There are a mind-boggling number of graphics cards on the market aimed at PC gamers. While the best graphics cards come with a heavy price-tag, there are also solutions more suitable to the average pocket.

If you are a real hardcore gamer then you have to purchase those expensive graphic cards to satisfy yourself. With that being said, here are some of the best graphic cards that improves your PC gaming experience:

1. Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Card

This one uses  ATI’s dual RV770 GPUs, connected with a special bridge onto a single PCB (printed circuit board) using the CrossFire technology, with two HD 4870 graphics processors and a whole 2 GB of ultra-bandwidth GDDR memory onboard.

This card definitely has an impressive framerate and realistic detail rendering for even the most demanding games. It is based on an advanced 55nm design and requires DirectX 10.1 support. Specifications include 2.4 teraFLOPS of processing power, 230GB/s bandwidth, and 60Gtexels/s bilinear filtering.

Of course, like other dual GPU cards, it tends to be a resource hog, consume lots of power and produce substantial heat, but their price has dropped in recent months.

The price for AMD’s fastest card has now dropped to about $420. The true potential of the graphics card is to be had at high resolutions of 2560×1600 and very high image quality. In short it tends to be an overkill in games that wouldn’t be utilizing both the GPUs to the fullest extent.

2. Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 Graphic Card

To compete with ATI’s dual GPU Radeon HD 4870 X2, Nvidia released its own dual GPU card in January 2009. The GTX 295 is essentially two GTX 260 GPUs running in SLI on a single card, except that these chips have 240 stream processors each rather than 216, and they’re made with a smaller 55 nm process.

Nvidia has used the 2 PCB approach instead of trying to put 2 GPUs on one board like ATI. Using 480 stream processors for parallel computing this graphics card makes the best of its PhysX and CUDA technologies. The heat dissipation efficiency of its heatsink-and-fan makes it significantly cooler and quieter during usage.

Games such as Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes, Racer Driver: GRID ran smoother on the Nvidia as compared to Radeon. While the GTX 295 quite easily the best graphics card for PC gamers, they don’t come cheap at almost $700.

3. Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX Graphic Card

Similar in many ways to the GeForce 8800 GTS, the high-end 9800 GTX is a step down from the GTX 200 series from Nvidia. It comes with typically 512 MB of memory and it’s a decent single GPU solution for serious gamers.

The NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card enables lifelike realtime game play while providing optimal power management with its HybridPower technology. The HD engine also delivers good video and movie quality and SLI compatibility provides enhanced performance on nVidia SLI-ready motherboards.

This card is reasonably priced at around $320. So, which is your best graphic cards among these top three? Or, do you know any other PC gaming cards that deserves a mention here.. then let us know!

After six months of saving up money you finally bought that Nokia N900. Sleek, powerful and provides you with excellent work-on-the-go capabilities. Too bad it got stolen while you were getting down from that busy train!

Had a wild party last night, couldn’t control showing off your latest Nokia smartphone. Downed a few extra shots and now you don’t even remember where you left off that phone?

Tracking Nokia mobile phones is quite easy these days. A few tricks will let you stay notified of not only your own mobile phone, but also that of your friends’. Take for example the Google Latitude application which is available for free (data charges added as per service provider’s plan).

The Google latitude application asks for your mobile phone number when you register. Once that is done a link is sent to your Google Latitude installed phone. After you accept the invitation (link) you can easily see the position of your mobile phone when you log in to iGoogle.

In iGoogle you can add your friends’ phone numbers as well and if they accept then their locations are visible to you on the map. You can also access this feature from the mobile phone itself. So if your stolen Nokia phone had Google Latitude installed on it, then a few mouse clicks would be enough to pinpoint its location. After that it’s the clicking of a different key.

Besides this, a few cell phone tracking softwares are also available in the market that helps you to locate your cellphone.

The phone locator software (Download) does the same work as Latitude but is compatible with lesser Nokia phones like the N95, N78, E71 and a few more. It uses GPS as its basis to locate your lost phone. The best part is that it is free.

Other than this you can create a free account at transportlines which provide the same service but even for Nokia 6210s and 6220s. These free cell phone trackers can prove to be a great boon in recovering your missing cell phone.

Those who do not own a phone which has GPS capabilities or those Nokia phones which do not support the above softwares, the only way left would be to notify the local authorities and service provider with your cell number and phone’s IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identification) number. Take care to note down this number at the time of purchase.

The IMEI number is usually printed on the package or you can also find it out by pressing *#06# (star-hash-zero-six-hash) on your phone. Service providers across the globe can crosscheck the position of a cell phone using the IMEI number. Although this information is considered highly confidential and only in special cases are they revealed by the provider. They can however lock-down the IMEI number making the mobile phone unusable.

A suggestion would be to simply go for a GPS featured Nokia phone and follow the steps above. Don’t forget to note down your IMEI number, always! I hope these ways to track your lost nokia cell phones are helpful enough.. if you have anything to say then let us know through your comments!

Microsoft Exchange server users sometimes face a problem while backing up their data from an .ost exchange file to a .pst Microsoft Outlook file.

OST Files – The .ost (off-line storage table) files are used by the Microsoft Exchange Server program to store messages, calendar items and other data items on the server. These files enable offline availability of the data.

PST Files – The .pst (personal storage table) files on the other hand are used by Microsoft Outlook do handle the same job. The .pst outlook format files maintain the archived items of a mail server. Since neither of the two file formats are counted against the size of the mailbox, hence it is a good idea to convert your data and save them as .ost or .pst format files.

The primary need to convert an .ost file to a .pst file occurs when an account gets deleted from a mail server or if the server is not working for some reason. Although there are several suggested methods to do the above conversion, the effective and confirmed ones come with a price tag. So here are a few FREE methods to convert your .ost file to the .pst outlook format.

Converting OST to PST Format

The first method you can try is to import your .ost file in Microsoft Outlook. Then create a blank .pst file and copy the data from the .ost file into the blank file and save it.

There are a few .ost .pst converters available in the market but most of them are costly. One free program is the ost2pst (download) which can effectively convert the .ost files to .pst files. Just search for it in Google. There is one issue with this free program though. It cannot convert files which have been created in Outlook 2003 or higher. This is because Microsoft changed the base format of the two file systems. Hence converting .ost to .pst is quite difficult in these situations.

An experimental method to convert .ost files of Outlook 2003 into .pst files is to trick the computer into thinking that it is an Outlook 2002 file and then convert it using ost2pst converter. First rename the desired .ost file (suppose abc.ost) to abc.pst. Use the scanpst.exe program provided with Outlook 2002 to scan this new .pst file. After the scanning is complete change back the name to abc.ost. Then use the ost2pst software to convert this .ost file to a .pst file. Since Outlook 2003 is backwards compatible, it should not have any trouble in reading the .pst file.

Remember that the above methods are experimental in nature and may not always provide with desired results. It is a good idea to back up your files before indulging in these processes!

Recently, Adsense team made a blog post on the upcoming release of the new Adsense interface which got an overwhelming response from the long time publishers.

Luckily, adsense team had sent me the invitation to join Adsense new interface program yesterday through an email. With curiosity in my mind – I activated the new adsense program instantly and it looks quite promising as of now!

I was jubilant enough when I found the invitation at first. This new adsense is definitely made for Adsense publisher, providing control over the ads served on our websites and helping you analyze the best ad size for your website! After digging into Adsense new interface, I found out couple of helpful features that are tweaked to benefit the existing publisher which I’ll be mentioning in this post..

Also, I presume the new adsense interface will be rolled out for all the adsense publisher quite soon! So, your current ‘simple’ Adsense interface is going to be with you only for matter of weeks..

Anyways, ontopic, here is the overview on why Adsense interface and what’s in store for publishers:

Home – Simple to use interface

With an easy-to-navigate sidebar menu along with the tabs and the performance graph, it is easier to check your adsense stats instantly. Also, the quick reports and the Earnings estimates are located in the homepage making it easier to check your hard earned money..

My ads Page is Modified

Apart from creating new channels without any hiccups, you can also check the earnings of each channels and compare it’s performance with other Adsense channels. For creating new adunit you also have the options to show rich media ads along with the normal text and image ads. Also, for those people who feel the ads are untargeted can use backup ad (quite similar to Google admanager) to maximize the earnings.

Allow Block Adsense ads

The Ad review center is on the homepage tab that has no changes made. It displays the direct advertisers who advertise on your website webpage.

Performance Reports

This is one of the most effective feature of the new adsense interface that has tons of options helping you to track, increase your adsense earnings and to analyze the best ad sizes.

‘More reports’ on Adsense

Most of the adsense publisher demanded for revealing information on which type of ads make more money. So here it is, in the ‘More reports’ you can find such information along with earnings of the ad types that fits on your website.

The image ads cpm was much better than Adsense text ads (Most of us think that text ads have a better CPM compared to image adsense ad) whereas the HTML ad had an skyrocket cpm compared to all the other ad types.

One of the HTML ad type had an eCPM of 300$ which is amazing.. sadly the advertiser didn’t advertise for too long! The point is; such near-to-accurate information helps you to analyze the high paying ad types and is one of the reasons on why Adsense is the most preferred publisher solution!

Analyzing of ad sizes becomes easier with ‘Ad sizes’ feature that shows the overall earnings along with page eCPM, CTR and number of ad clicks. Check the pic below..

Okay, is Adsense a CPM or CPC based network? We know that it’s a mixture of both CPC and CPM ads. But, CPC dominates the CPM ads! You can check this in ‘Bid types’ under the More reports.

For me, both the CPM and CPC ads are performing decently enough and over 90% of the time, the CPC ads were displayed! Another useful feature to track how is your

Conclusion: The overall upgrade to the new Adsense feature is to let publisher have control over the type of ads that are displayed on website and analyze the best placement, ad sizes! This is definitely useful for monetizing your website and making more money with simple tweaks..

Also, to increase your Adsense earnings, I recommend users to try out Google Admanager and section targeting to increase Adsense money on your blog (recommended by Adsense team). You can check out this post on how to setup Google Adsense admanager on Wordpress

Imagining life without the ever-present mobile phone is very hard indeed! For many of us, myself included, a day does not go by without the checking of messages, emails and several reminders on a trusted cell phone. In fact, I have personally grown to depend on my Nokia phone for much more than just making phone calls.

From accessing emails throughout the day to making use of various applications, a wide range of cell phone functions are utilized on a daily basis. Therefore, to make sure that your mobile phone is utilized to its full potential, it helps to have applications catering to your many needs installed on your phone.

Symbian is undoubtedly one of the most popular operating systems for smartphones in the world! The list of phones running on the Symbian OS includes those running on the Series 60 (S60), Series 80 and UIQ platforms, such as the Sony Ericsson P series and the Nokia N and E series smartphones, many other earlier devices as well as the Nokia “Communicators”.

There are several different kinds of software including those for games, themes, animations, wallpapers and other utilities that can be run on Symbian OS smartphones. Some of these applications can be as diverse as those showing you the position of stars at different times of the day to those which can identify any music track by simply recording a sample of the track that needs to be identified and searching it against a database.

The Internet offers a wide range of websites from where you can download free software and programs including videos, games, wallpapers, and themes for Symbian smartphones.

A few of the best sites cum forums for Symbian software include the following:

All About Symbian – Visit Website

This is one of the largest and best sites if you are looking for software that can be used on Symbian smarphones. The site includes helpful and informative reviews, news, downloads and articles for the latest available Symbian software. You should definitely give this site a shot if it is the latest free software for Symbian smartphones that you are in search of!

Symbian Freeware – Visit Website

This is another good website if you are out hunting for free Symbian software. It boasts of having more than 1800 free Symbian games, applications and themes. You can upgrade your Symbian smartphone at this site with mobile email, wireless tools, skins and themes as well as numerous other mobile utilities, games and GPS software for S80, S60 and UIQ platforms.

Free Symbian Soft – Visit Website

Free software downloads for your Symbian phone can also be found at this website. It contains free wallpapers, animations, games and other add-ons for enhancing your phone so that you can use it in the best possible way. Here you can find an almost infinite collection of free downloads catering to the needs and tastes of an extremely diverse range of people.

In addition to the above mentioned websites, other websites for Symbian software can also be found by simply running a Google search based on the kind of software you are looking for. Also, if you have any useful freeware Symbian softwares website then don’t hesitate to let us know about it..

Smart movie player is one of the most popular media player for mobile phones. However, the smartmovie player isn’t completely free to download.Smartmovie is awesome player for your mobile phone but it’s not feasible for everyone as well!

Therefore, here are some of the Smartmovie player alternative that can be used for your mobile phone to watch videos. Please let us know other players that fits in this ‘free player’ category!

Kinoma FreePlay

Kinoma Play is an media application that easily manages pictures, music, video and online media for the user. The GUI is simple and user friendly and works on both touch screen and smartphone editions.

Kinoma handles the media by sub-dividing each selection into categories. This free movie player alternative supports playback most media formats out there (including FLV among others), however some codecs are disabled and are available only in the premium edition of Kinoma.

The music organizer is pretty standard sorting through tracks by genre, album, artist and song. Unfortunately the free version of Kinoma doesn’t allow the creations of playlists. The Kinoma Guide is an extensive archive of thousands of RSS feeds, podcasts and streamable video ranging from newsbytes,personal  interests, hobbies, sport etc. It is also possible to have media streams and Internet radio over 3G.

The application is quite fast, robust and not at all crash-prone. Overall this is a viable alternative to proprietary Smartmovie players though there are many limitations imposed on the Kinoma FreePlay. However the $30 upgrade to premium is hardly indispensable to enjoying the media-rich experience that this free application provides.

The Core Media Player

The Core Media Player (TCMP), which succeeds the popular PowerDivX Ne  xtGen multimedia player, is a complete multimedia player that is capable of playing almost every multi-media audio and video format available and one is likely to come across.

It comes in two versions, the standard free version 4.11 and the Premium version. The Premium version of this free Smartmovie player has  DVD Playback and Unlimited Plug-in Support among the extra features that are not available in the free alternative.

TCMP 4.11 has an  Advanced DirectShow based Core. All audio and video types can be extended by downloading and installing DirectShow filters. It comes with highly modifiable Skins with Hue variations and Alpha blending  making it quite an eye-candy. This media player allows properties to be set for each Playlist item (playlists are possible here, unlike in Kinoma) including subtitles, aspect ratio of video clips, equalizer settings and others.

It also supports bookmarks and ‘chapters’ in addition to playlists of types M3U, PLS, NPL, XML et al. Allows Winamp plug-ins for audio and video files. The Core Dynamic Libraries makes it easy for users to use developed third-party software to enhance and customize the player like adding remote support, lyrics, subtitles modifications etc.

The player also had an adjustable media playback speed as well and a console mode which provides CLI features for greater control over the application. The hotkey controls are easily customizable and there are full tray icons.  The multi-threaded technology used here allows it optimal speed and efficiency.

AVG Antivirus is one among the best free antivirus programs available that cleans your system from those corrupted viruses. However, the free edition of AVG antivirus asks you to upgrade to PRO version and sometimes this is annoying.

Also, there are several reasons for which a user would like to remove the pre-installed AVG antivirus. If you have free AVG that you want to remove completely from your computer system then download ‘AVG remover’ tool as the manual method of uninstalling antivirus from Control panel –> Add/remove programs doesn’t completely uninstall them.

While you can delete the AVG folder from the program files but this method is the safest way for completely uninstalling AVG antivirus without leaving it’s trace on the registry.

Download AVG Remover

This is the uninstall tool from AVG used for removing AVG programs. The AVG remover tool was updated recently and you can download this from AVG official website.

Select the appropriate bit version (32bit of 64bit) and once you’ve downloaded AVG remover (a tiny program) you have to run it from your windows platform. The following message will appear

Select ‘Yes’ and it may require you to re-boot your system for removing AVG links from registry. Note that AVG remover will completely uninstall AVG antivirus by deleting the AVG program files, registry links and AVG database from your computer.

You can also try out CCleaner or Revo uninstaller freeware programs (if you have downloaded them already) to remove AVG from your computer. Hope this helps..

HyperCam is a powerful screen cam software that records in real-time the actions and sounds of a Windows desktop and stores it as a standard .avi  movie. Naturally this comes in handy for making a software presentation, demos or tutorials.

Basically after downloading the user has to defin e a rectangular selection of the desktop (or the whole desktop) through a selection tool or via direct input of the co-ordinates. Now, HyperCam will be recording every visual action within that frame along with accompanying sounds into the AVI file. Inbuilt features include in-video annotation, screen notes and voice over.

A search for a free unregistered hypercam online will yield several results. Among these there are some that host the trial ‘free’ version of the software.

The ‘Free Downloads Center’ has a HyperCam version 2.10.00 download page that actually provides the software without any license expiry date or any other catch. However the downside is that a small “Unregistered HyperCam” tag is affixed to the corner of the movies that are thus captured. This can be removed by registering the product with its creator – Hypersonics. This requires you to purchase a license for $39.95 which is not feasible.

The tag itself is hardly obtrusive and the free unregistered HyperCam will be fully functional in all its other capabilities. It can capture cursor movements, show the highlighted menus selections, windows popping up and in effect everything else you see on the screen.

The video encoding can correctly handle color palette changes if recording is done in 256 color mode. You are also able to pan the recorded area around the screen. As mentioned above one may also optionally annotate recorded movies with text making it ideal for tutorial or guide video purposes.

CNET provides the latest version of HyperCam for free download – version 2.14.02  as of now. But the unregistered hypercam symbol is still tagged onto the top left corner of every frame of videos made from the screen captures.

Other functionalities are unimpaired including the newer version features such as a ’starburst’ being added to enhance a mouse click, the user being able to decide the specification of frame rate and file compression etc. Moreover the unobtrusive nature of the software  is a boon for gamers who intend to record their ingame battles/matches and later post it on a video-hosting site like Youtube.

Finally, the upshot is that a free unregistered HyperCam can be readily downloaded, including the latest version with no evident features disabled or any spyware installed. The downside to this is the unregistered logo which will make it rather difficult to use recorded AVI movies for official purposes.

Here are some of the best ways to view CHM Files on MAC OS. Some of the freeware CHM readers are listed here which are compatible with MAC OS. 

About CHM File Format

Before mentioning the list of MAC CHM readers; here is an explanation of CHM file format:

.CHM Format is the patent format by Microsoft developed as help manuals that provides instructions of softwares, ebook or other help files. Most of the ‘Help’ button in softwares pops out CHM file format where you can access instructional tutorials on how to use the program.

If you are on Ubuntu then follow this guide for converting CHM into PDF and viewing it on your PDF reader. Also, sometimes you get an error message such as ‘Cannot open CHM files’ in Windows. But most of the time, CHM formats are automatically opened in Windows OS. And now, how to view CHM Files on Mac OS?

Therefore, below is the list of the best freeware CHM readers for MAC OS.. if you know any other freeware CHM program that can be listed here then let me know through your comments.

View CHM Files on Mac OS

So how do you open CHM file on Mac OS? After digging through the internet; I found some of the free MAC CHM reader that will open CHM format files and they are listed here in no particular order. Note that all these programs are completely free

1. Mac iCHM reader

iCHM is an completely free and functional CHM reader for MAC that has the ability to search, tab browse files, navigate instantly and export CHM to PDF format without too much of fuss.

You can directly download iCHM reader from here

2. Chmox viewer

Though Chmox CHM viewer for MAC is not updated anymore but this program is a good chm viewer! It does handle chm files appropriately, just like iCHM reader – You can convert CHM to PDF format and also search text in chm files instantly.

Download Chmox for Mac. Once you have downloaded Chmox, drag and drop it to the ‘Application’ folder and now try to open CHM file. Works like a charm!

3. Chamonix File Viewer

CHM files seems to work easily with Chamonix viewer which has features much more similar to that of the default windows CHM reader with options to add pages as favorites, search content and navigate through the index.

Even larger CHM files are opened in Chamonix and supports printing of individual pages as well.

Download Chamonix. (Note: Do check out the necessary OS requirements for opening chm files before downloading Chamonix)

Any other Mac CHM viewer I’ve missed? Let me know

Here is an useful tip for web site owners who wants to embed Myspace music player on their website or blog. Alternately, you can use this simple tip to generate Myspace music player codes and place it on your Myspace profile.

About Myspace Music Player

As you know, Myspace music is among the few biggest website that streams online MP3 songs with genre’s ranging from Hip hop to Funk! You can find tons of songs that you might have never ever heard of. Check out the Myspace music page.

Embed Myspace Music Player

I’ve found many ways to embed Myspace player on Myspace profile or website quickly. Though you can make use of the raw iframe myspace codes but with the help of this tool; things get a lot more easier.

Just enter the band name, artist name or the song name that you’d like to see on the Myspace player list and embed the html iframe code in your website or add to your myspace profile in any of the b

Related: How to Autoplay Youtube Videos on Myspace

Working Demo?

I’ve used the tool for generating the Myspace music playlist embedded them below. Check out some of the songs from ‘Three days Grace’ As easy as pie!