Microsoft is launching the first smartphones packing Windows Mobile today, and has shared a few details on the new OS ahead of its full announcement.

With a cleaned up, easier-to-use interface, WinMo 6.5 promises better browsing capabilities and easy access to services such as Windows Live, Bing, Mobile Office Communicator and Microsoft Online Services such as Exchange and Sharepoint.

Microsoft has also shared more details on the two new service platforms we’d heard would launch with the OS – My Phone and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

The former will allow you to back up and manage all your content including photos, apps, contacts and text messages on you PC, and will also offer a premium package some time soon that will help you relocate your phone if lost.

This will include showing the phone’s location on a map, remotely locking it, posting an “if found” message to the screen and setting off a loud ring – just in case you’ve just lost it down the side of the sofa.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile on the other hand is Microsoft’s crack at an app store with a current choice of over 200 mobile apps for business and pleasure.

Apple’s latest beast based operating system, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, will be available earlier than expected. This Friday, August 28, in fact. Rather than filling the operating system with fistfuls of new features, Apple says its worked on the architecture of OS X to make it quicker, lighter and neater. Mac OS X Snow Leopard will take up half the space of OS X 10.5.7. That means you’ll regain up to 7GB of disk space. There’ll also (apparently) be speed increases in Mac OS X Snow Leopard with Mail loading messages twice as quickly. 

Time Machine is also set to get a speed boost with initial backup 80% quicker. If you’ve ever had to wait for a Mac to backup, that’ll be music to your ears.

For suited and booted sorts there’s also good news: Mac OS X Snow Leopard supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. OS X Mail, Address Book and iCal will now work with Exchange with no niggles. 

Mac OS X Leopard users can pre-order Mac OS X Snow Leopard as an upgrade for £25 while those people still tussling with OS X Tiger should go for the box set. That includes the new OS plus iLife 09 and iWork 09 for £129. Both version ship Friday.

A Chinese court has jailed four people for spreading their bootleg “Tomato Garden” version of Microsoft’s Windows XP program, in what the Xinhua news agency called the nation’s biggest software piracy case.

Hong Lei, the creator of the downloadable “Tomato Garden Windows XP” software, was jailed for three and a half years on Thursday by a court in Suzhou in eastern China, Xinhua reported, citing local media.

One of his accomplices received the same prison term and two received two years each.

Hong Lei

Hong “created the Tomato Garden version of the Windows XP,” which crippled the program’s authentication and certification barriers, said Xinhua, allowing users unrestricted access to the popular Microsoft software.

Millions of Internet users then had free access to the software on a website, tomatolei.com, which made its earnings from advertisements on the site, it said.

Beijing has publicized court verdicts such as this to show anxious businesses and governments, especially Washington, it is serious about stamping out widespread piracy of copyrighted and patented products, especially films, music and software.

Not everyone has been persuaded.

“China’s efforts to stop intellectual property theft have been weak and ineffective—heavy on tough talk but light on implementation,” U.S. Congressman Howard Berman of California, who has been visiting Beijing, said in a statement issued by his office.

“Hundreds of websites provide downloads and links to pirated movies, recordings and games.”

The “Tomato Garden” website was set up in 2004.

In June last year, the Business Software Alliance—a business coalition campaigning against commercial piracy—complained to Chinese authorities, and Hong and his colleagues were arrested later in the year.

The report did not say whether they intended to appeal.

The traditional pub quiz faces many threats. Now joining the music-round-destroying Shazam app, Wikipedia has launched an official iPhone app. 

The free application, obviously named Wikipedia Mobile, is not the first Wikipedia app in the iTunes App Store but it is the first to be officially sanctioned. 

The Wikimedia Foundation which oversees Wikipedia says the app is easier to use than having to jump in to Safari to flick through pages. It’s killer feature is keeping your searched pages saved to refer back to.

The Wikipedia Mobile app lacks some of the features available in previous encyclopedia apps on the iTunes App Store but Wikimedia says it was focusing on speed and simplicity for the first release.

You can download the Wikipedia Mobile app for free now from the iTunes App Store. If we see you fondling your iPhone at the Frog And Ferkin pub quiz though, we won’t be happy.

American software company RealNetworks has been banned from selling a program that lets people make copies of their DVDs, in a US court decision that could have far-reaching implications.

After a year-long case over the legality of the company’s RealDVD software, a district court in San Francisco ruled that Real had violated America’s copyright laws and granted a preliminary injunction against Real to prevent it selling the program.

The ruling stops Real from selling RealDVD, a piece of software that allows to make back-up copies of their movie discs and save them to their computer. Although free DVD ripping software is readily available online, Real raised the hackles of Hollywood executives in 2008 because it paid for a license to the DVD Copy Control Association, believing that it could be interpreted to allow the services they wanted to provide.

In her ruling, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said that the complex meant that it was not illegal for consumers to copy their own DVDs – just illegal to produce a program that allowed them to do so.

“While it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally-owned DVD on that individual’s computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies.”

The case was brought by the Motion Picture Association of America – the consortium representing Hollywood studios that has become notoriously litigious in the face of unauthorised downloading and online file sharing.

Dan Glickman, the head of the MPAA, hailed the verdict.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision,” he said. “This is a victory for the creators and producers of motion pictures and television shows, and for the rule of law in our digital economy.”

“Judge Patel’s ruling affirms what we have known all along: Real Networks took a license to build a DVD player and instead made an illegal DVD copier.”

Campaigners had argued that consumers had the right to make personal copies of material they had legally obtained, and that Real should not be punished.

Lawyers for the MPAA, on the other hand, said that Real was breaking the terms of its license and profiting from a system that made it possible for consumers to rent or borrow movies for a nominal fee before copying them.

The court sided with the film industry, largely because it said broke a licensing agreement to access privileged details of the copy protection codes, known as the content scramble system or CSS.

Although Judge Patel earlier ruling that CSS was a trade secret – indicating the possibility that she might rule against Real – another company, Kaleidascape, had recently been ruled to have not violated the law in a similar position.

Another scheme for unscrambling the code, called DeCSS, was also challenged in court after its creation – but Jon Lech Johansen, the Norwegian teenager credited with working on the system, was acquitted by a court in Oslo.

“Real will likely appeal this ruling,” said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Whatever the outcome of that appeal, this ruling sends a chilling message to any technology innovator interested in delivering new products that interact with the DVDs you own.”

Real Networks, based in Seattle, said that it was “disappointed” in the ruling and would take time to examine the verdict closely before considering whether to appeal.

“We have just received the judge’s detailed ruling and are reviewing it. After we have done so fully, we’ll determine our course of action,” the company said in a statement.

Khalid Shaikh’s company has developed more than 900 apps for the iTunes, and has raked in thousands of dollars a day in the process. Now Apple is banning the developer from its App Store. While no one really seems to be defending the developer on the grounds of quality, the complaints apparently stem from copyright issues.

“The persistent nature of such complaints has led us to conclude that you are entering into the representations and warranties in the iDP Agreement in bad faith by misrepresenting that you have all the necessary rights for your submissions,”

Apple said in a statement to the developer.

Of course the whole thing once again calls into question the same vetting process which banned Google voice and allowed and then banned that now-infamous baby-shaking app. Nine-hundred apps is a lot of copyright infringement to slip under the radar in the first place, right?

Original Post By:- AppScout

Tunebite is the best solution to remove copy protection from music, audio books and films & then convert it to one of 100 file formats

Click to enlarge

Since 2004, Tunebite has been mentioned and singled out for excellence in more computer trade publications than any other legal software solution that removes DRM copy protection. Tunebite legally removes the audio DRM copy protection from music & audio books by re-recording it at up to 54x the speed. With either the playback software or Tunebite, additional copyrighted music & audio book files can be copied by using the virtual CD-burner.

Tunebite has one of a kind quality control with PerfectAudio, guaranteeing error-free audio output. Tunebite turns the PC into a high-performance, Video DRM converter and ensures the synchronicity of video & audio while the copyrighted video files are played back. In the process, Tunebite legally photographs, frame by frame, the replayed, copyrighted films & saves them in the desired format.

Tunebite informs you of the expected output quality of the files to be converted based on the operating system and PC performance & also warns of a loss in quality before converting files on PCs with weaker performance. The quality is also inspected during conversion. After the conversion is complete, Tunebite provides tips, in the rare event that problems do arise, to avoid such problems that may occur. Lots of extras: audio recorder for recording music from web radios (e.g. Last.fm), video recorder for video portals (e.g. Youtube) & automatically finds ID3 tags, album artwork & song lyrics.

Files can be played using your own player or with Winamp, Apple iTunes or Microsoft Windows Media Player. Music can be dubbed by synching cell phones, MP3 players, Apple iPods & other portable devices. There is a generator for individual cell phone ringtones. CD burning capabilities for audio CDs, audio DVDs and MP3 CD are also included

Download and Try Tunebite Here

Pros:

• Improved user-interface
• Good file format support and conversion speed
• Excellent set of media tools

Cons:

• User-manual needs improving and updating
• Perfect Audio mode is slow

Give your valuable comment on this post. The best 3 comments will get Tunebite Premium License Key for Free.

Comments will be judged by user votes

Although even the best-connected users can’t get their hands on Windows 7’s final code until Aug. 6, people willing to pirate the new operating system can download it today from several file-sharing sites, searches show.

Build 7600.16385, which Microsoft declared as Windows 7 RTM, or “release to manufacturing,” earlier Wednesday, leaked to the Internet almost a week ago. On the BitTorrent tracking site Mininova.org, for example, that build first appeared July 16.

According to the filename on Mininova, the build was compiled July 13.

Not surprisingly, the first edition of the build to hit BitTorrent was a 64-bit Chinese edition. That same day, English-language versions of the 32- and 64-bit popped up on Mininova. Since then, other language editions have appeared, including German, Hungarian and Italian.

Microsoft has not been able to plug the leaks of Windows 7. Last October, just hours after the company unveiled the first public build to attendees at its Professional Developers Conference, the alpha hit BitTorrent. Since then, the OS has leaked repeatedly, including prior to the public beta of January 2009 and the release candidate of May.

But while pirates grab the final bits — more than 5,000 copies of the English editions posted on Mininovalast week have been downloaded — legitimate users must wait two weeks for the new operating system.

According to the roll-out schedule Microsoft announced yesterday, developers and IT professionals who subscribe to the MSDN or TechNet services will have first dibs on Windows 7 RTM only on Aug. 6.

Consumers, on the other hand, must be even more patient: They won’t receive their pre-ordered copies of Windows 7, or be able to buy new PCs with it pre-installed, until Oct. 22.

Windows 7 retail prices run from $119.99 to $219.99 for upgrades, and from $199.99 to $319.99 for full-package editions.

Free application MetatOGGer is an advanced MP3 (and OGG Vorbis, FLAC, Speex, Musepack, Windows Media, WavPack, and Monkey’s Audio) tag editor that can automatically tag your music by creating audio fingerprints and comparing them with online database, MusicBrainz.

And while MusicBrainz already has its own dedicated application for this, we’ve always found Picard to be a little clunky. MetatOGGer, on the other hand, seems quite a bit more user friendly. Likewise, MetatOGGer can automatically search out and add lyrics to your tags from web site LyricWiki.

MetatOGGer is freeware, Windows only, requires .NET 3.5 SP1. If you give it a try, let’s hear how it worked for you in the comments.

Download MetatOGGer

Windows only: Hunting down application after application to fill a new computer with your favorite software can be a pain. Free application Smart Installer Pack makes it easy.

Just download the (rather hefty) 227MB application, run it, and choose à la carte from the many popular applications contained within, from Firefox or Chrome to Picasa or GIMP to more obscure favorites like Daemon Tools (image mounter). We’ve seen similar tools in the past, like previously mentioned InstallPad and AppSnap, and while SIP doesn’t offer as wide a feature set as either of those options, it’s still a decent alternative to a long Google hunt for each app. The SIP installers don’t run silently, so you’ll still have to hassle through all the clicking (another drawback that puts the previously mentioned apps a step ahead of SIP), but it’s got an attractive, simple interface that anyone—computer savvy or not—can handle.

Smart Installer Pack is a free download, Windows only.

Download Smart Installer

VLC 1.0 has got several cool new features, one of which is the ability to record what is playing in the screen.  Here we will take a look at how easy it is to record a DVD or other video formats using VLC.

Record Using VLC

You won’t see the record button in the default view so we need to make it available in the control panel by going to View and selecting Advanced Controls.

Now you can see the Record button along with a couple other handy controls like snapshot and looping.

Now when you start up a DVD or other video simply click on the record button and hit is a second time to end the recording.

While it is recording notice that the record button will be blue.

The recorded video is in MPEG format and stored them in the Documents folder labeled as VLC Record with the date and time.

This is a great way to save entire movies or specific scenes you want to watch later on your hard drive.

Of course VLC won’t burn the recorded MPEG file to DVD but you can certainly use other programs for that.  This is a much different process than “ripping” and you will need to play the video while it records.

Download VLC 1.0 for Windows, Linux, OSX

]]> http://techplore.com/technology/how-to-copy-a-dvd-with-vlc-1-0/feed/ 0 http://techplore.com/technology/workaround-for-firefox-3-5-slow-startups-on-windows/ http://techplore.com/technology/workaround-for-firefox-3-5-slow-startups-on-windows/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:04:52 +0000 Abhijit Kamal http://techplore.com/technology/?p=1252

If you find yourself with very long startup times after upgrading to Firefox 3.5 (from say 10 seconds to the order of minutes), you may be experimenting a bug due to a change in how Firefox 3.5 gets the randomness it needs for security purposes on Windows.

The procedure involves scanning some temporary folders looking for bits normally added by OS and other applications operations. Firefox 3.5 looks for more files and deeper (more subfolders) for increased randomness, but it has led to unexpected results for users with too many temporary folders or files resulting in slow startups.

Try builds are still being generated with fixes to this bug, but users report a noticeable improvement after deleting their temporary folders and  Internet Temporary Files (generated by Internet Explorer).

To clean temporary folders, check  and delete all files [you can, some may be in use] from these:

C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\History
C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents And Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temp
C:\Documents And Settings\*user*\Recent

On Windows Vista /7:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
%TEMP%

To delete Internet Temporary Folders, in the Control Panel., open Internet Options. In the Browsing History section, press the Delete… button, check all the options and press Delete.

Users report a significant improvement after doing this, even those who use Internet Explorer once in a while.

A fix to this bug should become available with Firefox 3.5.1, expected in a few weeks.

DVD, CD and BD media keep their data only for a limited period of time. And the data starts to degrade slowly. It might be possible to get back some files on the DVD’s or CD’s but in case of one single big file of some650 MBor like wise things become hard. Even if a small part of that file gets unreadable we lose the whole file. You might have got errors such as “Cannot copy file: Data error (cyclic redundancy check)“ / “Cannot copy file: Cannot read from the source file or disk” like wise.

The invasion Flash Drives and portable hard disks have still not affected the market of CD’s and DVD’s and still are the most widely used storage mediums used today. Their cheap price is the main factor behind this gain. DVD’s and CD’s are cheaper but they lack one defect. DVD’s and CD’s gradually degrade with time. In the earlier days i used to take backups of my important data to CD’s and keep them safely (almost at a dust proof place). I thought that even after long time my data would be safe. My PC’s hard disk used to work 3-5 hours during those days. So i thought that it would be safer to store and Keep the data in CD’s rather than keeping on my Hard Disks. But when i tried to read the CD after a very long time but every time it failed. The CD’s were not able to read except very few.

But there is happy news for all. There is a way to Protect DVD, CD or BD Medias from future damages. We can still recover the data stored in them very easily.

Thanks to dvdisaster. Dvdisaster will help you to recover the data’s stored in old CD’s, DVDs etc. dvdisaster is one nice software that helps us to recover data from DVD’s, CD’s etc. dvdisaster makes this possible by integrating some error detection and correction codes along with the burned data. So even if some read errors have developed the data will be completely recoverable. The data recovery will be possible even if the DVD, CD or BD gets scratched or gets errors due to its oldness. dvdisaster reads the original DVD or CD and then creates an error correction file which consumes a 15% of additional space. For e.g. if a CD of 700MB of data is taken it needs approx. 105MB of space for creating the error correction file and a 4.7GB DVD file needs an error correction file of approx. 700 MB space. When the DVD, CD or BD get’s scratched or encounter readability problems or errors, then dvdisaster will make use of the error correction file to correctly recover the data from the scratched DVD, CD or BD.

How to Use dvdisaster to Protect DVD,CD or BD

1. First insert the DVD/CD from which needs to be protected.
2. Run dvdisaster and choose the correct DVD/CD and fromFileclick onSelect Imageand give the destination to save the image file.
3. Again fromFile SelectParity Fileand give the location to save the error correction (.ECC) file.
4. Selection the option calledReadsee in the right pane of dvdisaster. This will take some time so go for a cup of coffee ad relax.
5. After the reading process gets finished clickCreateoption to create the ECC file.

How to Use dvdisaster to Recover  DVD, CD or BD from Read Errors

From the above mentioned steps we have successfully created the error correction file. Now whenever you have read errors with your DVD, CD or BD and not able to copy the files from them properly, just follow the steps below.

1. Run dvdisaster and locate the DVD/CD and click onRead.
2. Now just choose the ECC file present in the DVD/CD and click onFix. You can burn the image file in ISO extension to a DVD/CD.

What if i haven’t created the Error Correction (.ECC) File before ? I have a very old DVD/CD with me.

I am sure at least some of the users (may be most) reading this post will have this question in their mind.

dvdisastercan also be used to recover the contents of a damaged DVD/CD even when if you havent created the error correction (.ECC) file before / if no ECC file is available. Only problem is that the data recovery chances are less without the error correction (.ECC) file

dvdisaster will create an image file by reading the entire disk by skipping unreadable portions / damaged parts and then tries to recover the missing data from the DVD/CD by scanning then repeatedly.

And the best of the best dvdisaster is free and it is available for Windows, Mac OSX,Linux and Unix.

Download dvdisaster

In the age of the Internet, it’s difficult to keep things under wraps till you launch a product. Microsoft’s announcement of Office 2010 is still a few hours away, but since its page went up a while ago, Google already cached it!

The biggest news out of the launch is, without doubt, the introduction of the Office Web suite of applications, which will be taking on Google Docs. Microsoft has finally realized the value of ‘free’ as Word, Excel and PowerPoint will have free-to-use online versions, accessible via your Windows Live account.

Based on that cached page and TechCrunch’s guide, here are some of the salient features of Office 2010:

1. Office Web 2010:

a) Word, Excel and PowerPoint will look the same as they do in their desktop versions, complete with the popular ‘ribbon’ interface from Office 2007.

b) You can directly publish documents from your desktop Office suite to the online Office Web suite, and work on it in any browser. Almost all browsers are supported, as MS is working out the chinks in running the suite on Google Chrome

2. Word 2010:

a) Multiple users can work on the same file at the same time. Details of how this will happen haven’t been released, but MS has said that as you make changes, the program will alert the other users to update the document for the same. The collaboration, however, will not be available in the Web version.

b) Copy-paste functionalities have received a boost, and Word 2010 will also be able to handle taking screenshots and embedding them into the document.

3. Excel 2010:

a) A new feature called Sparklines gives a visual snapshot image of a data trend over time within a cell.

4. PowerPoint 2010:

a) Video and image editing will be integrated into PowerPoint, with the former option being akin to Apple’s iMovie, while image-editing is like a stripped-down version of Photoshop.

5. Outlook 2010:

a) The ‘ribbon’ interface has been included into all Office 2010 Apps, including Outlook.

b) The inbox layout has also changed, with a new message-tree-like appearance.

c) The ‘Ignore conversation’ feature will allow users to remove themselves from irrelevant email strings.

A free, online version of MS-Office will undoubtedly have a lot of people trusting the cloud more, because no matter what Google Docs has to offer, MS-Office is still MS-Office! Without doubt, there is lots more to come from the Redmond-based software giant when it makes its official announcement. And we will keep you updated as more news breaks…

iTunes Lyrics Importer

iTunes can display song lyrics for music  files, but it doesn’t automatically slurp in that data in the same way as it does album art. To grab lyrics, download the free iTunes Lyrics Importer. Close iTunes first, and then install and launch Lyrics Importer. iTunes will also open.

You can obtain lyrics for specific tunes by selecting one or many songs and then clicking the Get Lyrics button. Preview the details if you want, and click Update.

You can also update your full library in one swoop, without verifying each track. Select the iTunes window, and select all music by pressing <Ctrl+A. In the iTunes Lyrics Importer window, click the Update Automatically check box, and then click Get Lyrics. The utility will churn through your library, taking several seconds per track (which can add up for big libraries). Click OK when it finishes.

The program store the lyrics within the the song file. To see them so you can sing along, right-click a track, select Get Info, and choose the Lyrics tab. On an iPod, press the center button several times to cycle to the lyrics screen. On an iPhone or an iPod Touch, just tap the screen while the device is playing the song.

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