Month: January 2009

Yes, the The iPhone3G can’t do video ringtones. Is it a bad thing?

I am not sure after I saw this… The German ringtone company “Jamba” (called “Jamster” everywhere else) did close the year 2008 with a video ring tone called “Eddy Bär” that got famous on youtube.

Now I checked again and of course – I knew they would – they have translated the song into a couple of languages now – including English! –

Welcome “Howie Heart” (how romantic!)

He things the same thing as in the German original!
(And the same user comments and discussions whether the girl is pretty or not

Technorati Tags: iPhone, howie heart
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

I have written about VueScan earlier it saved me from buying a new scanner because at the time back then, Epson wasn’t convinced yet to release a 64bit Vista and XP driver for my Epson Perfection 2480 Photo scanner which was just half a year old by that time.

Now they celebrate their 10th Anniversary.

Here is what the coder Ed Hamrick writes on the VueScan homepage:

“We’ve been working on VueScan for 10 years now and have made thousands of improvements in this time. We’d like to thank everyone who has ever purchased VueScan by giving them a free upgrade to VueScan 8.5.

To get your free upgrade, just click the DOWNLOAD button above. If you don’t have your old serial number, you can get your serial number online.

VueScan 0.1 was first released in 1998 with support for a single scanner on Windows only. Within 5 years VueScan supported more than 400 scanners and after 10 years of development, VueScan now supports more than 1200 scanners on 3 operating systems and in 35 languages, has been downloaded more than 5 million times and has been purchased by more than 170,000 people worldwide.

For the past ten years we’ve continued to add support for more scanners and we’ve made thousands of improvements and added hundreds of features that customers have asked for. Since we first released VueScan 8.4 two years ago, we’ve made more than 600 improvements and it’s really changed a lot in this time.

So, Happy 10th Anniversary to VueScan and thanks for your support!

Regards,
Ed Hamrick”

Most remarkable: “We’d like to thank everyone who has ever purchased VueScan by giving them a free upgrade to VueScan 8.5.“

Well done, Ed! Wonderful decision!

Ed also sent me an email today asking me to also mention that it has been released in German too, now!

Simply update to the latest version and it will automatically change to German if your OS’ language is.

Me for my part prefers English so I changed it back in the preferences, so it’s all in English again 🙂

Technorati Tags: hardware, VueScan
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

ICQ seems to have decided to feed those people who complained about the Xtraz of ICQ 6 (down till ICQ 4 Lite)

While back then the difference between Pro and Lite was that – as of ICQ 4 Lite – Lite had Xtraz while ICQ Pro (ICQ2003b) had none but other “professional features that lacked in ICQ Lite (ICQ Lite – ICQ Lite 4), the difference now, according to Chip Germany is, that the new ICQ Lite 7 has no Xtraz in comparance to the just recently released ICQ 6.5 with Open Xtraz.

With the release of ICQ 5 in 2005, the ICQ Team decided back then to get a rid of the lite and pro lines (which they just created in 2004) and make just one big ICQ that has it all again. But because many users missed the “Pro” features of ICQ2003b and before (you could switch ICQ back then between “Simple” and “Advanced mode”), ICQ re-coded ICQ from the scratch and released an unfinished ICQ 6 with the promise of revolutionizing ICQ and bringing back the loved Pro features.

Still many complained that they do not need Xtraz games and stuff (which you could disable) and only want to chat. And for such people is ICQ 7 Lite!

It can be downloaded from Chip.de here.

Chip.de also released screenshots of ICQ7 Lite (click on “Weiter” there to get the next screenshot).

Note: The screenshots are in Russian but at the beginning of the installer you can choose which language you want to use ICQ in!

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQ Lite
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

Skype released yesterday the new Skype 4.0 Beta3 hotfix has been released.

It has 2 major changes. It allows you to disable uPnp and Nat-PMP port mapping so Skype doesn’t crash the Siemens Speedstream 4200 DSL Modem anynmore.

Furthermore it features Skype’s second self-developped sound codec which is- so Raul Liive writes:

“… especially designed for calls over the internet with superb quality. The Super Wideband Audio codec will help you most on lousy network conditions and when you have lower bandwidth available, although it also improves quality in normal conditions too.”

Isses should be reported – as always – in the Skype Bugs Tracker

Technorati Tags: Skype, 4.0
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

You are like me? You also missed an on/off switch on your Nabaztag rabbit? Wonder how to get one? Now you can !

That’s right! There has been recently released a control program for the Nabaztag rabbit that works on the iPhone! It can be downloaded in the AppStore! more info here. (source.)

The author also released 2 videos showing how it works:

My Bunny (iphone app) from Forge on Vimeo.

My Bunny app demo (for embedding on site) from Forge on Vimeo.

I have tried it myself since yesterday and it works within a blink of a second!

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Nabaztag
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

I have today got the new RFID reader from Violet which allows the Nabaztag/tag to smell the created so called “Ztamp:s” and nanoTags programmed with it !

(I wrote about the mir:ror earlier on my blog).

I wanted to share my email which I just sent to the mir:ror support:

“Hi there, I am using Vista X64 Ultimate SP1 and wanted to tell you it took me 3 hours (!!!) to get my mir:or ready! Here is what happened:

If I install the version Mirware 0.94 with Windows fix found on http://www.mynabaztag.de/thread.php?threadid=553&sid=

The mirror is detected and the nanotags can be programmed and used, but after 1 minute this doesn’t work anymore, the mir:or doesn’t recognize them anymore (the mir:ror itself is still detected by the software!) I also checked whether energy safing was activated for the USB ports but nope!

If I install any previous version from mynabaztag.de or the official version from violet.net you offer there for download, the mir:ror itself works perfectly but no action can be performed as the mirware program gives the error “Interface not registered” permanently. Also those versions all kind of slowdown the PS/2 port of my PC (MSI MS-7325) which means my Logitech MX-1000 is bloody slow and mouse clicks mostly work not anymore (I have latest SetPoint software installed).

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Summary: Install “Mirware 0.94 with Windows fix” and the mir:ror will work for a minute (reinserting USB plug 10 times and sometimews switching ports helps it for another minute)

OR:

Install the official final Mirware from violet.net and the mir:ror will work nicely but hammer on the mouse PS/2 port and application actions won’t run as it says “Interface not registered” during trying to play the stuff in mirware.

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Mind you: I followed the manual and quick manual strictly and even restarted Windows in between and did a clean uninstall and checked whether really all files got deleted.

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After 3 hours, I found the fix: TOTALLY IGNORING THE MANUALS!!!

Don’t unplug the mir:ror
Uninstall any mirware
NEITHER reboot Windows NOR unplug the mir:or!
Install he official version from violet.net
Uninstall the software again
Install the version Mirware 0.94 with Windows fix found on http://www.mynabaztag.de/thread.php?threadid=553&sid=

Be happy with your mir:ror!

This was really a painful experience!

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CAUTION: The setup program is broken! As is the Uninstaller!

Here is how the setup program is broken:

If you select “Run on Windows startup” it won’t work. It will either not add the starup entry to the registry! or confuse C:/ with C:

Here is how the uninstaller is broken

DANGER!!! The uninstaller will try to remove all the other startup entries from your registry!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I am seriously shocked by how buggy this software, drivers and the setup / uninstaller are!”

Technorati Tags: Nabaztag, mir:ror
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Wanna discuss this post? Then do it in my forum! 🙂
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!