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Archive for November 2nd, 2006

Free "Amazon Prime" Membership

In Deals, General on November 2, 2006 at 7:21 pm

Amazon is now offering free one month trial membership to their Amazon Prime program. With an Amazon Prime membership you can get free 2-day shipping on almost all items sold by Amazon.com. I’ve used this program before and it was pretty handy particularly this holiday season.

Here is what you should do to get the free trial,

  • Click on the link on top of Amazon.com that says “Your Account”.
  • Under “Subscriptions Management” click on the link that says “Manage your Amazon Prime Membership”.
  • Sign-in with your account.
  • There should be a “Free Trial” image displayed on the right side of the page. Click on that image to enroll into the free trial.

Have it handy during this holiday season.

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Zune™ ready to be launched by Nov 14, 2006

In IT on November 2, 2006 at 5:22 pm

The picture says it all. Zune™ is all set to be launched right on time for the holidays 2006. As the image says it is scheduled to be launched by Nov 14, 2006. For a comparable configuration (with iPod) of 30G, Zune is a bit cheaper than iPod, at $249.99. I particularly like the widescreen format even though the click-wheel is a huge miss. 

Here are some interesting facts/specs about Zune™, if you care.

Size and Weight

  • 4.4 in. x 2.4 in. x 0.6 in. (h x w x d)

  • Weight: 5.6 ounces

    Battery[2]

  • Music, up to 14 hours (wireless off), up to 13 hours (wireless on); pictures, up to 4 hours; video, up to 4 hours

  • Charge Time: 3 hours; 2 hours to 90%

    Display

  • Size: 3.0 inches

  • Orientation: Vertical and Horizontal

  • Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels

    Audio

  • Windows Media® Audio Standard (.wma): Up to 320 Kbps, CBR and VBR, up to 48-kHz sample rate

  • MP3 (.mp3): Up to 320 Kbps, CBR and VBR, up to 48-kHz sample rate

  • AAC (.mp4, .m4a, .m4b, .mov): Up to 320 Kbps, Low Complexity (LC), up to 48-kHz sample rate

    Pictures

  • JPEG (.jpg): All resolutions (desktop software will automatically convert to 640×480 at sync time)

    Video

  • Windows Media Video (.wmv): Main Profile, CBR or VBR, up to 1.5 Mbps peak video bitrate, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., with Windows Media Audio up to 192 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo audio; Simple Profile, CBR, up to 736 Kbps video bitrate, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., with Windows Media Audio up to 192 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo audio.

    Wireless

  • Connectivity: 802.11 b/g

  • Range: Up to 30 feet

    Language

  • English

    PS: I’ve bought a 30G Video iPod and wasn’t happy with the way it syncs with iTunes. So many times it hangs and I had to sync it multiple times to get the stuff done. I hate that portion of it. I have to wait and see how Zune™ fills in that space. If so then I might give Zune™ a try.

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    • I like this Royale Noir theme for Windows XP

    In Tips N Tricks, Windows XP on November 2, 2006 at 12:13 pm

    Here is the theme that I use in my laptop lately. It’s called Royale Noir and is based on the Windows Media Center Royale theme, enhanced. I’ve heard that it was developed at the time when Royale (the blue) was developed. But someone at Microsoft thought this is too powerful for them to release it to the public and have since then abandoned/archived it.

    I was using the Royale (the blue) theme all these days. It definitely is an improvement over the default XP Luna theme. I keep my Task Bar in the side (to utilize my widescreen laptop real estate) and Royale seems to be too con-complacent with that. With this new Royale Noir theme, it nicely docks the Task Bar to the side and makes it look better than before.

    I particularly like the cool dark color rather the bright blue. Also keep in mind that the world is moving to the black Vista in the near future. You know that. So, this is my baby step to get used to the life the way it is.

    Since this skin was never released officially there are a few issues with it: the selected items background color doesn’t seem to match the overall theme and the inactive titlebars are too blackish.

    But the good news is that it’s been signed by Microsoft and doesn’t require a custom UxTheme.dll patch in case there are any doubts to its authenticity.

    If you already have Royale installed, you’ll need to remove it as both of these skins share the same name. But in my case it wasn’t a problem as I’ve named my Windows/Resources/Themes folder to have a Royale Noir subfolder and that tends to play nice with the Blue Royale theme.

    Last, but not least, this skin has not been released to anyone outside Microsoft, until now.

    Download Royale Noir Theme from here.

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