This is a pretty common problem of those users who have Intel GMA Series graphics or their screen resolution is slightly wider that most of the games and applications support.

Solution:

There are two simple solutions to this problem.

Solution 1:

First is that there is an option provided by Intel Media Graphics Accelerator, using this option you can either fix the Screen aspect ratio or expand it.  Path to this option is given below along with figure.

Control Panel -> Intel GMA Driver for Mobile ->Display Settings->Aspect Ratio Options

Select Full Screen option and apply the changes.

However this solution doesn’t work in most of the cases as the Apply button is disabled and selected option doesn’t seem to work. So 2nd solution is applied for those 1st solution didn’t work.

Solution 2:

This solution surely works for most of the cases as I have applied this to many laptops.  There are few very simple steps.

1. Uninstall the Intel GMA drivers and program that you installed for Windows 7.
2. Go the your Systems Drivers page on the web and Download the latest drivers and application for Windows Vista. This is the core solution yet found by me that vista drivers seem to work well and provide the solution of aspect ratio problem.
3. Before installing the Vista compatible Drivers you have to add the compatibility to the drivers for Windows 7 before installing them.  Locate the downloaded setup file then got to its properties by right clicking and then find the “Compatibility” tab at the top and check the Option “Run this program in compatibility mode” and select Windows Vista from Drop down list.  Also check the option “Run as Administrator” and Apply the changes as shown in figure.

4.   A warning will appear telling you that you are going to install the old drivers as compared to the new installed one. proceed forward and install the drivers.  Restart your PC.

If you find some problem then quickly restore your windows back to the old state.

That is it you are done with the solution. I hope this solution will help alot of people out there like me.

I came across this Burner named BurnAware Free . I found it very simple yet very effective.

Description:

BurnAware Free is a free CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc burning software. It is ideal for users with basic disc burning needs as backup, creating data, audio, MP3 music, DVD-Video discs and burning disc images. Free, easy to set up, it enables you to save your files to disc quickly and provides clean, flexible interface to help you complete your burning tasks much faster.

Features:

1. Create data and multisession CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs.
2. Create Audio CDs and jukebox CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs.
3. Create DVDs-Video.
4. Create and burn disc images.
5. Supports all current hardware interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA).
6. Supports UDF/ISO9660/Joliet Bridged file systems (any combination).
7. On-the-fly writing for all image types (no staging to hard drive first).
8. Auto-verification of written files.
9. Supports CD-Text.
10. Clean, multilingual, easy to use interface.
11. Supports unicode for multi-byte languages.

Score:

I would give it  (8.5 out of 10 ).

The iPhone can only play movies that are encoded using MPEG-4 and H.264 codecs and have the extensions ‘.mp4′ or ‘.m4v’. In this tutorial I will show you how to convert movies that are in other formats (for example, wmv, avi, mkv, etc.) to iPhone playable movies.

How To Use HandBrake To Convert Movies To The iPhone Format:

HandBrake is an freeware application that can convert movies from any DVD-like source such as: VIDEO_TS folders, DVD images, real DVDs, .VOB and .TS files and any other multimedia formats. It can convert them to MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM using the MPEG-4, H.264, Theora video codecs and the following audio codecs: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3.

You can download the free tool from Handbrake. Just download it and install it. Now launch Handbrake and let’s see how we can convert a typical .avi movie into a playable iPhone one.

When you launch Handbrake, click on the ‘Source’ button from the menu bar, to select the movie that you want toconvert. As you can see, you have two choices: a video file or an DVD/VIDEO_TS folder. Choose what you prefer and then browse to the desired video file.

Now click on the Browse button and choose a destination folder for the new video and type its file name.

Next, select the output settings for the video file. This can be done from the presets panel on the right. Simply click on the ‘iPhone & iPod Touch’ option and all the output settings will be set in automatically. Also, if you will use thisapplication only for this task, you can click on the ‘Set Default’ button at the end of the panel and make the ‘iPhone &iPod Touch’ preset the default one.

Finally, click the Start button, found near Source. Handbrake will begin the encoding process and a command window will open with details about the process.

When the process ends the window disappears. For this test I used a 22 minutes video file that had 175 MB by default. The encoding process took 13 minutes and the final video file had 91.7 MB. The codec used for the encoding process was H.264 which is the best for image quality.

If you want a smaller file and fewer minutes for the encoding process you can select a different codec, like MPEG-4 XviD or MPEG-4 FFmpeg, from the Video tab.

For example, the MPEG-4 FFmpeg codec made from the original file a new video that had only 38.7MB in 2 minutes. Unfortunately the image quality was quite poor this time. So you have to sacrifice one thing for the other.

The last step is to connect your iPhone to the PC, start iTunes or other alternatives and upload the movie.

Some other free tools:

There are also some other free softwares available but they have got their own drawbacks and i have found handbrake to be the best out of these. However you can still give them a try. They are :

Agree Free AVI WMV MPEG ASF MOV to MP4 Converter

DVDVideoSoft Free Studio (Free Video to iphone Converter)

Kvip

This is the first for Pakistan in 3D gaming industry and before the game was released there was lot of demand of boxed version of the game as well.  Although this game has not created much hype as compared to other cricket games but still this game is lot better than what you think.

Official Trailor:

Lets talk about the Gameplay:

• Well most cricket games have been criticized for their unrealistic gameplay but it is not the case with CR because you really can’t come on the pitch and start hitting big sixes unrealistically.
• There are almost 35 different shots or combos as the game says with 3 special keys push , slog and loft.  In bowling there are some extra special deliveries and different ways of deceiving the batsman.
• The artificial intelligence of the game is too good. Your shot selection , your timing and positioning in the crease really matters while batting. Unlike other games when you play across the line of the ball, you can edge the ball to slips or loft it, if your settled meter is empty.
• Multi-player games are on the hype these days therefore CR’s Multi-player mode will really increase the game’s ranking much higher.
• Very interesting feature of the game is its online gaming support because playing online is a real fun. You can play play matches as well as ranked matches. Ranked matches are used in ranking the leaderboard of the game.
• Graphics of the game are not very good. They need to improve on that. Though their gameplay counters their not so good graphics.
• There are three different game modes. Exhibition mode, Revolution Cup and Revolution League.

My Score for the Game:

Game is now available for purchase from Steam. Its worth only 19.99 USD.

Gameplay – 8/10

Sound and Music – 7/10

Online Mode – 8/10

Graphics – 6/10

Customization – 9/10

Overall – 8/10

Just Follow these simple steps.

Steps:

• First of all you will need the latest developer version of the Google chrome, in order to install the extensions.

For that purpose download and install the latest google chrome from the following link

Google Chrome 4.0.249

For details on how to get started see the following post http://techtoggle.com/2009/12/google-chrome-beta-extensions-now-available-in-the-gallery/

• After the successful installation, Go to the extensions page and Download the StumbleUpon extension by clicking Install button right at the top.
• After the installation you will notice a toggle button just next to address bar as shown in figure.

• Simply login to the toolbar and then start stumbling as you do in Firefox using the stumble button in the toolbar.

Login

Stumbling:

Replying:

• Thats all. Its very easy. Start Stumbling on Chrome as well.

Handy Backup by Novosoft is award-winning automatic data backup and disaster recovery software. It is very flexible and can perfectly meet any individual requirements:

• Handy Backup has a comprehensible task-based architecture with three types of tasks available: backup, restore and synchronization.
• In addition to “common” file and folder backup, there is a number of presets that facilitate backups of critical data, such as My Documents, Microsoft Outlook, Windows registry, etc.
• Such inevitable for up-to-date backup software features as backup scheduling, backup data compression and encryption are fully supported by Handy Backup

Read more about Handy Backup.

How To Participate: You only have to become a fan of our facebook page (Click here to go to our facebook page) and then comment below to participate in the draw. Don’t forget to fill in your complete and valid email address. We will contact the winners through their email adress. The contest closes on December 31st 2009 at 11:59 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time). Winners will be randomly picked by a draw and will be announced on January 1st 2010. Winners will be notified and contacted by email. No comments will be considered after the deadline.

Rules:

• Giveaway:  Free License Keys[5] for Handy Backup.
• Deadline:  December 31st, 2009 at 11:59 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time).
• Anyone can participate.
• To participate, become a fan of our facebook page (click here to go to our facebook page) and then submit a comment below along with your email address for contact.
• Multiple comments will be considered as one entry.

Update: Winners are :

1: SHASHANK

2: MerleOne

3: Ashish Kalmegh

4: acr

5: Kgaurav

Congratulations to all the winners from team techtoggle. Keep checking your emails. You will soon be mailed the free lisence keys of the software. You can download the software from the website and then use the license key to register for free.

Download Handy Backup.

One of the most basic design objective of google chrome was to have minimum light-weight UI which is in a way conflicting with adding lot of features and extensibility because somehow it slow downs the startup time and increases memory usage of the system.

The use case list as a starter given by the developers team comprises of following items.

• Bookmarking/navigation tools: Delicious Toolbar, Stumbleupon, web-based history, new tab page clipboard accelerators
• Content enhancements: Skype extension (clickable phone numbers), RealPlayer extension (save video), Autolink (generic microformat data – addresses, phone numbers, etc.)
• Content filtering: Adblock, Flashblock, Privacy control, Parental control
• Download helpers: video helpers, download accelerators, DownThemAll, FlashGot
• Features: ForecastFox, FoxyTunes, Web Of Trust, GooglePreview, BugMeNot

Extensions Gallery :

Couple of days ago chromium team released beta of extensions in the extensions gallery as a step forward. Extensions are really easy to create, install and uninstall without restart. For this purpose the team launched a gallery which contains more than 300 extensions. (available for windows and linux).

Google Developers Video:

Note that you will be required to install google chrome latest beta Developer version to be able to install extensions.

Useful Links:

Here is the download link to Beta Developer Version.

Here is the download link to Extensions gallery.

After you take the screenshot, you will be given 4 option:

• Edit Image in Aviary
• Save to Desktop
• Copy to Clipboard
• Host at Aviary

Aviary’s Firefox Add-on Screen Shots Tour:

Download Aviary’s Firefox Add-on

Chrome Plus includes all the features of Google Chrome including some additional features too.

Additional Features of Chrome Plus

1. Double click tab to close page
2. Mouse Gestures
3. Super drag
4. IE tab
5. Download tools supported in context menu

Download Chrome Plus

I have found  a cool tool, RapidShare Download Accelerator that lets you to download multiple files at a time with your free account.It is very easy-to-use. All you have to do is to add the files you want to download and wait for them to be downloaded.

Download RapidShare Download Accelerator