AlphaComputing

Flash Comes One Step Closer To The iPhone

Alpha — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:02:04 +0000

In the latest update to Adobe Flash Player, Adobe has added along with a few other teaks “Support for multi-touch and gesture-enabled content. What comes to mind with multi-touch…? Ah the iPhone! Oh and Android. One big problem with flash content on mobile devices has always been that flash is a very pointer oriented platform. Meaning it relies on a mouse for all its hover effects.

Now with multi-touch and gesture-enabled content developers can get cracking with their new feature and make them restaurant sites more touch friendly in the future.

Forums 101: Being a First Class Forum User

Alpha — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:51:52 +0000

Forums are a great way to find answers to problems, debate different issues and topics, interact and help out other in need and just have a discussion. But when forums aren’t used correctly people coming in from search engines or daily users get a little cranky (my self included). So as a way to help you or someone you know a better forum user i have made this list of 5 ways to become a first class forum user. Feel free to refer all the people you believe are not using forums correctly

1. People can get very agitated when they can’t find what their looking for, and when they see that you have posted a thread in a forum and come back later to say its ok now and you fixed it without posting how you did it. So to combat this, post in enough detail how you fixed the problem. Heck if you have a blog make a full length blog post and link of to it! but do NOT spam.

2. Don’t keep repeating the question! Ok we get it you have the same problem. But they are people who just want to find an answer. if you don’t know how to fix it refrain from posting at all.

3. Found the answer? Help others out by posting to unanswered forum threads a link to where you found a good explanation/fix/answer etc.

4. Don’t troll. Ok you’re looking for some sort of cheat for a video game, one of the posters has mentioned how to do this on his PS3 and you go ahead and leave a reply “Ha! ps3 sucks! fa!g” . Well that’s not nice is it? How would you like it if someone punched you in the face?. Forums are supposed to be a nice clean environment and if it was my forum you were trolling on I’d have you banned, and so would many others.

5. Last but most certainty not least, don’t double post! At least do a search! How hard can it be? Do your research before you post, please. But if you come across a double post, don’t start trolling on the thread. Saying that it has already been answered. The question might be slightly different.

And that’s the top 5 top tips.

First Look at Windows Live Essentials Beta

Run Mac OS X in VirtualBox on Windows

Alpha — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 10:46:43 +0000

How to create a Hackintoshed Virtualbox
What you’ll need.
The newest Virtualbox build http://www.virtualbox.org/
An OSX86 iso from http://www.osx86project.org/
After you have the above mentioned files install Virtualbox. Open up Virtualbox and click on New at the top left.

At the Create New Virtual Machine window, click Next.

At this window type OSX as the name and it will automatically change the system and version.
The next window will let you choose your RAM amount.

If you can spare it crank it up as far as you can go but 1024MB should be sufficient.

This is where you’ll make your hard disk. 20GB should be enough so what it comes down to is dynamic or static. Dynamic will expand on use and Static will be a fixed 20GB no matter how much data is actually in it. Dynamic is better for not taking up your hard drive but Static should give you better performance. I normally use Dynamic. Click next unless you want to change it from Dynamic or if you want to increase the disk size or file location.

This is the settings you configured. Finish. Now click settings at the top. At this window click on System at the left and uncheck Enable EFI.

Now click on the Storage button on the left. From there click on Empty under the OSX.vdi
Next click the folder with the green arrow on the right.

At this window click Add (Plus sign on 3 CD’s) at the top. Then find and add the OSX86 iso you downloaded earlier. Then highlight it and click Select at the bottom. Then click OK and start

Now this is where you’ll install your OSX in Vbox!

At this point click inside the window and hit F8. Then at the boot: _ prompt type –v so you can see what exactly went wrong if something does go wrong. All the services will run and eventually you should come to the language screen. Choose your language then click next. If you are unable to move your mouse around then hit Right-Ctrl + I. Click continue, agree the click utilities at the top and click Disk Utility.

At this screen highlight 20GB VBOX HARDDISK. Then click erase at the right and Name it what you want in the name box and then click erase at the bottom right. When the cancel erase box pops up click Erase. It shouldn’t take long. Then click Disk Utility at the top left and then Click Quit Disk Utility. Now your back at the installer. Highlight the drive that is now showing up and click continue.

The next window is important. Click customize at the bottom left.
For AMD Users check,
Any Updates included at the top.
Drop down Kernels and choose Legacy kernel.
AMD option below System support.
For Intel Users,
Any Updates included at the top.
Drop down bootloaders and check the newest chameleon.
Drop down Kernels and choose Legacy kernel.
Then click Next done and Install. To speed up the process you can click Skip when the disc check pops up.
Wait for it to finish installing…

As soon as it says installation finished and starts counting down to restart press the Right-Ctrl and then click on Devices at the top and hit CD/DVD Devices and click Unmount CD/DVD Device. Then click Machine and Reset then click reset at the prompt. Next you’ll see the Chameleon loader and then OSX will begin to boot.

After it boots you will see the setup screens for OSX!
You’re good to go. The only hiccup I’ve found is that it can only be virtualized with one core. It could be the OSX disc I was using or it might not be. And I have yet to find the right kext that will allow audio to work and the resolution is limited also. But other than that you’ll have a fully functioning OSX virtualized!

Via: Tek411

First Look at Windows Live Essentials Beta

Alpha — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:14:24 +0000

The download is available here for as long as it is in beta and will be available on the official page. Note that the final version of this software may change in the final version.

Messenger.

Messenger got a nice redesign which brings many new social features to the table. It integrates a large number of services you can pick and customize into a single feed, much like friend feed. Once you add a account you can easily change your privacy settings for each service from the live.com online interface.

The messenger interface has changed slightly. All the buttons have moved to a single row under the text area. The block button has changed to a “Appear Offline to this Person” which i prefer since it works better for the way i personally block people. There is also an “Always on top” button to keep the window “Always on top”. An awesome new feature that comes with the beta is tabbed conversations! I can finally cut down on those millions of what windows i have open and have all my conversations in one window much like a tabbed browser.

The main application has two modes/layouts, you can have the huge feed of all your friends or you can switch to the compact chat only view in the top right. A few of the old features like themes settings have been moved to the drop-down menu. Finally, you can easily enter a preview links before you post them as your status.

sync.

sync is a very cool program. It’s completely new to this generation of essentials and has two uses.

First of all it does what it says on the can, it “syncs” you can select folders to sync to your 25gb of Sky Drive cloud storage. This works much like the popular sync program, dropbox. It’s also much easier to sync documents and IE bookmarks with the cloud and multiple computers.

The second feature remote desktop connection. You can connect to your computer over th internet and use it just like you where right there. Much like services like TeamViewer or GoToAssist.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ci46MjpReI

Photo Gallery / Movie Maker.

These two apps haven’t changed much they have just got better integration with Facebook, youtube, skydrive and other services. One cool feature Photo Gallery got though is photo tagging just like on Facebook. And the cool thing is when you upload the photo to skydrive or Facebook the tags are preserved.

Mail.

Not much has been done to mail either the only big change is it’s much easier to integrate other email accounts like Yahoo! Mail or Gmail.

Writer.

This is one of my favorite apps. Writer allows you to post to your favorite blogging platform (Blogger, Spaces and WordPress!). Has some cool plugin support and a great blog theme fetcher which will automatically set it’s self up to look like your blog. And to prove how cool it is, this post was written in live Writer.

How I Create My YouTube Videos

Alpha — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:20:59 +0000

I try to create the highest quality videos i can for my audience and so i use Camtasia Studio by TechSmith. Camtasia is aimed towards the screen-cast professional, which is where its price tag of $299 comes in. It is not the kind of software you would buy not to use. But if you are serious about your recording needs then Camtasia Studio is perfect for you (and me).

There are plenty of other great applications that can capture your screen very well, such as BB FlashBack which many YouTube screen-casters use. There are also some good gaming recorders like Fraps which captures games in the highest frame rate possible without slowing down your system too much like Camtasia Studio or BB FlashBack. For you mac guys out their, ScreenFlow is for you. It offers a lot of cool features and customization, but i still recommend Camtasia:mac which I reviewed. And finally for all you guys who just want a simple easy to use recorder with no fuss that is completely free, theres CamStudio.

As for my background music i get most of it from ClearBits (aka: legaltorrents.com ). But if you have your own music you would like to hear in the background of my videos don’t hesitate to drop me a line at alpha@alphacomputing.net

Camtasia Studio is extremely powerful and I go over most of my edits and features I use about half way through the video bellow.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Fdqp_Prws

iOS 4 on older Hardware (iPhone 3G, iPodTouch 2G, 3G-8gb)

Alpha — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:05:39 +0000

As of Monday, June 21st 2010 Apple released their 4th version of the iPhone Software renamed as “iOS”. iOS4 brings multitasking, background wallpapers, a unified inbox, new settings and a few more new features. Not all the iDevices get this full upgrade though. Only the iPhone 3GS and 16-32gb iPod3G get all the features, like multitasking and all the good stuff.

I currently own a 8gb iPodTouch 3g which does not fully support all the features. So i booted up synced up and started up my iPod, expecting my wallpaper ( a very minor feature ) new folders, the new safari integration… But i was left very dissatisfied. All Apple is giving us is an ad filled OS. The only feature we get for older hardware that worked well is the iAds platform. On older hardware, we don’t get wallpaper, multitasking and “descent” folders. All of which i could do very well on the same device while it was jail broken. Why the evil doers at Apple can’t give me a wallpaper and folders that work well, i don’t know. You’re probably wondering why i think the folders are so bad. Well it’s because while everyone was in oar when Steve Jobs showed them off on the iOS4 demo a few months ago he skipped over the fact that you can only have 12 icons in one folder! Thats right, less than a page of apps is a single folder. I cant even scroll through them like i could on the popular Categories app available through Cydia on a Jail Broken iPod and iPhone.

In conclusion, if your currently on older unsupported hardware, don’t upgrade. Stay with your jailbreak and be happy. I know what my next phone will be

Browse the web as if you had a iPad

Alpha — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:16:14 +0000

Apple’s new product the iPad has just been launched (april 3rd). And many websites have also come out with their iPad compatible sites. Most of us who have not got iPads can’t view these sites or test them so i have put together a small hack for you guys who are interested. I will show you how to change the user agent of MozillaFirefox with a small add-on called User Agent Switcher available on the Mozilla Add ons page. This add-on allows you to change your browser’s user agent to trick the website into thinking that you are on a iPad when your actually laying back browsing with Firefox.

So once you have added User Agent Switcher to Firefox you can go up into Tools and click on “Default User Agent”. You should have some default user agents like IE and the iPhone. We need to add the iPad ourselves so we click on “Edit User Agents” inside the “Default User Agent” menu. Here we click on “New” and then “New User Agent”. It should ask you to fill out a few fields. You can enter any user agent for any device you would like, there’s a good list of user agents over at Wikipedia if you would like to try that, but we are going to continue with the iPad.

You should still be in the “New User Agent” window. In the Description enter iPad . For the user agent paste this in:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10

Then for the App Name: Mobile Safari
And app version: 5.0 (Macintosh; en-US)

Click ok and go back into “Tools>Default User Agent” and choose your new user agent “iPad”. Now go around the web and any site that has separate iPad site should load up. BUT, not all iPad functionality is supported by FireFox because the iPad ships with Safari which renders things slightly differently and has full HTML5 support.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOzjZ4byRfQ

Thanks for reading and feel free to share if this was helpful or interesting. Fun fact: The word “user agent” was used 30 times on this article.

CrunchBase Information on IPad

CrunchBase Information on FireFox

Free, legal, fast, reliable music From YouTube: Muziic

Alpha — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:53:02 +0000

So you want completely free music? From the latest artists, bands and albums? You want a fast and reliable streaming source like YouTube? You want to be able to listen to that music on your Apple iPod, iPhone, iPad, Mac, Linux Machine and Microsoft Windows Computer? Well there’s a website out there called Muziic.

This service uses the YouTube API which means it imports all the music from YouTube which means it is pretty fast. You can search for any artist, band or album you fancy and when you start playing the song the video will begin playing in the side and player controls will load beneath. If you click on an album you will get a new tab open (in muziic) where it will display the songs in that album and give you the option to share that album with your friends over twitter, facebook, MySpace, Digg etc.On the left you can create playlists so you can listen to your favorite songs without interruption.

Another great feature is their desktop client which is available for Windows (for now) and has a slick black look. Functionality is the same. But since they do have the web player you don’t ever need to download anything. Just as long as you have flash you will be fine. For your portable music experience they have a iPhone app. It has all the basic functionality of the desktop and web apps and even has continuous playback.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtxE8W94EYs

So that’s how to get your music free fast and legally. If you have found this post helpful feel free to share with your friends because “sharing is caring”.

Free Web Based Screen Recorder: Screenr and ScreenJelly

Alpha — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:48:49 +0000

Have you ever been in the situation where your friend needed your help with a PC related problem and you really needed to show him your screen so that he could understand what he has to do, but you couldn’t because you didn’t have a screen recorder and it takes to long to send a video file. So what are you going to do? Well i have found two perfect services for this situation that will really come in handy next time.

The services are called Screenr and ScreenJelly (or sreenjel.ly). And what they are created to do is to be a very quick easy and fast way to get your screen cast out. The bonus is that because they are both web apps and live in the cloud its cross platform! Mac or PC, not sure about Linux. They both do basically the same thing which is record your screen and host your video. Screenr offers a few extra features like iphone/ipod and iPad capable player so it can be seen on virtually any device. SreenJelly on the other hand has a more private approach with the option to make videos private, and also has 2 extra sign up options, facebook and a screenjelly account.

They both use Java , and are pretty fast at uploading your video to their services. If you are not happy with your recording you can delete it or continue on and Tweet it. And once you have your account activated and start creating videos they will all appear on your Screenr or ScreenJelly profile. After upload Screenr allows you to then download the .mp4 or even publish it straight to YouTube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSz0CqjmbVI

So if ever need an instant screen recorder those are your number one (and two) options. I recommend Screenr because of the extra features and nicer look and ScreenJelly for its privacy. Thanks for reading and remember “sharing is caring”

NewsMap.jp – A new way to see the news

Alpha — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:28:17 +0000

So fed up of that boring Google news page? Well NewsMap.jp is something to look into. What NewsMap.jp presents the news feeded in from Google in a much more visually appealing way. You can select from one or more of the given categories that are given at the bottom of the page such as Technology and Sports. It is all color coded by recency, so lighter colors are newer news that was posted within 10 minuets darker are more than 10 minuets ago and the darkest is more than 1 hour ago. Then at the top of the page you can select one or more countries that you would like to see news from.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulAVkBlTTnQ

If you then decide to sign up for newsmap, you get extra features such as the ability to change your font, change what categories and countries load when you are logged in etc. You can also select what counties not to display at all.

NewsMap.jp was developed by Marumushi and is powered by Google News Thanks for reading and don’t forget that “Sharing is caring”.