Digital Compass

A new Bluetooth specification for portable devices will piggyback on their built in Wifi hardware to accelerate file transfer speeds by a huge margin. The process, technically known as alternate MAC/PHY will reportedly become an official addition to the Bluetooth specification this april, It involves having devices search for and recognize each other using standard Bluetooth handsake protocols, and then handling over actual file transfer to the devices Wifi hardware using an ad-hoc connection while control over the connection while control over the connection remains with the bluetooth controller, speeds could jump upto Wifi current 54 mb/s rating. But that's not all! According to broadcom. some of its chips already in circulation can be upgraded with just a firmware flash.

2009 is looking really fantastic already and we have Good reasons for why it is going to be a great year in gaming. We loved F.E.A.R to death playing it multiple times over the years ( since 2006 to be exact ). The subsequent expansion packs that followed ( not developed by monolith ) pretty lame leaving us craving for a full fledged sequel. Of course, since the game performed really well both critically and commercially, a sequel wasn't far away and sure enough Monolith are back with a sequel that will dwell deeper into the life of uber creepy freakshow, Alma. Making his debut in this game is a brand new protagonist by the name of Michael becket, Who will be exploring the remains of the city that was obliterated after the end of F.E.A.R.

There are a number of mobile phone deals out there available on the latest handsets. You can also get better deals if you decide to take out a mobile broadband contract at the same time, but if you want to simply get a decent mobile phone, then here are 2 handsets that we reckon will be big sellers in 2009. First up there is the Sony Ericsson C903. The Sony Ericsson c903 is a mid range phone and is perfectly suited to today's economic climate. It doesn't have all the mod cons associated with many of the other phones that were announced at the world mobile congress, however it will be reasonably priced on contract.

If you want to opt for something a little more special then why not go for the Nokia N97? This phone comes with a touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard that is capable of taking on the iphone. However we would say that the N97 is more suited to the business user, with its Symbian S60 operating system. Overall, these are 2 entirely different phones with 2 entirely different price selling points. Whcih one you decide to go for will largely depend on your budget.

Since upgrading to firefox 3, the backup of bookmarks in the file "bookmarks.html" has not been updated .Why does this useful Feature not work all of a sudden?

From version 3 onwards, Firefox uses the database file "places.sqlite" to save bookmarks, and the format "json" for backup files. the file "bookmarks.html", in the previous program versions that used to store the bookmarks, is no longer used in firefox 3, However if you want to continue to use it for simple backups, You can make a setting in the advanced configuration to instruct the browser to automatically update the "bookmarks.html" file on closing as it did in the older versions.

Type "about.config" in the address bar and press [ Enter ] confirm the warning " i will be careful, I promise !" Now search fr the entry "browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML", Double-click on it, to change the logical value to "true". Now, the browser will update the file 'bookmarks.html" directly in the profile folder on closing firefox every time.

There are a few mobile phones worth talking about at the moment and boy do they look good, the problem is that you are going to have to pay for them. The best thing to do to find the best mobile phone deals is to use a good, competent price comparison website that will help you to navigate through the massive amounts of deals that are available online at the moment. There are 2 phones that are looking particularly interesting at the moment. Firstly there is the Samsung Tocco Ultra, this is the replacement for the older Tocco, with some firmware updates and a slide out keyboard. The touch screen is more responsive and the screen colours much clearer. This is only one option of course.

The other option is to go for the LG Arena, this is the newest touch screen mobile phone from LG and we have to say it looks absolutely brilliant. There are already some companies taking pre-orders for this mobile phone so why not get in before everybody else and grab yourself one of these 2 great mobile phones?

Want to watch your Downloaded collection of movies on the home theatre system? To do this you will need to convert the videos into the VOB format of DVD video. This can be done using tools like Nero or Roxio, but Convertx to DVD does the job really well. With it you can also design the menus for your home DVD movie. Of course, you can just buy yourself a DVD player that plays Divx, There's support for a wide range of formats that include avi, divx, xvid, mov, mkv, flv, mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg-, nsv, dvr-ms, tivo, ts, ifo, vob, wmv, realmedia. existing files from digital camcorders, TV/Sat, capture cards and so on.

We liked the exhaustive set of options for defining various aspects of DVD creation such as encoding quality, DVD target size, video and audio processing parameters, chapter intervals, DVD resolution and so on.

You can either define these parameters from a dialog box or through the tree view, If you opt for the latter, where options are neatly categorized, simply click on the default text and replace it with you text - as in the case of "Title text for Title Menu"

As we went about converting a video and making a DVD we noticed that previews were always shown at each step, This feedback helped us make refinments before burning the DVD using the built - in CD burning engine.

Next post will feature how to Convert your flash into exe and scr? and for more tutorials keep visiting Digital Compass.

VERDICT: This tool makes it easy to create custom DVDs for home movies

FOR: Exhaustive set of options.

AGAINST: None

Fresh UI has hundreds of settings for configuring and optimizing windows XP/2000/NT/98/95/Me. With it you will be able to customize the windows user interface and applications settings, and control the user environment with policies, A plus point here is the good organization of the feature set with sections such as Applications, Hardware, Windows system and so on, This makes for easy navigation and usage, With Fresh UI you are essentially tweaking the windows registry settings. But you can also use it to enforce policies such as disallowing users to change the desktop wallpaper.

The benefit here is that you get a simple interface to play around with registry settings, As a precaution, Back up these registry first, So that you can revert to its earlier version if something goes wrong.

Probing into the ' Tools ' menu we discovered ways to tweak settings for the Dr watson windows debug tool For instance, you can specify the number of errors to save and opt for visual notification, if the integrity of data is a top concern then tweak the file signature verification setting, You can ask to be notified if system files are modified. A registry cleaner and editor is included. There's also a text editor for editing system configuration Files ( INI ), config.sys and autoexec.bat

VERDICT: A tool that makes Windows look and work the way you want to.

FOR: Easy navigation through features with detailed descriptions.

AGAINST: Does not work with Windows Vista.

Feedreader 3 is a fantastic RSS reader that automatically downloads all your RSS and Atom feeds for you. Its minimalist interface design devotes most of the screen space to feed listings. There are only menus and no toolbar buttons. beneath this interface there are some powerful features. For instance , a feature called smartfeeds lets users find RSS feeds on the web by entering keywords that relate to the feed, to access this go to "file | New | Smartfeed" or hit [ Shift ] + [ F3 ]. Then create a rule for the feed by clicking on the drop-list boxes. Normal feeds can also be converted to smartfeeds.

.The intelliupdate feature uses an algorithm to recognize and learn the update frequency of each feed, And trigger it when needed . useful, since websites updates feeds at different intervals; Intelliupdates will ensure that your downloaded feeds are always the latest in the background as you work and you get Outlook-style popup alerts when a new feed arives as a bonus, Feedreader can also download enclosures and podcasts that are attached to articles, it allows you to tag all articles and this helps in organizing them,

Feedreader is such a compact little program that it occupies a small memory footprint of just 4 mb, This little Program is absolutely new !

FOR: Small memory footprint, Intelliupdate feature. AGAINST: No toolbar with buttons.