Friday, 18 November 2011

Gizmo's Freeware: Updated: Best Free BitTorrent Client

Gizmo's Freeware: Updated: Best Free BitTorrent Client

Link to Gizmo's Freeware: Top selections

Updated: Best Free BitTorrent Client

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 09:33 PM PST

Senior editor mr6n8 continues to improve this already remarkable review which includes not only product recommendations but also tuning guides for each product to help you get the highest download speed. A few weeks back after reading this review I switched from my long term fave program utorrent and have never regretted it.


http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-bittorrent-client.htm
Posted by Admin at 18:13 0 comments

OS X Daily: Profile of a Typical iPad Owner: Pet Owning Male Doctor Who Plays Video Games

OS X Daily: Profile of a Typical iPad Owner: Pet Owning Male Doctor Who Plays Video Games

Link to OS X Daily

Profile of a Typical iPad Owner: Pet Owning Male Doctor Who Plays Video Games

Posted: 18 Nov 2011 01:11 AM PST

Typical iPad Dude What do you think the profile of an average iPad owner would be like? Would you guess that the most likely individual to buy an iPad was a male who owns pets and plays video games, who might be a business traveling doctor or scientist that takes vitamins and prefers organic food?

Yup, all those things are more likely to be true of iPad owners, and they also tend to be married college graduates who live in apartments. All of this is according to a market research firm that AllThingsD tapped to make the infographic embedded below.

These are amusing to look at in the same vein of the profile of Android vs iPhone users and Mac vs PC users, just don’t take any of the comparisons or assumptions too seriously…

Typical iPad buyer / owner

Reading the smaller print you’ll find that up to 70% of iPad use occurs in front of a TV, and that nearly half of iPad owners live in households with over $100,000 a year in combined income. Interesting, huh?

Unlock the iPhone 4S with an iOS 5 Bug

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 01:58 PM PST

Unlocked iPhone 4S

If you didn’t already buy an unlocked iPhone 4S from Apple or take advantage of Sprint and Verizons 90 day unlock request, you can apparently unlock the 4S’s GSM SIM card slot yourself by taking advantage of a strange bug in iOS 5 and how the iPhone 4S handles the Edge network.

Here’s what you’ll need to attempt this:

  • GSM activated iPhone 4S (AT&T model on contract, for example)
  • AT&T SIM card
  • T-Mobile Micro SIM

If you have all of that, completing the unlock is a matter of tripping up iOS 5 by performing a virtual song and dance routine, how someone figured this is out is fairly impressive on its own:

How to Unlock the iPhone 4S

Do this at your own risk:

  • Insert original carrier AT&T SIM card
  • Dial 611 for AT&T customer service hotline and drop the call
  • Turn on Airplane Mode
  • Take out AT&T SIM card
  • Insert T-Mobile SIM card
  • Make sure WiFi is off ( also tap on 'Forget this Network" to make sure it doesn't connect automatically later)
  • Switch off Airplane Mode and iPhone will search for network. This is followed by the Apple splash screen appearing.
  • Activation Required will be displayed on the screen
  • EDGE network will activate automatically – notice the 'E' on the top left corner of the screen
  • Wait for about 20-30 seconds and turn off the phone
  • Turn on iPhone and the same Activation Required screen will be displayed
  • When you see one signal bar, tap on Use Cellular Connection
  • Eject SIM card
  • Activation Required screen will be displayed the second time
  • Insert SIM card
  • Unlocked!

Multiple users are reporting success with this method, although some had to repeat it many times to get it to finally work.

Apparently this trick has been around for a few weeks now, although it hasn’t been widely publicized for some reason or another. Here’s a YouTube video of someone completing the procedure as described above:

If you give this a try, let us know if it works for you. These instructions are from Pastebin via MacRumors. This is just now stating to take off on the web, so we should have some more conclusive reports soon to determine if this works or not.

Want to Buy a Kindle Fire at a Discount? Here’s How to Save $10 [Today Only]

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 12:48 PM PST

Kindle Fire

The Kindle Fire is the hottest Android tablet out there, and while it’s no iPad 2, it’s a hot little item either as a Christmas gift or just a cheap tablet for slothing about the house. For $199 it’s hard to beat, but today only you can save $10 through a special promotion between Amazon and MasterCard bringing the price to just $189. The only catch is that you need a MasterCard credit or debit card (tip: you can create a MasterCard instantly with PayPal):

Congrats you just got a Kindle Fire for $189! Shipping for the Kindle Fire is currently about 2-3 days, and the Kindle Touch is about 3-5 days. By taking advantage of this deal you get another bonus $10 off coupon to use on a later order too.

Save $10 on the Kindle Fire

Technically the $10 off coupon is valid for any electronics or toys order over $100, so you could use it on the Kindle Touch or some other gadget Christmas gift too. The big thing to remember here is that it’s time sensitive and for today only.

Install & Run Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in a Virtual Machine on top of OS X Lion

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 12:04 PM PST

Mac OS X Snow Leopard running in a virtual machine on top of OS X Lion

We showed you how to run OS X Lion in a virtual machine on top of Snow Leopard, but it seems everyone wanted to know the opposite of that: how to run Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in a VM on top of Mac OS X Lion. Follow our instructions and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Requirements

This guide should also work in Parallels and VMWare, but I chose VirtualBox this time around because it’s always free and runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. We’re going to assume you have the Snow Leopard DVD or ISO/DMG handy already, and that you installed VirtualBox, if not get those figured out and proceed:

Installing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in a Virtual Machine

This guide was done in OS X 10.7.2 Lion with the newest version of VirtualBox, it should work to install OS X in Windows too.

  • Open VirtualBox and create a new Virtual Machine – make the virtual disk at least 15GB and allocate at least 1GB of RAM to the VM
  • Choose “Mac OS X” and “Mac OS X Server” as the OS and OS Type
  • Select the Snow Leopard DVD, DMG, or ISO as the primary boot drive
  • Confirm the specs, boot disk of and choose “Create”

    • Create a new OS X virtual machine

  • Now boot the newly created VM by clicking on “Start” and let the Snow Leopard installer load, click through to the “Install Mac OS X” screen
  • Pull down the “Utilities” menu and select “Disk Utility” – this next step is important because without it the virtual drive will not appear in the install menu
  • Select the name of the virtual hard drive on the left side menu of Disk Utility (15GB VBOX HARDDRIVE or something similar) and then click on the “Erase” tab
  • Choose “Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)” and name the hard drive something, then click on “Erase”

    • Format the virtual hard disk to HFS

  • Now quit out of Disk Utility to go back to the general Mac OS X Installer
  • Select the hard drive name you just formatted and click on “Install”

    • Installing Snow Leopard in a Virtualbox

  • Let the installer run, this will take a while (30-45 minutes) and just ignore the “Time Remaining” estimate because it’s inaccurate – if it looks frozen or stuck, it’s not, the progress bar just jumps in huge chunks rather than gradual increases
  • After the installation is done and you’re back at the VirtualBox Manager screen, click on on the gear icon for “Settings”
  • In Settings, click on “Storage” and then look under “IDE Controller” to remove the Snow Leopard install DVD, ISO, or DMG – if you don’t do this, the VM will boot back into the installer rather than into Mac OS X 10.6
  • Close out of Settings, select your VM, and click on “Start” to boot the virtual machine

If you see a bunch of error messages with white text on a black screen, ignore all of that and let VirtualBox boot. Soon the familiar Mac OS X Snow Leopard setup screen will load to pick region settings and setup the virtual machine as any other new Mac. Enjoy!

Mac OS X Snow Leopard in a VM on top of Lion

If you’re having fun with this, check out our other posts on virtual machines, including installing Windows 8 preview in VirtualBox, Internet Explorer test VM’s for Mac OS X, and more.

iShred: the Snowboard with an Embedded iPad 2 [Video]

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 11:47 AM PST

iShred

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, ski and snowboard season is upon us, and while it seems like everyone on the mountain has an iPod or iPhone, the guys at Signal Snowboards took the Apple love a step further with the iShred. Yup, the the iShred, it’s a snowboard built to honor Steve Jobs, and it includes a built-in iPad 2 near the nose of the board, and it even has a fancy Apple-esque glowing logo on the bottom of the aluminum base.

They put together a video showing the board being made from scratch, and then a pro rider taking it out for a spin. It looks cool but the alu doesn’t handle too great:

“First run was awesome, the things like a missile. It doesn’t like to turn, but it’s pretty fast and heavy.”

Watch the video below or just check out a couple screenshots:



iShred glowing logo

Signal iShred: iPad snowboard

iShred: iPad Snowboard

In case you were wondering, the board probably isn’t for sale, it was just a one-off creation to have some fun. Maybe they’ll start making boards with that cool glowing logo?

Apple Dominates the Best Gift Ideas for Kids this Holiday Season

Posted: 17 Nov 2011 10:20 AM PST

Holiday Gifts

Shopping for kids holiday gifts is notoriously difficult, the last thing you want to do is buy them something they don’t want, or worse yet, something that isn’t “cool”. Thankfully kids are getting easier to shop for (for us geeks anyway), because what do they want? Gadgets, and lots of them. Dominating the top of the most desired electronic gifts are three Apple products: the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Here’s the full list as polled from Neilsen:

Most Desired Electronics Among Kids for Holidays 2011

For kids aged 6 through 12:


Some of the items on the list are fairly expensive, with computers and the iPad 2 around $499. The iPhone and other new smartphones require a 2-year contract to get at a reasonable price, which may not be feasible for every situation, does a 6 year old really need an iPhone 4S or Galaxy S2? Given these constraints, the iPod touch at $189 and the Kindle Fire tablet at $199 are two of the coolest gifts a kid (or an adult for that matter) could get, and they’re reasonably priced and don’t need a contract. The iPod touch has a better app ecosystem, but the Kindle Fire has a screen twice the size.

Holiday 2011 Gift Ideas for Kids

As previously mentioned, this list comes from Neilsen, who dubs 2011 the “iHoliday” for the heavily Apple-favored list.


Posted by Admin at 18:10 0 comments
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