HTC HD2 – The Design

The HD2 is a robust and solid smartphone; it is very beautifully designed and has a 4.3-inch screen. I personally feel any smartphone with a smaller screen is not user friendly. The screen resolution is 800X480 and the display is bright and sharp. You can view and navigate any regular website with ease without looking for the mobile version of the website.

There is a 3.5mm headphone socket and a micro-USB charging port on the bottom. A USB connector is sufficient and you don’t need a charger. Almost all the options can be controlled using the capacitive touchscreen, without the need for using the buttons.

HTC HD2 – The Pros

• HTC has designed a user interface named HTC TouchFlo 3D (also called as HTC Sense). Generally people are not happy with the user interface of windows mobile, but this HTC Sense makes the UI very attractive
• You can re-order the home screen menus and make the home screen clutter free.
• You can include Twitter app and Facebook sync. They come in very handy while you travel.
• 16gb of memory (you can add more)
• Helps business people by providing have mobile version of Office, excel and PowerPoint and you can sync with Microsoft outlook.
• The highlight of this mobile is the option of ‘WiFi Router Mode’ where in the mobile can act as a WiFi hotspot for 7 other devices. Just create a SSID and a password and the router is ready.
• It is capable of playing wide range of video files.
• You will be blown away by the speed of the user interface. To my knowledge this is the fastest smart phone in the market.

HTC HD2 – The Cons

Conclusion:

Without any doubt HTC HD2 is the Windows Mobile smartphone ever built, it is right there at the top along with iPhone and high end android phones. When you consider hardware, it is even better than iPhone and other smart phones. The only negative aspect is it is running windows 6.5. If you are fan of windows mobile then you can definitely go for HTC HD2

HTC HD2 – Complete Review is a post from: TechnoAges

You can either hire good technical writers or outsource it altogether. I came across this company named Quality Technical Writers, they are in the market for around 10 years now and are providing quality Technical writing service

Get Professional Technical Writers for you Comapany is a post from: TechnoAges

You play music in Vox by simply opening up an audio file (in practically any format). While you can’t make a custom playlist, Vox will now have quick access to any music in the same folder as the song you opened, so you can create playlists simply by throwing some music together in the Finder. Beyond simple playback, Vox also has a powerful 10-band equalizer and several effects (reverb, time stretch, pitch shift, etc.) that can be applied to your audio. At any point you can export any song (or the entire contents of the current folder) to AAC, AIFF, and a variety of other formats. The export can simply transcode the audio file, but it can also apply your EQ and effects settings to the new file as well.

While it’s not necessarily a solution for managing enormous music libraries, Vox is a great little music player for playing music you’ve got just about anywhere. If you take you don’t like managing your music at work and just take a hard drive of MP3s with you, Vox is a really great way to play them.

Vox | via One Thing Well

Send an email to Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com.

Great Little Vox Music Player and Converter for Mac OS X is a post from: TechnoAges

LifeHacker.com says,

Whether you’re just trying to get annoying marketers to give up on calling your cell phone or you have a specific person in mind you’d like to block, Call Block Unlimited can help block the number. The app has a built in black list of known scammer and telemarketer numbers and supports white listing and black listing of numbers of custom control. You can opt to dump unwanted calls into voicemail or block them altogether.

Call Block Unlimited is a free app and works wherever Android does. You can download it by scanning the QR code at right or searching the Android Marketplace for “Call Block Unlimited”.

Call Block Unlimited [AppBrain via AddictiveTips]

Call Block Unlimited for Android Blocks Unwanted Numbers & Routes Calls to Voicemail is a post from: TechnoAges

There’s not a rash of viruses or malware apps circulating around the Android ecosystem these days—even the supposed “wallpaper data collector” turned out to be not actually malicious. Still, it’s not a bad idea to have a scanner handy for when and if you need it. Norton’s real strength is the offering of a free, universally accessible tool for remotely wiping or locking down your phone’s data and SIM card access.

After devising a passcode for locking and unwiping, Norton stashes them away, then watches for them to arrive via SMS. If you can’t get your phone back and fear for the security of your Gmail or other data, SMS yourself with lock yourpassword, or wipe yourpassword, and so forth, and you’re good to go. If you somehow fire off that command accidentally, you can set up two buddies in Norton’s settings to have unlock capabilities from their phone numbers.

Norton Mobile Security’s direct competitor in this game is WaveSecure, recently purchased by McAfee, and offering a bit more functionality for $19.95 per year. Norton’s app comes with a 101-day subscription (at least it did today), but no pricing is evident on the forums from which the beta sprung. You can grab it through the Market, or using the QR code at left.

Norton Mobile Apps Public Beta [via AddictiveTips]

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

Lock or Wipe Your Stolen Android Using Norton Mobile Security is a post from: TechnoAges

Why Prey?

There are obvious reasons to like Prey. Chief among them, it’s free to use for up to three devices of any kind, from computers running Windows, Mac, or Linux to Android devices. But that wouldn’t mean anything if the tracking Prey provided wasn’t really solid. It’s not fool-proof, especially if the thief wants to entirely wipe your computer or phone, but if that’s not the case, it gives you a fighting chance.

We’ll tell you why in readable text, being a blog and all, but we think LifeHacker.com‘s video walkthrough, embedded below, tells the tale even better—with old-timey music, too, courtesy of Incompetech.

On a laptop with a webcam, a Wi-Fi chip, and Prey installed, it’s a good bet you’ll have a photo of your thief and an approximate location on them just as soon as they have your computer running for a few minutes. You don’t have to actively search, either—devices with Prey installed in the background “phone home” to your web-based account every 20 minutes by default (you can decrease this interval), spilling their guts about everything they’re doing.

Webcam snaps, desktop screenshots, lists of modified files and running programs, network data galore, and much more are provided to those who want to quietly track their, uh, prey. If you’d prefer to think that maybe someone just found your device, you can set read-aloud alerts, fire off alarms, change the system wallpaper, lock it with a password, and remotely wipe out your browser data—all from any browser you can get to.

The basics of installing and using Prey are covered in the video, but here’s a brief run-through:

Step One: Set It and Forget It

Head to Prey’s download section, grab the package for your system (again, Prey supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android), then install it as normal, creating an account as you do so. The only major issue to address is how you want to control your system and track it if it goes missing. Most people will want to stick with the default, web-based standard method, but those who would prefer an email-based, server-controlled tracking setup can explore an “Advanced” option. I’m focusing on the default Prey + Control Panel setup.

Because it’s tracking software that doesn’t want to be seen, Prey is almost invisible when it’s running on your system, without any configuration or executable files to be seen. In fact, once you’ve deleted the installer, you shouldn’t be able to find Prey at all in your system, because that’s the idea. It quietly and quickly checks in with Prey’s servers in the background, at an interval you decide, to see if the owner has logged in and marked it as stolen. That’s all it does—until you flip the switch on Prey’s servers to note that it is, in fact, stolen, or ask for an update on the hardware profile.

After you’ve installed Prey and set your defaults, log into Prey’s web center, and peek at the basic configuration tools. You can give each of your devices a unique name, clarify its details, and change the frequency of its reporting time. You can set the frequency to a reasonable 20 or 30 minutes now, but don’t worry—you can update it as soon as your device is swiped, so you won’t be wasting those precious early minutes wondering what’s up.

Step Two: Set Your Modules

The Modules menu on Prey’s site determines what happens when your device checks in and notices that it’s stolen (if only computers could recognize their strange meta-existence). There are two types of modules: the quiet, informative “Report” modules, and the more aggressive “Action” modules that secure your data, and likely let the thief or finder know that you know your stuff is missing—and that you’ve got a way to track it.

Report Modules: In general, you’ll want to switch all these on. You never know what might come in handy, and it’s not too much more effort for Prey to grab any one item more than the others. You can set limits on how much raw modified data and running program information is thrown your way, but the defaults are fine, if voluminous. The most important module to turn on is Geo, which uses Google’s Wi-FI location API to try and triangulate a laptop’s location—or the GPS chip in an Android for very accurate positioning.

The main exception would be the “Webcam” option. If your laptop has a webcam that must activate a very distinct light or LED before snapping a picture, it could be an obvious give-away and tip your hand. MacBooks, for example, turn on a green LED when grabbing images from the webcam. If you wanted to go stealth and not let the unlawful owner know you had them, you could shut this off—but you’d likely be better off trying to grab at least one picture of the thief unawares. (He or she may not be perceptive or paranoid enough to catch what’s going on.)

Alarm modules: When subtle won’t work, Alarm Modules provide you with your next best chance of alerting the thief, the person who bought stolen goods from the thief, and potentially anyone near them, that your laptop is your laptop. Failing that, some alarm modules can at least wipe out any potentially revealing information about you.

Alarm, Alert, Change Wallpaper, and the password-protected Lock are pretty self-explanatory. Our volunteer “thief” Whitson reported that the alarm is, in fact, quite loud and attention-getting, and that the pop-up alert comes up over anything else you may be doing.

The “Secure” module is where you make your big security decisions. You can set Prey to wipe out your entire password keychain, delete data from Firefox, Safari, or Chrome (sorry, Opera users), or wipe down Outlook or Thunderbird. A total account wipe-out would be a nice option, of course, but there’s likely a compromise between making Prey still active and having data deletion access.

Android SIM Protection

Android phones set up with Prey actually have fewer reporting and alarm modules than laptops, but they do have one unique feature: SIM card protection. If a thief attempts to swap out the SIM card in your phone, the new SIM number is captured and text-messaged to a contact you set up in the Prey options. With that kind of data and a police contact, you’re pretty close to tracking down your phone.

Step Three: Using Your Reports
So you’ve registered Prey on your laptops and Androids, and if it gets stolen, you’ll get an email announcing a new report is drawn up every X minutes. Now what?

First things first, report your laptop or device stolen to the police. The cynical may assume they don’t care or don’t have the know-how to track your gear, but the cynical often aren’t shielded members of a law enforcement agency. Give the police everything you have on your device, including serial numbers, identifying stickers or characteristics, and the last place you knew you had it. It never hurts. When using the similar “Find my iPhone” feature of the MobileMe service, police in Madison, Wisc. were able to track down two iPhones stolen from a store. Your mileage will vary, but it’s best to head through official channels first.

If you’re on your own, you can hope that the thief or other person toting your laptop makes a regular run of certain Wi-Fi spots. You’ll have the IP address they’re connecting outward from, the name and details of the Wi-Fi spot they’re connecting to, and a list of the programs they’re running, connections they’re making, and other details. Your best hope is that geo-location through available Wi-Fi can point you somewhere unique in an uncrowded neighborhood, or that the Wi-Fi they connect to is unique and identifiable—”JoesCoffee”, “246JonesSt”, or something similar would be ideal. If your webcam can grab a clear snap of the thief, all the better. If you’ve got nothing quite so unique and helpful, a visit to the traceroute and other tools at network-tools.com (or nearly any site resulting from a “traceroute” Google search) can potentially get you closer to your missing goods.

In any case, contact your local police rather than try and pin the phone down yourself. One blogger snatched back an iPhone with some help from friends, but he suggests your journey might not have such a funny ending.

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

How to Use Prey to Recover A Stolen Android & Laptop? is a post from: TechnoAges

LifeHacker.com says,

If you’ve activated Ping from your iTunes sidebar, and maybe found it lacking before, now you can find a new Ping button when hovering over tracks in your Library, whether or not you grabbed them from iTunes. You can Like a track, Post about it to your Ping profile, or visit that artist’s Ping page to get more of your music tastes into Apple’s own social experiment.

The deeper Ping integration is an update to iTunes (version 10.0.1.22), available free for Windows and Mac systems.

iTunes [Apple]

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

Share Songs on iTunes’ Ping Network From Your Own Music Library is a post from: TechnoAges

LifeHacker.com says,

Better Use of Your Album Art

If you just want to use iTunes to manage your music, it can still do that. And now your album list, instead of showing the same album name listed over and over next to songs from that album, will show the album art from that disc in that column instead (at a minimum of five or more album tracks). And the iTunes icon itself has dropped its note-on-a-CD scheme for a more modern, Apple-app-like look.

Ping Is a Music-Focused Social Network in iTunes

Ping is the big new thing in iTunes 10, though. Ping is, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs described it, “like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.” Right off, it’s helpful to know that it’s entirely optional, like iTunes’ Genius recommendation feature. You can either make yourself entirely open to the public, accessible only to approved friends, or off the Ping grid entirely.

You can follow artists on iTunes to see, at a minimum, where they’re playing concerts and when they’ve got new music or videos out, but if they’re sharing other things—photos, other tracks they like, free content—you’ll get that, too. You can also bring in friends to follow your own music choices, and follow them back, but it appears that Ping mainly tracks music purchases, not the tracks you’re playing or previewing. For example, Ping features a top 10 list of music the people you’re following are buying from iTunes, but—at least from Jobs’ presentation—it doesn’t sound like it offers any help when it comes to what your friends are actually listening to. So it’s a lot less open than, say, Last.fm, and contained entirely inside iTunes, or your iPhone or iPod touch. It doesn’t appear to be accessible at all via a web browser.

One more small thing we noticed: iTunes has moved its close/minimize/restore buttons to the side of its window, at least on an OS X demonstration.

iTunes 10 will be available for Windows and Mac systems.

iTunes 10 [Apple]

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

iTunes 10 Introduces Ping a Social Network for Music, Like Twitter is a post from: TechnoAges

Ads on the web can be all kinds of annoying, but some people prefer not to block every internet ad they see—after all, it is how most web sites (including Lifehacker) make their money, and are able to keep pumping out content for free. Even if you don’t block ads, though, it may be worthwhile to install an ad blocker (like Adblock Plus for Firefox), if only for its malware-blocking powers.

You won’t see it on the list of ad filters when you first install most ad-block extensions, but a few folks have created a filter that maintains a listing of domains used for spreading spyware and malware. It started out as a tool for DNS servers, but has since been converted to a filter so those using ad blockers can take advantage of (on Firefox or Chrome). Hit the link to read about it and subscribe to it, and don’t forget to install Adblock Plus on Firefox first if you haven’t already.

Blocking Malicious Sites with Adblock Plus [via #tips]

Ad Block Plus Extension Blocks Even Malicious Software Too Now is a post from: TechnoAges

Game Booster gives you a number of preferences for when you’re running a game, from which background applications can quit to small tweaks to optimize processor performance and clean RAM. After specifying your preferences, you can go into “Gaming mode” with the flip of a switch. Then, when you’re done playing, you can just switch gaming mode back off and go back to your regular desktop experience.

It also has a few other features, like checking for important driver updates, downloading popular game add-ons, and defragmenting your game folders. If you find that your desktop setup isn’t optimal for gaming, it’s a nice tool to let you spend more time gaming and less time tweaking your computer before every session. And, of course, don’t forget to overclock your graphics card with previously mentioned EVGA Precision for an even bigger performance boost.

Game Booster 2 Beta is a free download, Windows only.

Game Booster v2 Beta [via Life Rocks 2.0]

Optimize Your Gaming System for Free Using Game Booster for Better Experience is a post from: TechnoAges