A few days ago I got the HTC Hero (the so called european version of Google’s Nexus One). It’s almost the same phone and I really musta say this, Android is fasssst ! Really fast!

What you get ? Better camera, better Mail (and of course GMail), Google Maps integration, 1 GHZ processor 512 ROM and 576 RAM.

The 3.7 inch AmoLED display is way better compared to the Iphone’s LCD. Almost the same battery life for day by day use.

Still under review….but 8 people out of 10 (IT geeks of course) said the Android does worth the switch from iOS.

• Ms Office 2010 Academic Suite for only £49
• Ms Windows 7 Professional 64 bit Upgrade (you must have a valid license of XP or Vista) for only £30

I took advantage of my @northumbria.ac.uk account and in 5 minutes using Digital River’s shop I had the product keys and download links. Office 2010 is about 586 MB and Windows 7 Pro is about 3.2GB.

Be aware you need to have a Win XP or Win Vista license prior to installing Windows 7 Professional , this is just the upgrade version. However the price is unbeatable. Upgrading from XP it’s a bit tricky but if you have minimum IT knowledge you’ll be fine.

If you had a Office Trial before you can use the same .exe file and just use the new product key since the executable is the same (name, version and size ) so you don’t have to download it again.

Those of you who are interested should visit the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/student/office/en-gb/default.aspx

Beach side - Vama Veche

After 12h I have received an email from the website owner , Mr. Richard – the so called “code-director” (hahaha) telling me that he was unable to find a proper unlock code for my BB 8900 but I can choose another option from their website, and so on. Practically just bullshit …

Hi ,

This is just to inform you that a request on the server for your BlackBerry phones unlock code (imei : 359485027368XXX ) has returned “Code Not Found”

This could be because your imei is incorrect. Please recheck your imei and if incorrect forward to us for resubmission.(free)

This could also mean that the unlock service chosen wasnt the service that locked your phone.

YOU MAY have an alternative service….

For example if you chose Motorola unlock codes we try to obtain your codes from Motorola, if your phone returned Code Not Found from them it could be that your “network” that locked it, ie Vodafone or AT&T.  Its quite possible and happens quite often that if you re-place your order choosing the alternative service you can obtain your codes this way.  Alternatives are not always available it really will depend on your network and make of phone, you can check our list here:

http://www.foneszone.co.uk/nav/unlock_code_pricelist.php

When you order codes from us our form just automatically selects the CHEAPEST option available, not always the most reliable for your phone, If you would like to try another service please REPLY and I can set up new payment for another code.

Hi Spanoche,This is just to inform you that a request on the server for your BlackBerry phones unlock code (imei : 359485027368216 ) has returned “Code Not Found”
This could be because your imei is incorrect. Please recheck your imei and if incorrect forward to us for resubmission.(free)
This could also mean that the unlock service chosen wasnt the service that locked your phone.
YOU MAY have an alternative service….
For example if you chose Motorola unlock codes we try to obtain your codes from Motorola, if your phone returned Code Not Found from them it could be that your “network” that locked it, ie Vodafone or AT&T.  Its quite possible and happens quite often that if you re-place your order choosing the alternative service you can obtain your codes this way.  Alternatives are not always available it really will depend on your network and make of phone, you can check our list here:

http://www.foneszone.co.uk/nav/unlock_code_pricelist.php

When you order codes from us our form just automatically selects the CHEAPEST option available, not always the most reliable for your phone, If you would like to try another service please REPLY and I can set up new payment for another code.

I have submitted a refund request two or three times, no answer. I had to contact Paypal report it and after a couple of days PayPal refunded my account.

So please take care when you’re looking for “unlock blackberry” on Google, a lot of scammers like this one ( foneszone.co.uk ) show up. It’s better to be warned than sorry !

1) the small opening in the volcanic ash clouds that allow airliners to fly through without any chance of danger.
2) the opening at the top of a volcano from which forth spews volcanic ash

“We were stranded at Heathrow Airport for hours until the airline found some ash hole to fly through.”

It’s called OpenProj and it’s an open source project management software intended as a complete desktop replacement for Microsoft Project.  This software is a serious alternative to Ms Project. OpenProj will do: control, tracking and management of projects.

OpenProj interface

OpenProj is ideal for desktop project management and is available on Linux, UNIX, Mac or Windows. It even opens existing Microsoft or Primavera files. OpenProj is an user interface and even opens existing MSProject files.

OpenProj shares scheduling engine with Project-ON-Demand and provides Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more.
The OpenProj solution has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Galician, Persian, Russian, Korean and Chinese.

Features:

•     Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) used to order and control the tasks of the project for people who manages projects
•     Resources Breakdown Structure (RBS) used to define the structure of the resources, teams, providers, etc.
•    Task Usage and Resource Usage are used to control your project and provide a good track on it.
•    The Report tool provides information about the current status of your project.

Microsoft Project retails for $999.99, is installed on 7% of all Office desktops and drives over $1 billion in revenue for Microsoft. OpenProj fills an important gap in the desktop market, as a key component in the Office family of products now has a replacement available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. OpenProj was also selected for inclusion with Star Office suite boxes in Europe. The OpenProj solution has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Galician, Persian, Russian, Korean and Chinese.

As you can see the results are pretty sharp and almost no distortion is visible.

Both of the compression options are found in the Save As menu. First find a large PDF file that you want to shrink, any will do for this example. Go to File > Save As. In the save box there will be two drop down items. The second one is what we are interested in, Quartz Filter. From the drop down menu select none. This may be counter intuitive at first, however it allows the PDF engine to run and reduce any parts that it can. It doesn’t run any other filters. For the most part on an uncompressed PDF this will produce pleasing results. The image below show the drop down box on the Save As menu.

how to compress PDF files on a Mac

The option of having no Quartz Filter for the most part is sufficient. This can reduce the file size. This option is known as loss less, so it wont remove anything at all and keep things in high quality. This is needed for PDF’s with images. However for PDF’s with only text or simple geometric shapes to may be better to reduce the file size even more.

To apply a reduction in quality (however it still stays pretty good) in the drop down select “Reduce File Size”, I never notice it at first. This option will crunch images and remove parts of the PDF that are not needed, in a similar method of a jpeg images. There are slight problems with this method. Images turn out horrible and lose all quality. However for text and simple bands of colour it is perfect, and the reduction in file size can be massive.

Hopefully these two option apply to you. The first one, for the most part, doesn’t produce any decent results (one files size was larger) if the original PDF is made in Preview. However the second option always reduces the files size, usually by half.

Park Plaza Amsterdam - room

The Tamron 17-50 mm on the Nikon D300 @ ParkPlaza Hotel / Amsterdam.

Today I have started the trial for Kastersky AV , highly recommended by a lot of IT guys these days. See you back in a month with a short review.

kaspersky av 2010

No more than 25 minutes of good music coming from the rotor. If you have ever wondered how this looks like here are some photos taken @ Tuzla – Constanta a few seconds after departure.

Rent a movie , download it , get some popcorn and adopt my position….I don’t give a f**k about all this SL vs W7 prizefight. If you do go here