Technology Metro

We own a lot of gadgets, well most of us does including me. Most of these gadgets use different file format for videos, a cell phone uses a .3gp format, and iPod uses a .mp4 format so to save movies of any videos in these gadgets we have to convert them into a compatible format for each gadget. There are some softwares available which can convert your DVD movies into suitable format. DVD Ripper can be used to do all the converting. There are a lot of DVD Ripper softwares you can choose from and Xilisoft DVD Ripper is one of the well known softwares. You can convert any of your DVD movies to a suitable format with Xilisoft DVD Ripper. Xilisoft can convert DVD’s for almost any media players available on the market today including MPEG-4, AVI, DivX, XviD, RM, FLV, SWF, MOV, 3GP, and WM. There are two types of DVD formats, NTSC and PAL. Xilisoft supports both these formats so it should not be a problem at all.

ImToo is another DVD Ripper available on the market. There are load of DVD Rippers available to use but not all of them are reliable. ImToo is another trusted name in this area. ImToo DVD Ripper Pack is a bit expensive than Xilisoft but ImToo includes a bit more features. ImToo can even rip audio files from a DVD music videos to all audio format used today. ImTOO DVD Ripper can convert DVD files for all media devices so no need to get a different software to convert the DVD file to a suitable format for that particular gadget. You can even edit the video and place video effects on it. This is an All-in-one software so the price is fair. ImTOO DVD Ripper pack includes five different softwares to obviously it will have a lot more functions. ImTOO DVD Ripper pack includes:

• ImTOO DVD Ripper Platinum v4.0
• ImTOO DVD Creator v3.0
• ImTOO MPEG Encoder v3.1
• ImTOO Audio Encoder v2.0
• ImTOO CD Ripper v1.0

All these can make your life real easy for anything you want to do that is related to video and audio files.

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Here is another great deal for computer owners. You could get a Free Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse at PC Connection after $30 mail-in-rebate. This is not the best Cordless mouse on the market but for free, I wouldn’t hesitate to get it. Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse is quite big compared to other cordless mouse but it is packed with some useful features. Even though it is big, it is quite comfortable to use. Here is what you will be getting inside the box of a Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse:

• 1 AA battery from Duracell
• 2.4GHz Micro Receiver
• Setpoint 2.42a Installation CD and a
• Quickstart Guide

Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse is quite easy to setup on your PC or a laptop. The only thing it needs is a USB port. Here is an in depth review of Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse at EverythingUSB if you want more information on it. For the price (Free after rebate), I don’t think you will be disappointed with Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse. The dual laser engine found on Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse mouse works on most surfaces but sometimes doesn’t work that well on surfaces that a single laser mouse would. Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse is good for on the go persons as it relatively small and performs great for the price it is listed under. The review at EverythingUSB should clear any doubt you may have over Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse as they have provided a full unbiased review of this Logitech Mouse. The review article should help you decide if the Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse meets your requirement. By the way, shipping is not free for this product.

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Youtube is one of the most used sites on the world wide web and is becoming even popular if that can happen. Youtube is free to use by any person and they can upload personal videos or any kind of videos and share it with the world. When I first started using YouTube, there were a lot of videos I wanted to save on the Computer for later viewing but it was quite hard to do so. I started using a FireFox plugin called Video Downloader. It was not the best way to download videos from YouTube. You can only download videos using Video Downloader in FLV format and to watch that video, you will need a FLV player. FLV files don’t play on Windows Media Player or any other player except a FLV player and if you want to save the video in your cell phone, iPod or any other handheld and computers, you need to download and install a FLV file converter. It is a quite a hassle doing all this.

Some months ago, I found a site that will let you download YouTube Videos in any format, well in six formats including flv (mpg format, .mov format for playing in quicktime and MACs, .mp4 format for iPod, PSP, iPhone, ,3gp format for cell phones, mp3 and ofcourse .flv). You can use ConvertTube not just download YouTube videos but convert and download any online videos from the web. Convert Tube is free to use but there is a restriction, you can only download a video every eight minutes only. To download videos without a time restraint, you will have to pay a subscription fee of $5 per month. Using Convert Tube is very easy, just paste the videos url (eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCnhhz9MguA) in the URL field and choose the format you want to download the video in. It is easy as that, no need to install any flv players or install any kind of softwares, it is all done online.

This is the best online video downloader I found till today. I always use it, the only drawback to ConvertTube is, you have to wait eight minutes before you download another video if you are not a registered user ($5/month).

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Ok, I got another Graphics Card deal here, actually a couple of deals. I think it is a great deal for any kind of gamer. The first one is Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT 512MB Graphics card. A great graphics card to play any games that is currently on the market. Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT 512MB Graphics card will run any game. Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT Graphics Card has been over clocked at 700MHz for fast performance. Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCIe Graphics Card can be bought for $140 at Newegg.com after $40 Mail-in-Rebate. You will get a Neverwinter Nights II PC game for free with the purchase of Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT Graphics Card. Shipping cost for this Gigabyte GeForce 8800GT Graphics Card is free.

The second deal is for XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB Zalman Edition Graphics Card. XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB Zalman Edition Graphics Card costs $145 at TigerDirect after $30 Mail-in-Rebate (Two rebates per person). XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB Zalman Edition Graphics Card has the world’s first DirectX 10 GPU and uses a powerful unified architecture bringing life like graphics to your games. Not the best graphics card by any means but it packs a punch for the price it is sold for. XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB Zalman Edition Graphics Card comes with a Zalman cooler at no extra cost. Here are some of the specifications for XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB Zalman Edition Graphics Card:

• Has a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT GPU
• RoHS Compliant, HDCP Enabled, HDTV Ready, SLI Ready, OpenGL 2.0, DirectX 10, PCI Express 2.0, Vista Certified
• 512MB of DDR3 Video Ram
• Dual DVI (Dual Link), HDTV/S-Video Connectors
• Resolution of up to 2560 x 1600 (Digital)

This XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB Zalman Edition Graphics Card also supports dual monitors if you ever want to use two. I will keep post on this blog if any other good deal comes along.

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Here are some great deals for Tom Clancy’s Games Series Fans. Get the set of three Tom Clancy’s first person shooter games for just $10 after mail-in-rebate. Tom Clancy’s Chronicles includes three separate games, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six 3. I just bought a Tom Clancy series Complete Collection DVD today and I was just about to install one of them when I saw Tom Clancy’s Chronicles (Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six 3) at Amazon.com for just $10 after $10 mail-in-rebate. Tom Clancy’s games have won awards so you won’t be disappointed at all. One of the best first person shooter game. This Tom Clancy’s Action Games Collection include Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six3: Raven Shield . All of these games have a very compelling story and extraordinary game play that will drop your jaws.

Here are other two good deals on Circuitcity. The first of them is called Crysis. I haven’t had the chance to play it yet but it looks great. You can get this futuristic first person shooter game Crysis at circuitcity for $20 after discounts. Crysis is not available for purchase online but you can buy it in circuitcity stores for the same price.

Another discount on offer at circuitcity is Portal. Portal is a the first first-person puzzle action adventure game ever created. Portal has won 40 different awards for its innovative game play, 15 of those awards were Game of the Year awards. Portal provides hours of unique game play. Portal was created by Valve. In the past, Valve have created one of the most successful game ever called Half-life and they have moved even forward with this new Portal first person shooter game. You can get Portal at Circuitcity for $10 after $10 discount. Portal was released for PC just about a month ago so the $10 price tag is very good for an innovative new game created by developers who have one of the best track record. Here is the Flash Version of Portal. All of the games I have mentioned above are for PC.

There are lots of things to consider before you commit to a web hosting. One thing you must do before you make your choice is to see if the web hosting provider is a reliable one. There are lots and lots of sites that sell web space for very cheap price but the service they provide is very poor. Even the expensive ones are not reliable enough. The best hosting right now that most people use is BlueHost. I have read a lot of reviews about them and most of them are positive. The space and bandwidth they provide is plentiful but if you have a site that gets a huge amount of traffic, it is better to ditch share hosting and go for a virtual private server or a dedicated one. They cost a lot more but you will have all the resources to yourself.

Most of the servers use linux operating system but windows web hosting can be very useful to users who don’t know much about linux. Windows is a lot user friendly to novices than any linus operating system I have seen, including Ubuntu. Well windows is a bit dangerous than linux as there are a lot of virus and malwares that harm Windows Operating System than a Linux one. Even the Microsoft server is on Linux, so that tells you something. Windows is very widely use and that is why it is targeted by lots of hackers (cracker) to exploit the system. There are lots of very handy articles on WebHostingRating for people who are looking to purchase a web hosting and every single one of them will give you a slight idea on what kind of things you need to consider before getting one. Sites like Web Hosting Rating help a lot when it comes to choosing a right web hosting as they provide vital information from lets say, specifications to valuable tips and tutorials that can help you to make the right decision. Here are some things you need to consider before you choose any particular web hosting company.

• Do some research (find out as much as you can about the company)
• Don’t go for the unlimited bandwidth and disk space (most of the people think that they will get unlimited space but it is not true, the space is shared between all users and one hosting account can only use about 20% CPU usage before your account gets suspended)
• Visit some webmasters forum and look around, you are bound to find some very useful information
• Visit web hosting review sites like Web Hosting Rating and read the reviews left there by customers

There are other things to consider too, like the server down time. Most of the web hosting companies guarantee 99.99% server uptime. Some companies guarantee but don’t deliver on their promises so this is where you need to do some research. Also the download speed of the server needs to be accounted for as people simply won’t bother visiting a site that take too long to load. I actually found the perfect hosting for my sites. The price is low enough and the service is superb, almost never had a server downtime till today (about 1 day since I subscribed to it, about six months ago). I wouldn’t say that cheap web hostings are bad neither would I say expensive ones are always good, if you look around hard enough, you are bound to find a great web hosting for a very cheap price. That’s what I did after my three failed attempts and since then, never had any problems.

Anyone who wants to make a website, has to get a web hosting space, be it free or otherwise. Choosing the right web hosting for your site can be a bit of a hassle as there are many things you must look at including the cost, disk space and bandwidth. There are lots and lots of web hosting providers on the web and that can make it hard to choose and know which one provides the best service as service is the most important part. No one wants their site to be down because of server problems. I have had this problem couple of times. I bought a web hosting package from a webmaster’s forum (a cheap one) and for about a week there was no problem at all but after that the server was down for atleast 15 days. I had to switch from that server.

Cheap always doesn’t mean bad service and expensive doesn’t mean it is the best. I have had experience with both. I bought a hosting package from a reputable web hosting provider but when I started receiving about 12k traffic, they suspended my account. It was quite and expensive package and I bought their hosting services for a year and paid in advance. Well, I got a full refund from them. After that, I got another hosting package from webmaster’s forum, not the cheapest but not that expensive (5$ per month). I get 2GB of disk space and 25GB of transfer bandwidth per month. Not the best specs to look at but they don’t oversell. The previous web hosting I talked about before gave Unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth, clearly they are overselling. Well, many people have many different experience with web hosting providers so it can be quite hard to choose even. There are some web hosting reviews available online to analyze which one is best. There are lots of web hosting review sites but not all of them can be trusted. WebHostingGeeks is a well established site and I think it can be trusted. According to them, BlueHost is the best hosting provider for 2008. I have read a lot about BlueHost and I haven’t heard that many negative stuffs about them. Specs look good to but don’t assume you will be getting all of them, it is a shared hosting. Obviously, almost all of the hosting providers oversell to use all of servers space which is usually not used. But beware of an unlimited deal though. One thing I don’t like about BlueHost is, customers need to give them scanned copies of their utility bills etc to verify. Well, thats the law, I guess.

There are some great web hosting articles found at WebHostingGeeks which can be useful to novices as well as professionals. Lots of very informative articles are found there. All the reviews provided by them are from true customer experience and it will be very useful for anyone who wants to switch or get a new web hosting. They have reviews of all the major web hosting providers found on the web.

This is another good deal on a Graphics Card. I just wrote a discount graphics card post yesterday and I found this one today. This deal is available at Compusa. EVGA Geforce 9800GTX PCI-Express Graphics Card is priced at $270 at compusa. You can get even further discount if you use a paypal account to pay for it. Using a paypal account to purchase the EVGA Geforce 9800GTX PCI-Express Graphics Card will drop the price down to $250. The $20 paypal discount offer can be applied on any item on Compusa provided the product costs is atleast $200.

Well back to the EVGA Geforce 9800GTX PCI-Express Graphics Card. This NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX based Graphics card provides gamers with lifelike graphics at the same time, providing optimal power management with the use of HybridPower technology. When the graphics card is not in use, it shuts down which in turn lowers the power consumption and noise.

Here are some of the specifications and features that are available in a EVGA Geforce 9800GTX PCI Express Graphics Card.

• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX Graphics Processing Unit
• 675 MHz processor clock frequency
• 512MB of Video Ram with a memory bandwidth of 70.4GB/sec which runs at 2200 MHz.
• 256-bit GDDR3 memory interface
• Has a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1600 (Digital)
• PCI Express 2.0
• Supports Multiple monitors
• Supports Microsoft DirectX 10 & Shader Model 4.0, OpenGL 2.1
• NVIDIA SLI (Scalable Link Interface)
• NVIDIA HybridPower
• NVIDIA Unified Architecture
• NVIDIA Lumenex Engine
• NVIDIA Quantum Effects Technology and a whole lot more technologies.

EVGA Geforce 9800GTX Graphics Card specs are a lot similar to 8800GTX but EVGA Geforce 9800GTX Graphics Card runs a lot cooler. Because EVGA Geforce 9800GTX Graphics Card uses a PCI express 2.0, it is about 10% faster than even 8800Ultra. This is the graphics card to go for if you are looking a Tri-SLI (three graphics card) as it costs a lot less than other high end graphics cards. 9800GTX even very gets close to 9800GX2 specs which is a much more expensive card (around $500). EVGA Geforce 9800GTX Graphics Card provides awesome performance in this price range.

I wish I could have EVGA Geforce 9800GTX PCI-Express Graphics Card. It has a huge amount of Video Ram and could run any games that are on the market right now. $250 is a bit off my budget for a graphics card but I think some hardcore gamer would appreciate the EVGA Geforce 9800GTX PCI-Express Video Card for $250.

Two good deals at the same time. If you are looking for some quality Graphics card for your PC, this is one of the best deals you will ever find. This post includes two different deals on two different Graphics Card which should be perfect for any kind of budget. Here is the first and the cheapest one on offer.

Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2600XT at Buy.com can be purchases at just $30 after rebates. New Google Checkout users can get an additional $10 discount which drops the price down to $20. If you have received a $25 coupon for Google Checkout, you can get Diamond Viper Radeon 256MB Graphics Card for just $5. I have published a post a deal on Diamond Viper ATI Radeon X1650 PRO Graphics Card before but this a lot better deal that that one. Here are some of the specifications for Diamond Viper Radeon Graphics Card. (BTW shipping is free)

• Radeon 2600 XT GPU, 800 MHZ Clock Frequency
• 256MB of Video Ram which has 128-bit GDDR3 memory interface
• Native PCI Express x16 bus interface
• Supports Microsoft DirectX 10 & Shader Model 4.0, OpenGL 2.0

This deal includes two products, a XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCI Express Graphics Card as well as Company of Heroes Game for $150. This deal is offered by Newegg. Buy a XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCI Express Graphics Card and get a Company of Heroes game for free (while supplies last). The price is dropped to $150 for XFX GeForce 8800GT 512MB PCI Express Video Card after a $30 mail-in-rebate. Here are some of the specifications for XFX GeForce 8800GT Graphics Card.

• Nvidia GeForce 8800GT GPU, 600MHz Clock Frequency
• 512MB Video Ram which has 256-bit GDDR3 memory interface
• Supports Microsoft DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.0
• Maximum Resolution of 2560 x 1600
• 2 DVI port and 1 HDTV Out port
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 interface

I wish I had a PCI Express slot. I would have surely bought the XFX GeForce 8800GT Graphics Card for my PC. It is quite hard playing games on my Laptop which has a lot better Graphics Card than my desktop and can’t run most games on it because of that.

I am into programming and know something about it. Not a lot on scripting languages though. I learned C programming for 4 years and I think I know something about C programming. I haven’t done any C programming for some year thought but I know what kind of logic goes into programming. Programming is mainly about using logic. Syntax can be found on the web or on books but logic is the key to any programming. There are a lot of online sites that can help you learn programming but I think it is best to learn offline with a professional person who knows it all as it takes a lot less time to learn that way.

Well, if you know the logic behind programming and are just looking for some tips, you could get help online easily as there are lots of sites that offer help for free. Scripting language can be quite useful when creating a website of you own. When creating a site, you also need to look at the designing aspects of it. There are a lot of design blog that will help you to design websites. Learning designing doesn’t take that much time as programming does (from my experience).

Stylish Weblog is kind of a general blog but it has lot of useful information on designing, programming, technology news and also has interesting articles on finance. This blog can be useful to a lot of people as it includes quite a broad range of subjects. Stylish Weblog is a fairly new blog but still it has a lot of very informative and useful posts on it. You might want to check out Stylish Weblog’s user accounts as it offers valuable information on staying safe from Malwares and spywares. Spyware is a huge risk when you are online. I myself have had a problem. Lot about $50 because of it. Atleast, I think it was because of Malwares on my PC. I had a virtual credit card which I got to purchase items on the web. Before I could purchase anything, the balance just magically disappears. I had never used that card on the web before or anywhere else for that matter. The credit card information was stored in a notepad file. The balance just magically disappeared. I think it was because of Malwares (Don’t know for sure though). You should take a look at this spyware community on Stylish Weblog for more information.