will crash when trying to open such a big file!
I resized my resulting 1.3GB TGA file to 1920×1080 pixels afterwards in order to be able to publish it here, but of course all the cool details are gone that way. Your result may look like this:
Click here for 1080p version of this screenshot. I actually set all graphics settings to Ultra High and have no idea, why the water reflections and stuff are missing… probably gone due to the down-sampling. Don’t take too many screenshots, otherwise all your HDD space will be gone…
Below are some more down-sampled versions of 450 megapixel screenshots. The weird stripes you can see don’t appear in the full-size versions, so I think I have to blame the down-sampling again…
For some time, the developers at Google were working at a solution to make their search engine faster. Now you can test the new search architecture called “Caffeine” yourself.
Obviously, they reached their goal of increasing the search speed, but didn’t change the search behavior. When searching for normal terms, you can feel a speed increase of up to 75% in my tests, but when using more complex searches with quotes, there is almost no difference.
Adblock scripts for Firefox, Opera and even Internet Explorer have been around for a while, but until now, there was no easy-to-install extension for Google Chrome with a similar  functionality. The latest release of Google Chrome, version 3, has added easy support for extensions, and a nice guy called gg3po has developed an extension to disable advertisements on websites.
Step 2: Update Google Chrome In Chrome, click on the settings button (on the right side) and select About Google Chrome. The appearing window will check for updates and download them, if available. After the download finished, close Chrome.
Step 3: Enable extensions Now right-click on your Chrome shortcut, select Properties. Add “–enable-extensions” (without the quotes) as launch parameter to your Target path.
Step 4: Download AdSweep Launch Chrome, now extensions should be enabled (although you won’t see any change yet). Go to http://www.adsweep.org/ and download the Extension for Chrome (not the User Script!) (alternative download). A window will pop up asking you whether to install the extension, click OK.
Step 5: Restart Chrome & start surfing ad-free! Now most ads on websites shouldn’t show up any more!
This is how a website looked before and after enabling the AdSweep extension:
