Xbox 360 HD can be connected to your pc

Some scene guys apparently released a driver for Windows XP that makes it capable to connect and detect the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive that was released a few days ago in the United States. I do not own a Xbox 360 nor the HD-DVD add-on (of course) but this could be great news for some of you guys out there that do own both. All you need is to get hold of the driver which was released under the name XBOX360.HD-DVDRom.UDF.Reader.v2.5.WindowsXP-BluePrint.

merge video files

Join multiple video files into one

Websites sometimes split movies into smaller parts to make it easier for users with low bandwidth access to the internet to download the movies without facing problems like timeouts. Once downloaded it is rather tiresome to view such a movie because you have to click on each part which naturally means a short pause between the last and the next movie.

A Free Game for the Weekend: True Combat Elite

True Combat Elite is a total conversion of Enemy Territory. Both games are free which means you can just visit the developers website and download them to your computer and start playing the games. Versions for PC, MAC and Linux exist. The installation itself can be a bit tricky at first, let me guide you through that process later on in this article. True Combat is a modern warfare game similar to Counterstrike Source, you play either on the Terrorist or the Anti-Terror side.

run system tools windows

Faster Access to XP system tools

What do you do if you want to access one of the administrative programs in Windows XP ? You click through various menus most of the time to reach the destination. If you wanted to reach the Device Manager you would have to click on Start, Control Panel, System, Hardware Tab and then the Device Manager.

myuninstaller

An alternative uninstaller for Windows

The uninstaller that ships with Windows is slow and lacks functionality. You have to enter your control panel, click on add or remove programs and a new window with most installed programs pops up. Information in that window are scarce - only the program name and the size of the installation is displayed. You do not see the directory the software is installed, the registry keys it is using or the name of the company that developed the software.

auto window manager

Auto Window Manager

The freeware Auto Window Manager adds additional functionality to the way windows manages the windows it displays. You could for instance customize that whenever a program opens it opens in maximized, minimized or default state. This setting should work with most programs and windows, i tried it with firefox and thunderbird for example.

tiny menu options

Tiny Menus for Firefox

This tip is for those users who like to maximize the width and heights of web pages that they visit. You might have noticed that the menu bar in firefox takes up a complete row at the top of the screen. I always pondered with the thought that there had to be a way to make it either smaller or merge it with the navigation bar. Enter Tiny Menu.

Why it might be a good idea to use Open DNS

I decided to read more about open dns after I read Evertons article "Does open dns really speed up web pages" on his great website connected internet. He was trying to find out why a dns service that was using servers in the United States would be faster than the dns service offered by his own internet service provider. The connection to the latter is of course faster than the connection to the open dns servers - so, why would it be faster or even more reliable ?

xp iso builder

Upgrade a Windows XP Recovery CD to a full installation one

Many hardware companies sell their systems with a windows xp recovery cd which makes it most of the time impossible to install that operating system on a different system. This forces the user to either buy a new XP system or at least a standalone XP Cd, that is, unless you do what I'm going to explain here. The following steps create a bootable standalone installation system for your operating system that is not connected to the computer you purchased it with.

Ipod Errors and Freezes - how to fix them

Ipods can be compared to small computers that thankfully do not run on a windows operating system. They still tend to spit out an occasional error once in a while. Most of the time it either freezes, is stuck in disk mode or displays other errors that are not that common. (like icons that should not be there).

folder redirector

Move Special Folders like My Documents to a different path

If you want to move folders that are automatically created by windows xp on your c: drive to another path or folder you might face a problem. Simply moving the folders won't work which means there must be another way to relocate them. The easiest way that I've come up with is to use the freeware called Folder Redirector which makes it simple and fast to redirect the following folders to a different folder or drive on your system.

secure website phishing

Realtime Anti-Phishing Add-on for Firefox gone bad

Phishing, as wikipedia puts it, is a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. I receive daily mails that seem to come from respected websites like ebay, amazon or financial sites that ask me to update my software by following a link from within the email. This leads to a fake website that looks similar to the website that you normally visit. Once you enter your login data the criminals will have and use that information for their own advantage.

ametro

Add Subway maps to your iPod

I don't like those big subway maps that you get for free when you visit cities like London, Paris or New York. They are big, they tell everyone that you are a tourist (attracts criminals) and not that handy if you need a quick answer about a certain subway you need to catch.

check for new messages thunderbird

How to get mail from all thunderbird accounts at once

The email client Thunderbird does not necessarily retrieve messages from all of your mail accounts at startup. By default the first mail account will be checked on startup and all mail accounts will be checked every ten minutes. The following user.js tweak changes this behavior in the way that Thunderbird retrieves mail from all accounts at startup as well.

How to disable game intro movies

I hate game intro movies with a passion. Some games force the user to view about half a dozen of intros without giving him the change to escape them because the normal keys that cancel the playback are disabled. If you are unlucky you have to watch the producers logo, the developments team logo, nvidia, another team that worked on the game (multiplayer part for instance), the normal intro, an EA logo..

nintendo wii southpark

Southpark Nintendo Wii Episode

What is going on in Southpark ? After the highly successful World of Warcraft Episode the producers published a second episode that is centered around entertainment technology. Cartman longs for the Nintendo Wii and can't wait the three weeks until it will be released in the United States. He comes to the conclusion that deep freezing himself is the only solution which reduces the wait time. The plan goes terribly wrong.. but see for yourself.

audacity mp3 ringtones

Create your own mp3 ringtones

Most teens love ringtones, new ones, unique ones that none of their friends have. It almost seems like a race for the newest coolest ringtone which starts again with every passing day. One method to get the newest ringtones would be to buy them for horrendous prices - honestly I never understood why users would pay so much money for a 20 seconds song. A better (cheaper) way would be to create the ringtones on your own which ensures two things:

third party cookies firefox

How to disable third party cookies in Firefox

The developers of Firefox removed the option to disable third party cookies in firefox 2.0 stating the reason that it was not possible to block all third party cookies with this function. Third Party Cookies are mainly cookies that track user behavior, the big ad networks for instance like to use them a lot. There are basically two options to disable third party cookies in Firefox.

Add Defragment Now to the right-click menu

Defragmenting the hard drives of your computer is important especially for users who install lots of programs or perform lots of read and write operations on their hard drives (p2p users for instance). In a perfect world files would be written contiguously on the hard drive - in the world of windows they are not. Read operations waste more time because all the bits that make the file are not in one place but scattered around the complete hard drive. Defragmenting the drive moves them closer to each other to speed up loading times.

dmexbar

How to add functionality to Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer is a basic file manager with severe limitations that make it rather painful to perform some operations using it - you know what I mean if you ever tried to compare two directories using it for example. DMEXBar steps in and adds lots of functionality to the windows explorer by appending a toolbar to it. Once installed a toolbar should be automatically added to every windows explorer window, moving the mouse over one of the buttons in the menu displays a short information about that button.

keep user display settings

Different Display Settings for each User in XP

Windows XP has the annoying habit of assuming that every user wants to run his operating system with the same screen resolution, color depth and refresh rate. If you ever had to share a computer running windows xp with older folks you know what I mean - they tend to love low resolutions because everything on the screen appears to be bigger that way.

Privacy and Security Add-ons for Firefox 2.0

I thought that it would be a nice idea to compile a list of privacy and security related add-ons for firefox 2.0. The list is not complete but I think I have everything covered with those add-ons, feel free to add your top picks in the comments. Let's go.

Windows Media Player 11 Download

Yesterday Microsoft released the new Windows media player 11 silently it seems. You can download the (final ?) version of the Media Player at the official Media Player homepage. This version is only usuable with Windows XP so everyone with a different system won't be able to use this new version. Guidelines for common actions like installing the player, codec information and playing / burning files can be found in the faq entries of Media Player 11.

Create Automatic iTunes Playlists with the Filter

One of the blogs that I'm regularly visiting is Connected Internet created by my friend Everton Blair. He writes mainly about the same topics that I write about (with a slight British touch) and once in a while I find a interesting story that I would like to write about at ghacks as well. He discovered a automatic playlist generator for iTunes called The Filter.

chatzilla

IRC Chat Extension for Firefox

IRC, Internet Relay Chat, is one of the greatest communication platforms on the internet. You normally connect to one of the IRC servers using tools like mirc for instance. Once connected you may want to start by receiving a list of open channels on that server and afterwards connecting to some of them. Once in a channel you can chat, privately chat and send / receive files to other users or channel bots.

Play Counterstrike in 2D

Most computer users do know Counterstrike even though they probably never played it. You side either with the anti-terror unit or the terrorist and try to beat the other team by completing an objective or elimination all other players. Counterstrike 2D is a freeware conversion of this popular game. The interface looks and feels like the real thing, you may configure your keys and choose to play against bots or on the internet against human players.

tor

Use the Foxtor Extension for anonymous surfing

There are times when it is safer to remain anonymous on the internet - be it that you want to write something about your current company on the web, live in a country that does everything to prevent it's citizens from accessing unbiased information or simply for the reason that you do not wish that someone could track what you are doing on the internet. In an ideal world every user should have the right to read and publish on the internet without the fear of loosing his job or life. The world however is not ideal and tools like FoxTor exist to help those people out.

Danish Provider Tele2 forced to block allofmp3

Danish Provider Tele2 has to block access to the Russian mp3 website allofmp3 after loosing a civil lawsuit against the IFPI
(International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). The complete story can be read at slyck news. The question that naturally arises is if this can be called censorship. Music Industry and it's lobbyist groups claim that allofmp3 is illegal although it is perfectly legal according to Russian law.

A catalog for your movies

I have a large collection of movies both off-line and on my computer and it is sometimes hard to keep the overview of everything that is in my possession. It happened more than once that I bought a movie that I already own which is rather dumb because there are ways to prevent this from happening.

Firefox Showcase Extension

This extension is sweet. If you like to open many tabs at once and flip around while surfing you might encounter the problem that you can't find a certain article in the massive amount of tabs that are open at the time. I usually flip through them until I find the article that I was searching for. Takes a lot of time and I always was hoping for an extension that would help me optimize this procedure.

aol originals

Pricing for AOL Movie Downloads

Aol will offer movie and tv show downloads from Paramount Pictures in their new video portal. Downloads will be sold for prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.99 which suggests that most users will be quite unhappy with the pricing. Amazon Unbox and Apple's iTunes is offering download in the same price category and every other portal will most likely follow them.

Use Password Grids to Remember Passwords

Most internet users have serious troubles with passwords: they either choose to use the same password on all sites, use passwords that can be easily guessed by looking at the persons background or write all their passwords down to be able to look them up if they forget them. Only a few users use high quality passwords that they are able to remember.

Firefox 2 News Archive and Update History

The Mozilla team finally uploaded version 2.0 final of Firefox to the ftp servers with the web servers surely to following not later than tomorrow. If you want to be one of the first to download the new final version I suggest you do so with the links for: Windows or Mac / Linux.

open pandora

Open Pandora Application

Open Pandora is a freeware application that adds features to Pandora, the famous music service that finds new music of similar taste for you. Pandora itself is designed to function in your browser making it rather uncomfortable to listen to the music. Enter Open Pandora:

autoit

Automate and Script Windows Tasks

AutoIt is a freeware scripting language that runs on every Windows operating system starting with Windows 95. It makes it possible to use a combination of mouse movements, keystrokes and window / control manipulation to automate tasks in Windows. It is also capable of executing Windows and Dos programs.

internet explorer addons

Add-Ons for Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer comes equipped with the same technique as firefox that allows users to create addons and offer them for download on a site that was specially created for this purpose by Microsoft. Ieaddons is the name of the site and looks like a typical slow-loading Microsoft website. Add-Ons are categorised in the four categories Security, Time Savers, Browsers and Entertainment.

zoomit

Zoom It

ZoomIt is a freeware from Sysinternals which lets you zoom into part of your screen. With resolutions beyond 1600*1200 it becomes more urgent to have a utility that lets you zoom into part of your screen to magnify that part. It is also nice if you want to take a closer look at low resolution images for instance.

import emails gmail

How to import mail into your gmail account

You might want to import already received mails into your gmail account, one reason could be that you want to make the complete switch to gmail and never use the old email client again. There is unfortunately no import function to do that in gmail, at least none that I was able to find in my gmail account.

Germany introduces Internet Tax

Please read on this is a funny story, I promise that. Germans pay about 19$ a month if they own a television. This fee was introduced right after the war to make it possible that state independent tv stations would be able to run without receiving money from the state. There were only those stations after the war and it made sense at this time. Nowadays you have dozens of tv stations but you still pay the money for those state independent ones (all other stations don't see a dime of that money).

the wonderful icon

The Wonderful Icon Freeware

Oh well, the name wonderful icon is not really helping when you try to figure out what this freeware does. The main purpose is to assign new hotkeys to windows. The program offers you a great deal of predefined actions that can be assigned to an hotkey, for instance: Open Browser, Dos Box, Always on Top, Type Char xyz into window, reboot and many more. I would say there are around 100+ predefined actions and you also have the ability to create new ones very easily.