Facebook TimeLine - Check who has taken you off their list of friends secretly

Ever wondered why you dont get to hear from that person on your Facebook wall anymore ? And then you might wonder maybe they stopped using or didnt get on to Facebooking for a while?

Well here's a way to know if someone taken you off their friends list or in facebook vocab "Unfriend" you for some reason.

This neat trick involves in using the new facebook timeline which is soon to be live on everyones facebook profiles. But for now it remains as beta still you can add it as if you were developing an app with facebook developer network.

When you hear the words "app" and  "developer network" you might think oh no I know nothing about apps and developing but don't be put down by the big words. Its just going through some buttons named "next" and "finish" to complete the process and you are good to go. And after magically the Timeline tryout message will pop up in your facebook profile page automatically.

Check out the full guide on how to enable the TimeLine feature at Redmond Pie site and their other post on how to check who has un-friended you here

Cook yourself free breakfast rite in your hotel room with an iron and a coffee maker.

When you are sidetracked in a hotel room and you got cravings for a nice hot and a simple breakfast, fear no more an iron and a coffee maker can be there for your rescue.

Well any descent hotel should have those stuff available for their guests so guess how easy it is to cook them up in no time. Yummy bacon and half boiled (well sort of ) eggs or even fried eggs is not a problem.

check out the full video of Natalie Tran from Lonely Planet demonstrating this lifesaving and money-saving cooking hacks.

Note: Dont forget to remove all traces of your little cooking adventure off the desks, coffee maker, Iron and the wash room sink.

Fastest boot times I have seen. Windows 8 boots almost instantly

Well the first thing that comes to your mind about boot times and windows is that its slow. But in this competitive race of Operating systems wanting to be the best OS the companies are coming up with ways to beat each other in the game. Expect lots of gizmos in the up coming version of windows. Windows 8.

As explained in the video its almost amazing how it springs up to a usable state almost instantly.

It all has to do with a new technology. the devices that supports windows has come up with. something called UEFI. ( Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). The new interface pre boots just before the OS ( windows or Linux) and prepares the previously needed data for the OS thus making it a faster bootup. Read more more about it on the wiki

Want to dump that WebOS and Run Android on your HP Touchpad?

The people at Cyanogenmod team and few other teams are racing to a final release of a stable android OS on the defunct Hp Touchpad. Well theres a US $2000 reward aswell to be won for the people who comes up with the final release.


Note: Amazon still has HP TouchPad 16 GB and HP TouchPad 32 GB in stock.
and the Cheaper Smartbuy Hp TouchPad 16GB 


Here is a video from the Cyanogenmod team below and the note from them.

Hey Internet--
Here is some (older) touchpad progress from Friday. The Cyanogenmod team wanted to share it with the public to bring attention to our need for a few more touchpads (for developers currently working without them).

As you can see from this quick demo, we've been working hard and have made progress. Since this video was created last week, the build has been more "tabletized" (tablet tweaks added, etc.), lvm support has been added.
The touchscreen driver issue is now the focus of our attention.
Our ultimate vision is to create a *multiboot* solution where the end user will be able to boot into WebOS, Cyanogenmod, and/or other OSes. This appears to be very possible, and we have discussed several potential implementations with our new friends in the WebOS development community to make it easy for an end-user to set up.
For the moment though, we need about 4 tablets, as we have talented and experienced developers who cannot contribute effectively due to a lack of hardware. If you have an extra touchpad and are willing to help the cause, please let us know in the comments below.
A BIG CAVEAT-- PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR ETAS. For the uninitiated, this is the #1 rule for Cyanogenmod. It will certainly be a long while before our goals become reality. Our goals incidentally are not connected with any bounty-- we are motivated to do it right, not do it fast.
And now the obligatory shout outs-- Thanks to rootzwiki and all the devs and everyone else who are collaborating and contributing to this project. You know who you are, you.
The CM team www.cyanogenmod.com

How an Internet browser works. As an easy to Understand Comic ;)

Ever wondered or wanted to refresh your knowledge bank on how an Internet browser works ? Here is a interesting illustration made by Vlad Studio that is equally interesting even for the young ones to look at :)

The user shown as the guy with the crown possibly a king orders his men to fetch a website. so the men goes out  after negotiating with all security measures in place ( firewalls etc) to the open world known as the internet.

He finds himself where he wants to go from the post which is the Domain Name Server. Gets to the place where the webpage is. This is the hosting server. The Wise owl gives the man what he wants and he returns to his king with the information.

This process happens over and over until the User shown as the king is satisfied.

voilà I guess I explained it well. So refer to this whenever you are kind of perplexed on how it all happens ;)

New Skype enabled Freetalk ATA Lets you use your old house phone with Skype without a PC

The people have been looking for a way to use Skype without a PC or an expensive Skype enabled Cordless phone for ages.


Even Companies with Pbx's can now take advantage of the FreeTalk Skype Adapter to make calls and receive calls to and from thousands of skype subscribers through out the world.


Many Skype enabled services that lets you use an ordinary desktop phone came out with flying colours and left without a note. Because most of them did not take a direct approach to using skypes proprietary signalling and codecs. They always had to go around it due to Skype not authorizing them to use their codecs and signalling methods.


But now FreeTalk has joined up with Skype and has come up with the solution everyone's waited for.

Supercharge Your New HP Touchpad With Non-Market Apps and Patches

Many of you bargain hunters probably picked up the defunct HP Touchpad last week, and though WebOS isn't exactly thriving, that doesn't mean you can't do some pretty neat things with it. If you want to go deeper, here's how to get extra functionality out of your Touchpad.

While there isn't much in the way of Android-style custom ROMs (yet), users can install non-market apps and software patches from Preware, a repository of WebOS software maintained by Preware.org. All it takes is a settings change on the Touchpad itself and a small Java program called WebOS Quick Install. It's kind of like rooting or jailbreaking, but nowhere near as complex.

I put this guide together with a lot of help from the WebOS Internals Wiki and thePreCentral Touchpad forum, which incidentally is a great place for app and patch suggestions. Definitely head over there once you're done setting up your Touchpad if you need more inspiration.

Step One: Activate Developer Mode

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Turn on your Touchpad and press the home button. Tap the "just type" area and enterwebos20090606. Tap the "Developer Mode" icon that appears. Tap the "on/off" slider in the top right corner of the next screen, but leave the "DEVELOPER MODE PASSWORD" field blank. Tap "Submit".

Step Two: Install WebOS Quick Install

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Switch to your computer and download the latest version of Jason Robitaille's WebOS Quick Install. It's a Java app, so you'll need an up-to-date version of Java, but it should work equally well for both Windows and OS X.

Step Three: Install Homebrew Apps & Patches

Plug your Touchpad into your computer with the included MicroUSB cable. It's best to use the cable that came with the device; it seems pretty picky about third-party cables. You should also use a USB port directly on your computer, not a hub or extension cable. Do NOT press the "USB Drive" pop-up that appears.

Switch back to your computer and double-click the .jar file you downloaded. It'll probably install some drivers for WebOS hardware—just let it do its thing. When it's finished, the Quick Install menu will appear. From this page you can manually install apps and packages. Click the globe icon on the right side (which looks like an old-school Palm HotSync icon—nice!) to open up a menu with all the Preware apps and tweaks ready to install.

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Standard homebrew apps are on the "Applications" tab. Quality fluctuates across the 200+ entries, but there's a lot of worthy apps there, and it's all free. I highly recommend installing the Preware app, which then lets you install apps right from your device rather than needing to connect with WebOS Quick Install.

"Patches" is a great collection of advanced software tweaks that WebOS users have put together over the last few years. Just click "Install" underneath the description area to apply a patch. Two of the patches you'll absolutely want to implement are "Remove Dropped Packet Logging" and "Muffle System Logging", which cut down on the intensive back-end tech support services and should give you a noticeable speed boost.

The apps and patches will download and install across the USB cable right away. When you're finished, just unplug the cable. If you want to remove patches later, just repeat the above steps and click Tools > Device Management from the main Quick Install screen. Save the .jar file in a handy location for when you want to use it again. Advanced users can check out custom kernels for overclocking and a huge variety of Linux programs that run on the Touchpad.

This post originally appeared on Michael's personal blog.

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Michael Crider is a freelance web writer. You can check out his regular posts on Screen Rant, follow him on Twitter (@MichaelCrider) or visit his personal blog.

Article Source : 

http://lifehacker.com/5836294/supercharge-your-new-hp-touchpad-with-preware

Save a Dying Video Card with a Quick Bake in the Oven

 BY WHITSON GORDON 

If you've booted up your computer only to find red lines and other graphics issues, you might be able to save that graphics card by putting it in the oven.

Lines across your screen and other graphics abnormalities are called artifacts, and they're likely to occur when your video card is failing. If it's really dying, you might even get a blank screen or program crashes due to overheating. It turns out, a bit of heat is the perfect medicine. Things you'll want to be careful of:

• Make sure to remove the heatsink and any other plastic parts from your card. Melted plastic all over your card is bad news.
• Place a few balls of tin foil on a tray and rest the card on them so it isn't touching the tray. Make sure to put the card in chip side up, otherwise the chip will fall off.
• You'll want to bake it for around 8 minutes at 385°F. The time is flexibile; the general consensus is that anywhere between 5 minutes and 12 minutes should be okay.
• Obviously, let it cool off before you stick it back in your machine.

The science behind this simple: often, video cards fail due to loosening solder joints. Thus, an oven is the perfect savior: by heating those joints back up, they'll turn to liquid and melt back together, giving your card another shot at life. This isn't a brand new trick by any means, but we just discovered it and thought it was pretty cool (not unlike the "save a failing hard drive in the freezer" trick).

Check out the video above for a demo by my favorite hardware guru, Linus Sebastian of NCIX Tech Tips. It didn't work for him in the video, but it's actually a well-documented fix, and he does a good job of explaining the process. Your mileage may vary, of course, but if your graphics card is about to bite the dust, what do you have to lose?

http://lifehacker.com/5823227/save-dying-video-cards-with-a-quick-bake-in-the-oven?tag=macgyver-tip

Video Card Repair Oven Baking Technique to Repair Solder Guide | YouTube

Car Rental Review Geneva, Switzerland - Resident Advise :)

This is a short review of car rentals available in Geneva, Switzerland. I hope to expand this review as soon as I get more facts and figures from the rental places.

I have experienced all of these services mentioned below so this is not a review based on other articles.


Mobility Car Sharing 

First of all if you are planning in staying in Geneva for more than 4 months there is a perfect solution to car rentals from Mobility.ch

You could write them an email and explain your situation. They normally asks for a resident permits but given that you are planning in staying for more than 4 months they should be ok in providing you with a trial supscription  for 4 months. you can reduce the trial subscription to 40 CHF if you have a cumulus card from Migros supermarkets. Its available at the reception at any Migros free of charge.

Now let me go through the Mobility car sharing program. The program offers cars from sizes Mini to large passenger vans.

You can have a look at the available range from this link - http://www.mobility.ch/en/pub/vehicles/overview.cfm

The program allows you to rent any one of the vehicles in the mentioned link on a hourly basis and per kilometre.

the rates are available here - http://www.mobility.ch/en/pub/private/rates.htm

First you got to book a car from their internet booking portal or via the Iphone app or the customer service line. calling them is not advised for bookings because they charge you a fee for every minute.

Then you can visit the location that is nearest to you and unlock the car via the plastic credit card sized access card. the car keys are available in the glove box or in the place marked with a sticker. You do the same when you are done with your journey.

Click here to see how it all works at the Mobility website

I'm not going to go through all the details or repeat them, you can find all the dets at their website http://www.mobility.ch/en/pub/how_it_works/this_is_mobility.htm


Before I come to major car rental companies I should mention a company called

Patrick Location SA

If you dont mind driving a little older car which is three four years old then you are going to be saving a whole lot of money. these guys are having a small three door Fiat Seicentos available for 40 CHF a day with 100 km's. You can check out their website for more details.

Well there is newer and bigger cars from 65 CHF as well. I've had one of those 3 door Fiats for few days and it was all good. The deposit is around 1000 CHF which is a downer but then again if you are safe driver you got nothing to worry about. Geneva is a safe town to drive.

To be continued ......

Photo by nocklebeast

Android Parental Control Contains Kid Access to Your Smartphone

BY DAVID GALLOWAY
http://lifehacker.com/android-downloads/

Android: I've often given my son my phone to play Angry Birds, and at least twice he's managed to delete contacts or emails. Android Parental Control helps users lockdown their phones so kids can only use apps that you have approved; an admin password is required to access any restricted app. Additionally, the app can be set to launch as soon as the phone boots so clever kids can't get around the restrictions by rebooting the phone.

You can also enable "Safe Sandbox" mode to show a screen with approved apps your kids can access. This is great for little explorers who are frustrated when they can't open the apps they want to try. The only apps they see are the ones you've previously selected that they can see.

The app works well and is free. If you want the ability to let kids play games or watch videos on your phone without having to worry about them accessing inappropriate apps or deleting info, you should definitely check it out. The app has not had an update since last December, but the developers seem to frequently use the app's Facebook page.

Android Parental Control is a free app available in the Android Market.

Android Parental Control | Android Market

Download Windows 7 ISOs to Reinstall Without Restoring Your System

Windows - If you've just bought a new laptop or pre-built desktop running Windows it's more than likely you do not have a disc with the operating system. You may have a restore disc or hard drive partition that will restore your computer to factory settings, but having an actual disc to install Windows is good to have if you need to reinstall just your operating system.

Why wouldn't you want to use the restore disc? Your computer doesn't just have Windows, it also has free trials of several programs, various toolbars, and other bloatware that slows down your system. You need an install disc for Windows so that if it becomes necessary to reinstall you won't have to spend an hour removing unwanted software.

Luckly, you can download full ISOs (disc images) of the various types of Windows 7 from Microsoft and Amazon.com. These ISOs were put there to be freely available for customers who purchase copies of Windows7 online, but if you have a legit product key there is no reason you can't use the ISOs to make your own Windows install disc. Tech blog My Digital Life has collected several download links for all versions of Windows 7. See the link below to download.Photo by Indi Samarajiva.

Windows 7 ISO x86 and x64 Official Direct Download Links | My Digital Life

http://lifehacker.com/5832896/download-windows7-isos-to-reinstall-without-restoring-your-system

BY DAVID GALLOWAY

How to (Almost) Guarantee You’ll Never Have to Check Your Luggage Again

How to (Almost) Guarantee You’ll Never Have to Check Your Luggage Again

TRAVEL

Checking your luggage is like gambling with your belongings. Something could break, get stolen, lost, and so on, and checked baggage generally comes with high fees. Here's how to almost guarantee you'll never have to check your luggage again and, if all plans fail, how to make the best of a bad situation.

Make the Most of Your Two Carry-on Bags

The easiest way to avoid the need to check your bags is to pack your bags efficiently. You may be surprised by how much you can fit with some smart techniques. Here's a look at af ew.

Taliban target 19 NATO oil tankers...

A scene from hell: Flames and black smoke fill the air as Taliban target 'sitting duck' NATO oil tankers yet again

A suspected U.S. missile strike killed four alleged insurgents on Monday

By OLIVER PICKUP

As black clouds of smoke billowed from the charred remains of at least 19 NATO tankers, and flames licked the dark sky near the Afghanistan border, agog locals observed the wreckage following an ambush.

Gunmen atop motorbikes opened fire yesterday on the narrow main highway at Kolpur village in Pakistan, 15 miles south of Quetta, the capital of the usually restive Baluchistan province.

The tankers, carrying tonnes of fuel, were heading through the southwestern Pakistan region en route to NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan when they were fired upon in an attack that has become all too familiar to coalition forces.