Mailplane: The Mac OS X Gmail Desktop

Do you love Gmail? I really do.

These days, web apps are giving their desktop equivalents a run for their money. Still, desktop apps provide a level of integration that is difficult to recreate through a browser. Mailplane aims to provide the best of both worlds for users of the popular web-based email service Gmail, plus some clever new features that aren’t found anywhere else.

Mailplane will be released in the coming weeks. Mailplane tries to bridge the gap between web app and desktop, bringing drag-and-drop file management and integration with other applications to Gmail. While you can still use the “attach a file” link when composing an email, it’s now possible to simply drop an attachment into a new message.

An “iMedia” browser gives direct access to the most likely locations for media files, potentially removing several steps from the process of attaching frequently mailed file types. While these features may be nothing new for most well-made Mac applications, Mailplane makes Gmail feel right at home on the desktop.

Tweak Aero's glass borders: Vista Hack

The borders around system windows, such as dialog boxes and the Control Panel, are transparent in Windows Vista's Aero interface. These borders are hackable; you can shrink them, make them larger, and change their colors and transparency levels.

To make the borders larger or smaller:

1. Right-click the desktop and select Personalize.

2. Click Window Color and Appearance.

3. Click Open classic appearance properties for more color options.

4. From the dialog box that appears, make sure that Windows Aero is selected as the color scheme. Click the Advanced button on the right side of the dialog box. The Advanced Appearance dialog box appears.

5. Select Border Padding in the Item drop-down menu. To change the size of the border, type a new size for the border. (The default is 4.) Click OK, then OK again. The sizes of the borders will now change.


There's more you can do to the borders as well. To change the border color, transparency and more, right-click the desktop and select Personalize > Window Color and Appearance.

1. Choose a color for your windows on the top of the screen, or custom-build a color by clicking Show color mixer and then moving the sliders that appear to mix your own color.

2. To change the transparency of window borders, move the Color intensity slider to the left to make them more translucent, and to the right to make them more opaque.

3. To turn off transparency, uncheck the box next to Enable transparency.

Run Mac OS X from USB Stick

First, prepare all that need:

• USB Flash Disk (min. 2 GB required). You can use many types for this USB disk, such as USB Stick, USB Pendrive, ZIP Disk, your iPod, SD or MMC card, extrenal hard drive, etc.
  

• JaS Mac OS X 10.4.x Retail DVD

• Pacifist software. Download here.

OK. Ready? Now plug your USB Disk, and it will be mounted automatically.

Open Disk Utility (Applications->Utilities)
Select your USB Disk device in the left menu, and click the partition tab.
Enter a nice name for your device like osx86.
Hit Options... button, and choose Master Boot Record.
From the drop-down, choose 1 partition as the volume scheme.
Be sure the filesystem is Mac OS Extended (Journaled),
Hit the Partition button.
Next, we need to enable Owners, open a Terminal and type:

sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/osx86

Mount the JaS 10.4.x DVD or the Retail 10.4.x DVD.
Browse to the directory System/Installation/Packages on the DVD.
Open OSInstall.mpkg with pacifist (right-click->Open With Pacifist).
Expand Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware, then expand Contents of
EssentialSystemSoftwareGroup.

Select Contents of BaseSystem.pkg and Contents of Essentials.pkg and
right-click and choose Install to Other disk...

Choose your USB Disk (osx86) and hit the install button. Now be patient :-)
Now depending on what DVD you used, you will need to download the
right update from apple.com. I downloaded the 10.4.8 Intel update since I used
10.4.7 retail DVD.

Open MacOSXUpd10.4.8Intel.pkg with Pacifist and install to Other disk...

N.B.: Before installing the update, you may need to free some space on the USB Disk.
Just delete the asiatic font files in /System/Library/Fonts (= 100 MB bonus).

Since we installed with Pacifist, some of the files are missing. We need to copy them.
Get them from a full 10.4.8 working install. Those files are:

/System/Library/CoreServices/SetupAssistant
/Applications/Safari.app
/Applications/Address Book.app
/Library/Receipts/BaseSystem.pkg
/Library/Receipts/Essentials.pkg

You need to replace the following files:

/mach_kernel by semthex SSE3 or SSE2 kernel
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleACPIPlateform.kext
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleSMBIOS.kext

Optional:

/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleIntelIntegratedFrameBuffer.kext (GMA950)

Add this for PS2 keyboard/mouse:

/System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext

Put all your custom kext you use on your working install.

Do not forget to chmod -R 755 and chown -R root:wheel all files you copy.

Be sure that you have bless version 24.0 from 10.4.4.
Any other version of bless won't work.
Run bless -version in Terminal to check version.

sudo bless –verbose –folder
“/Volumes/osx86/System/Library/CoreServices” –bootinfo

Now, Repair permissions
Open Disk Utility.app, select your USB Disk and repair permissions.

Then set partition to active
Open a Terminal, be sure your USB Disk is plugged in

> sudo -s
> diskutil list

> /dev/disk1
   #:                   type name        size      identifier
   0: FDisk_partition_scheme             *1.9 GB   disk1
   1:              Apple_HFS osx86       1.9 GB    disk1s1

Note that here the USB Disk is disk1 (disk1s1).

> fdisk -e /dev/rdisk1

Enter 'help' for information

fdisk: 1> p

Disk: /dev/rdisk1       geometry: 999/64/63 [4028416 sectors]
Offset: 0       Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [  start -  size]
-------------------------------------------------------------
*1: AF    0   1   1 - 1023 254  63 [     63 - 4028346] HFS+        
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [      0 -       0] unused      
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [      0 -       0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [      0 -       0] unused  

First time you do this, you should not see the star in front of partition 1.
We need to activate the partition.

fdisk: 1> f 1
Partition 1 marked active.
fdisk:*1> write
Device could not be accessed exclusively.
A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] y
Writing MBR at offset 0.

During the first boot to OS X from the USB Disk,
you'll have to finish the installation setup.
For the first boot, you need to boot to your current working system.
And specify following boot flags:

mach_kernel -v rd=disk1s1

Notice that we specified disk1s1 from previous diskutil list command.

Next boot should be directly to the USB Disk,
so don't forget to enable USB boot in BIOS.
And set USB Flash boot order before harddrive.

Bring your osx86 with you and test it on any PC with SSE2/SSE3 processor like
Intel Pentium 4, Intel Pentium D, AMD Athlon XP, etc.
Enjoy it!

Source: MacGeek

Cannot Run .exe files ?

What causes the program to run ("execute") when you double click the file name in My Computer or put it in the Run dialog box? Briefly put, it is an entry in the Windows Registry that does this.

For many, many different file extensions for files -- such as .doc for Word documents, or .txt for ASCII text files -- there is a location in the Registry that specifies how Windows handles such files. For .doc files it specifies, usually, that the Microsoft Word program (if present on the computer), or the Windows Accessory Wordpad if MS Word is not present, will be used to open up the document file so you can read and edit it. For .exe files, it specifies the "Open" action to be that which causes the program to run.

There are a number of viruses, trojans, and worms that mess up the Registry data for running executable (.exe) files, so this can cause nothing to seem to happen when you double click an .exe file name in My Computer or try to execute one by putting the name in the Run dialog box off the Start Menu.

If the virus/trojan/worm has been partially removed from your computer, then you might get a Windows error message such as "Cannot find program.exe". The reason the various types of malware modify the .exe file Registry key is to ensure that when you try to run any executable program, the malware program runs instead.

Data files for modifying the Windows Registry have the file extension .reg Various authors have come up with .reg (Registry) files to restore the proper contents of the .exe entry. If the .exe file association entry in the Registry has been modified, then you cannot even run the Registry Editor, Regedit.exe in order to try and correct the problem.

Somewhat often, you can rename the Registry Editor program to another type of executable by changing its name from Regedit.exe to Regedit.com and then you can edit the Registry. But edit it to what? If the Registry entry for .reg files has not been maliciously modified, it is easier to download the appropriate .reg file for your version of Windows and then double click the file name in order to fix the .exe entry.

For Windows XP, you can find one this way: right click this registry file, click save target as on popup menu for download it. After that, double click that file and click OK. Restart your Windows, and finish. You can run the .exe files as before now!

You must do the same trick above for Windows 9x/ME, but the corresponding registry fix is here.

Windows CE on your USB Stick : How To

Portable Windows CE is a 'launcher' for the Windows CE device emulator that can run an emulator-based image from a USB keychain.

Download the Windows CE 5.0 Device Emulator here.

Change "Mcft" in link to what it is supposed to be

Extract the emulator to a folder on your hard drive by running "setup /a". The installer will prompt you to specify a directory to extract to.
For example: D:\PortableCE

Download this launcher script.

Copy the following launcher script to the folder you extracted the setup to. You'll need to rename the file from launchce.cmd.txt to launchce.cmd

Once you have that set up, just copy the entire D:\PortableCE folder over to your USB keychain.

To launch the emulator, just plug in your USB keychain, navigate to the PortableCE folder, and run launchce.cmd. You should (hopefully) have the emulator fire up.

Google Searching Secrets

Tired to search and got nothing ?
Here the secrets for searching in Google:

Method 1


Put this string in Google search:

"parent directory " /appz/ -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory " DVDRip -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory "Xvid -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory " Gamez -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory " MP3 -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

"parent directory " Name of Singer or album -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums

Notice that i am only changing the word after the parent directory, change it to what you want and you will get a lot of stuff.


Method 2

Put this string in Google search:

?intitle:index.of? mp3

You only need add the name of the song/artist/singer.

Example: ?intitle:index.of? mp3 britney

Change Your IP In Less Than 1 Minute

Do this steps :

• Click on "Start" in the bottom left hand corner of screen
• Click on "Run"
• Type in "command" and hit ok

You should now be at an MSDOS prompt screen.

• Type "ipconfig /release" just like that, and hit "enter"
• Type "exit" and leave the prompt
• Right-click on "Network Places" or "My Network Places" on your desktop.
• Click on "properties"

You should now be on a screen with something titled "Local Area Connection", or something close to that, and, if you have a network hooked up, all of your other networks.

• Right click on "Local Area Connection" and click "properties"
• Double-click on the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" from the list under the "General" tab
• Click on "Use the following IP address" under the "General" tab
• Create an IP address (It doesn't matter what it is. I just type 1 and 2 until i fill the area up).
• Press "Tab" and it should automatically fill in the "Subnet Mask" section with default numbers.
• Hit the "Ok" button here
• Hit the "Ok" button again

You should now be back to the "Local Area Connection" screen.

• Right-click back on "Local Area Connection" and go to properties again.
• Go back to the "TCP/IP" settings
• This time, select "Obtain an IP address automatically"
• Hit "Ok"
• Hit "Ok" again
• You now have a new IP address

With a little practice, you can easily get this process down to 15 seconds.

Notes:
This only changes your dynamic IP address, not your ISP/IP address. If you plan on hacking a website with this trick be extremely careful, because if they try a little, they can trace it back

Recovering a Corrupt AMI BIOS chip

With motherboards that use BOOT BLOCK BIOS it is possible to recover a corrupted BIOS because the BOOT BLOCK section of the BIOS, which is responsible for booting the computer remains unmodified.

When an AMI BIOS becomes corrupt the system will appear to start, but nothing will appear on the screen, the floppy drive light will come on and the system will access the floppy drive repeatedly. If your motherboard has an ISA slot and you have an old ISA video card lying around, put the ISA video card in your system and connect the monitor.

The BOOT BLOCK section of the BIOS only supports ISA video cards, so if you do not have an ISA video card or your motherboard does not have ISA slots, you will have to restore your BIOS blind, with no monitor to show you what’s going on.

AMI has integrated a recovery routine into the BOOT BLOCK of the BIOS, which in the event the BIOS becomes corrupt can be used to restore the BIOS to a working state.

The routine is called when the SYSTEM BLOCK of the BIOS is empty. The restore routine will access the floppy drive looking for a BIOS file names AMIBOOT.ROM, this is why the floppy drive light comes on and the drive spins.

If the file is found it is loaded into the SYSTEM BLOCK of the BIOS to replace the missing information. To restore your BIOS simply copy a working BIOS file to a floppy diskette and rename it AMIBOOT.ROM, then insert it into the computer while the power is on.

The diskette does not need to be bootable or contain a flash utility. After about four minutes the system will beep four times. Remove the floppy diskette from the drive and reboot the computer. The BIOS should now be restored.

Recovering a Corrupt AWARD BIOS

With AWARD BIOS the process is similar but still a bit different. To recover an AWARD BIOS you will need to create a floppy diskette with a working BIOS file in .BIN format, an AWARD flash utility and an AUTOEXEC.BAT file. AWARD BIOS will not automatically restore the BIOS information to the SYSTEM BLOCK for this reason you will need to add the commands necessary to flash the BIOS in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

The system will run the AUTOEXE.BAT file, which will in turn flash the BIOS. This is fairly easy. Here are the steps you need to take.

· Create a bootable floppy diskette
· Copy the BIOS file and flash utility to the diskette
· Create an text file with any standard text editor and add the following lines

@ECHO OFF
FLASH763 BIOSFILE.BIN /py

In the above example I am assuming that you are using the FLASH763.EXE flash utility. You will need to replace the FLASH763 with the name of whatever flash utility you are using, and replace the BIOSFILE.BIN with the name of the BIOS file you are using.

You will also need to change the ‘/py’ to whatever the command is for your flash utility to automatically program the BIOS without user intervention. If you do not know the command to automatically flash your BIOS type the name of the flash utility with a space and then /? to display the utility’s help Publish Postscreen.

The help screen should pecify the command switch to automatically flash your BIOS. If you are using the FLASH763.EXE utility then the switch to automatically flash your BIOS is ‘/py’.

Boot Block Recovery For Free

You don't need to pay a measly sum of dollars just to recover from a boot block mode. Here it is folks:

AWARD Bootblock recovery:

That shorting trick should work if the boot block code is not corrupted, and it should not be if /sb switch is used when flashing the bios (instead of /wb switch).

The 2 pins to short to force a checksum error varies from chip to chip. But these are usually the highest-numbered address pins (A10 and above).

These are the pins used by the system to read the System BIOS (original.bin for award v6), calculate the ROM checksum and see if it's valid before decompressing it into memory, and subsequently allow Bootblock POST to pass control over to the System BIOS.


You just have to fool the system into believing that the System BIOS is corrupt. This you do by giving your system a hard time reading the System BIOS by shorting the 2 high address pins. And when it could not read the System BIOS properly, ROM Checksum Error is detected "so to speak" and Bootblock recovery is activated.

Sometimes, any combination of the high address pins won't work to force a checksum error in some chips, like my Winbond W49F002U. But shorting the #WE pin with the highest-numbered address pin (A17) worked for this chip. You just have to be experimentative if you're not comfortable with "hot flashing" or "replacement BIOS".

But to avoid further damage to your chip if you're not sure which are the correct pins to short, measure the potential between the 2 pins by a voltmeter while the system is on. If the voltage reading is zero (or no potential at all), it is safe to short these pins.

But do not short the pins while the system is on. Instead, power down then do the short, then power up while still shorting. And as soon as you hear 3 beeps (1 long, 2 short), remove the short at once so that automatic reflashing from Drive A can proceed without errors (assuming you had autoexec.bat in it).

About how to do the shorting, the tip of a screwdriver would do. But with such minute pins on the PLCC chip, I'm pretty comfortable doing it with the tip of my multi-tester or voltmeter probe. Short the pins at the point where they come out of the chip.


AMIBIOS Recovery bootblock:

• Copy a known working BIOS image for your board to a floppy and rename it to AMIBOOT.ROM.
• Insert the floppy in your system's floppydrive.
• Power on the system while holding CTRL+Home keys. Release the keys when you hear a beep and/or see the floppy light coming on.
• Just wait until you hear 4 beeps. When 4 beeps are heard the reprogramming of the System Block BIOS went succesfull, so then you may restart your system.

Some alternative keys that can be used to force BIOS update (only the System Block will be updated so it's quite safe):

• CTRL+Home= restore missing code into system block and clear CMOS when programming went ok.
• CTRL+Page Up= restore missing code into system block and clear CMOS or DMI when programming went ok.
• CTRL+Page Down= restore missing code into system block and do not clear CMOS and DMI area when programming went ok.

Btw: the alternative keys work only with AMIBIOS 7 or higher (so for example an AMI 6.26 BIOS can be only recovered by using CTRL+Home keys).