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Dropbox 23GB of free space for 2 years You must have an android device for this to work. As found on : http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1550699 and HotUkDealsLinky : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5152607/Drop...v2_theos0o.apk Step 1: If you already have Dropbox installed on your Android device, you must Clear data, Force close and finally uninstall it from Settings > Applications > Manage...

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Sky Go Android App released It certainly has been a long time coming and even though it comes with strings, Sky's "Sky Go" app has finally been released for Android. Don't get too excited just yet though. Sky Go will only work on supported Android devices running 2.2x and 2.3x. Not only that but to "ensure that our rights contracts are fully upheld we are also unable to support any Android devices...

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Asus Transformer TF101 not charging, SOLVED!Asus Transformer TF101 not charging, SOLVED! I purchased an ASUS Transformer TF101 a few months ago and I have been very happy with it. That was until recently. When I plugged it in it would no longer charge. I read on multiple forums that this was a common issue for Transformer owners and some fixes included putting the transformer plug into the freezer to cool it down and also to bend the pins slightly to try to...

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Google’s response to Siri is codenamed Majel, could... Interesting. I've not tried Siri nor do I know anyone that has an iPhone 4GS that can give me reports on it. By all accounts it's the dogs nutsack so hopefully this app will be just as good. Google’s response to Siri is codenamed Majel, could be released by end of year | Android and Me.

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Carrier IQ: How the Widespread Rootkit Can Track Everything on Your Phone, and How to Remove ItCarrier IQ: How the Widespread Rootkit Can Track Everything... This post is especially for the paranoid amongst us. Recently an Android Developer discovered a rootkit called Carrier IQ that is capable of logging everything you do and worst of all it comes pre-installed on almost all smartphones, including Android, iPhone and Blackberry. Click on the link below for more information Carrier IQ: How the Widespread Rootkit Can Track...

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Streeme – Run your own music server

Category : DIY

After my last post about running your own search engine I thought that I would carry on the trend by introducing Streeme.

Streeme is a HTML5 based music server that will allow you to stream your entire mp3 music collection to any device that is connected to the web.

Streeme is cross platform and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Streeme is relatively easy to set up but it does involve installing a web server on your PC and opening ports on your router (if you want to be able to access your music from outside your home)

Check the link below for some more info.

Streeme - Web Based music server

streeme – Project Hosting on Google Code.

Running your own search engine

Category : Internet, P2P, Search Engine

It’s no secret that I love Open Source. I love the freedom it brings to a user, no licence fees, no pirating software and generally there’s a great community behind Open Source projects that help a user to find their feet. YaCy is no different.

I was reading an article about a guy that was trying to move from Google. He was trying to find an Open Source alternative to all the Google products that he used. While the article was very interesting the main project that stood out for me was his alternative to the Google search engine.

YaCy is a completely Open Source search engine that is based on the P2P model. It’s extremely easy to set up and it runs on your local machine (after installation just point your browser to http://localhost:8090)

The installation takes only three minutes. Just download the release, decompress the package and run the start script. On linux you need OpenJDK6. You don’t need to install external databases or a web server, everything is already included in YaCy.

I only installed it last night on my home machine and haven’t had a chance to give it a full workout but when I do I will report my findings back here but on first inspection it is an incredibly powerful and incredibly easy to install personal search engine.

*Edit* Did I mention that it is cross platform and will run on Windows, Linux and OSX?

Android App of the minute (for me anyway)

Category : Android, Internet

SMS Backup+

I’m really getting into all this cloud stuff and I’m after finding it very handy to be able to back up all my contacts and images to the cloud. Until now I just figured that SMS messages would have to be backed up manually, maybe that was the case before but not with this app.

SMS Backup+ backs up all your SMS messages to your Gmail account. It creates a label called SMS and stores all your SMS messages under that label.

It can be configured to back up at regular intervals. It can be configured so that it will only backup when it has a WiFi connection.

It’s free from the Android Market

Backup Backup Backup

Category : Internet

Here you, yeah you, when is the last time you backed up the personal data on your computer? If your computer went kaput while you were reading this article and there was no way to get back your pictures or your music or your thesis from your hard drive you would just restore them from your backup disk right? RIGHT?

If you don’t have any backup plan in place then you really really need to get one in place sooner rather than later.

Any type of backup is better than none. Copying the contents of your My Documents folder onto a DVD and putting it in your car is one way but it’s a bit tedious. The easiest way to back up is to create a backup that just works. You spend a few minutes configuring the software and then forget about it. Enter Crashplan. Crashplan is a great program that will allow you to back up your files to another computer in your house, to an external drive or even to your friends PC (if they have the space to store your stuff)

Crashplan has a great support forum where almost every scenario is covered. They have great rates for offsite storage and one of the most important parts is that all your backups are encrypted therefore you don’t have to worry about your friend snooping on any data that is backed up to his or her computer.

As it so happens I have terabytes of spare storage and I’m opening it up to readers of this blog to avail of my bandwidth and storage space to use my drives as offsite backup for their data. Just install Crashplan and contact me for the “Backup Key” that you will need to store your data on my disks.

D.I.Y. Car Phone Mount

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Category : Car, DIY, General, Mount

Not being one for having an original idea or thought I decided to rewrite my own version of a Lifehacker article that I read about creating your own car mount for your mobile phone.

Step 1 – Get your hands on a large Bulldog clip.

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Step 2 – Pop the handles off the bulldog clip

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Step 3 – Get a pliers and hold the looped edge in place while bending the clips upwards with your hand (see Step 4)

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Step 4 – The handles of the clip should look like this when you are done.

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Step 5 – Put the handles back on to the bulldog clip so that the bend in both handles are pointing towards each other.

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Step 6 – Put some elastic bands around the bottom of the handles for a bit of resistive tension.

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Step 7 – Pop your phone in between the handles for a D.I.Y. phone mount.

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You can clip the bulldog clip on to the air vents of your car to keep them in place and then attach your phone for an easy cheap phone car mount.

You can also accessorize the mount by wrapping wool or twine around the handles to cover the metal and give the phone a little bit more grip and protect the outside of the phone.

Happy hands-freeing.

.FREE – free domain names for all

Category : Uncategorized

I just stumbled upon a site that is giving free .free domain names. Just click on the link below if you are interested.

.FREE – new free generic top-level domain [gTLD].

Getting Chrome to work through HTTP Proxy on Ubuntu

Category : Chrome, Chromium, Internet

One of my mates converted me from Firefox to Chrome about a year ago and I must admit I was delighted with it’s speed and the multitude of extensions that it offered.

I had Chromium installed on Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit and it was working fine. I was connected to the web using a password protected HTTP Proxy server. Now I’m not sure exactly what changed, whether it was an update to Chromium, an update to Ubuntu or some change that I made but one day Chromium would no longer connect through the proxy.

I tried the usual “turn it off turn it back on” and uninstall and reinstall the browser but none of it seemed to work. After spending about an hour trying to get it working I just went back to using Firefox, that was until today. Today I was looking at different browser extensions when I came across one that I wanted to try out. Unfortunately for me it was only available for Chrome. This brought me back to the original problem that I had.

I fired up a terminal and entered chromium-browser into it to launch the browser. I was keeping an eye on the terminal as I changed the proxy settings in Chrome when I spotted this line

Major: (0×00020000) An invalid name was supplied | Minor: (0x96C73AF3) Cannot determine realm for numeric host address
My proxy server is generally inputted as an IP Address and not a hostname. Seeing the error above I edited my /etc/hosts file to add 1.2.3.4 proxy to it (where 1.2.3.4 was the IP Address of my proxy server) I restarted the browser and was able to log on through the proxy and on to the internet.