gHacks technology news » trick http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:37:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Share the iTunes Library on a network http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/26/share-the-itunes-library-on-a-network/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/26/share-the-itunes-library-on-a-network/#comments Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:16:52 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/26/share-the-itunes-library-on-a-network/ I don’t like the iTunes software that much – it is slow and big and the only reason for me to use it is that it is the offical software that comes with the iPod. I recently ran into a problem which was fixed pretty fast by a quick tip that I found at one tip a day. I assume that iTunes is already installed at least on your main computer and you want to access the same library of songs that are stored on the main computer.

You need to locate the file iTunes Library.itl on this computer which is usually stored in username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes. You need to share the folder iTunes. To do this right-click the iTunes folder and select Sharing and Security  from the context menu. If there is no Sharing and Security entry you will have to enable simple file sharing by clicking on Tools and selecting Folder Options.

Click on the view tab and activate simple file sharing in the advanced settings (scroll down). Enable the options ‘Share this folder in the network’ and ‘Allow network users to change my files’ in Sharing and Security.

The final step would be to start iTunes on the other computer and hold down the shift key which will open a menu during startup. Select Choose Library and select the iTunes Library.itl file from the main computer.

That’s it. You can now access your iTunes configuration from the second computer as well and all changes made will be global. You can repeat the process if you have more than two computer.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/26/share-the-itunes-library-on-a-network/feed/ 4 Megaupload bypass country limit http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/29/megaupload-bypass-country-limit/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/29/megaupload-bypass-country-limit/#comments Fri, 29 Dec 2006 09:25:36 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/29/megaupload-bypass-country-limit/ Megaupload is a file hoster just like Rapidshare that has restrictions set in place for guests that are downloading files from their website. Everyone who wants to download a file from Megaupload has to wait a certain time before they can start the download. Another restriction is a so called country limit. If the maximum number of downloaders from a specific country has been reached all others from that country will have to wait until the amount of downloaders drops below that figure.

The message that appears reads: “All download slots (number) assigned to your country (name) are in use. Several ways to bypass the country limit exist and I would like to explain two of them and hint to others that can also be used if the need arises. The first one has been around for a while. You do need to download the User Agent Switcher add-on for Firefox or edit the registry in Windows if you are using the Internet Explorer.
Firefox:

Click on Tools, User Agent Switcher and select Options.. Options from the menu. Click on User Agents in the new tab and then on ADD. It is only important to fill out the first two fields. Name the first any way you want, Megaupload for instance. Copy and Paste the following line in the second field.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; Alexa Tool bar)

Internet Explorer:

I strongly advise to use Firefox instead but if you really want to do this in Internet Explorer you have to edit the registry. For IE7 and IE6 navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\InternetSettings\User Agent\Post Platform.

Right-Click Post Platform and select New String Value and name it Alexa Toolbar.

Firefox users need to switch to the User Agent that they have created before they click on a download link. Do this by clicking on Tools, User Agent Switcher and choosing the name (megaupload) that you entered during the creation.

The second method would be to enter the megaupload website indirectly by using a service that does not reveal where you are coming from. Two services that come to my mind are Google translate and anonym.to

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/29/megaupload-bypass-country-limit/feed/ 7 Increasing the performance of Windows Vista http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/16/increasing-the-performance-of-windows-vista/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/16/increasing-the-performance-of-windows-vista/#comments Sat, 16 Dec 2006 12:55:23 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/16/increasing-the-performance-of-windows-vista/ My first impression of Windows Vista was that it was a very shiny operating system with lots of useless stuff (for me) that wasted lots of valuable ram on my system. Things like the sidebar which may be useful for some are absolutely useless to me. Besides that they use ram. I have decided to remove everything that I would not need to increase performance on the system.

This tips might also be useful to those users who use an old computer with Windows Vista. My Vista installation is using about 430 megabytes of Ram in default state with only one instance of Internet Explorer 7 running as well. The following paragraphs contain a list of changes that I made and their effect on the system.

  • Disabling the Sidebar
  • Changing the Design to Windows Classic
  • Changing the Background image to one color
  • Disabling the Windows Firewall and Bitdefender

Those changes alone dropped the ram usage by 60 megabytes to 370 with one Internet Explorer window open. There are many settings that can still be tweaked to gain even more performance, for instance removing unnecessary services and indexing. I will take a look at those in the coming days.

The question of course remains why you would like to change to Vista if you disable everything “new” that Vista offers. I personally think that it introduces lots of gimmicks that freeware on XP offered for years. And if it is security that you want you should take a look at Linux instead.

 

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