TechLighten

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So you like a video on YouTube that you want to download and store on your computer? Here’s a quick and fast guide how to download all your favourite YouTube videos without any hassle. After following this guide, you’ll have a quality video downloaded onto your computer that you can play later on at anytime.

First of all, select the YouTube video that you want to download. In this guide, I’ll be using a video from a quick search. Lets say you want to download one of Britney Spear’s latest videos, here are the easy steps to get that or any other video:

1. Open YouTube.com, and in the search box type whatever video you want to download. I’m going to type Britney so that we can proceed with downloading one of her videos in this tutorial.
2. Once you get the results, the next step is to get the address of that specific video.  Read the rest of this entry »

If you used to search the web for a 3GP version of your favorite video so that you could enjoy some high quality movies on your mobile phone, your search is over. No you won’t have to ask others to compress a video for your mobile phone because at the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to compress any of your favorite video or movie to a high quality .3GP format movie yourself.

If you regularly watch videos on your mobile phone, you already know how pixelated and badly compressed most of those movies look. With this tutorial, we’ll follow some steps, use a nice compression software, and tune up a few things so that you’ll get videos with the the highest quality possible, and even that with a minor increase in the file size.

In order to compress the movie, first you’ll be needing this very nice audio/video compression tool called Read the rest of this entry »

So you want to install one of those .vkp patches to add more functionality to your Sony Ericsson phone? Well I’ve been thinking about writing an easy guide to patch your phones without any trouble.

After you’ve followed this tutorial, you’ll be able to add more such patches to add other extra features to your phone. If you don’t know about .vkp patches, let me tell you what .vkp patches can do. Patches actually let your phone do alot of things than it isn’t allowed to do therwise. For example .vkp patches can:

1. Remove java restrictions so that you won’t be annoyed by those permission messages everytime opera mini tries to access the internet or every time you start a file reading program
2. Add extra menus on the phone’s desktop for easy accessiblitity
3. Increase sms (inbox) storage size to thousands of sms msgs.
4. Add a blacklist (call-blocking) feature so that certain people can’t call you.
5. Add other smaller features like make your phone vibrate once when you call someone and they attend the call.

Installing the .vkp patches:

We’ll be using a program called Far Manager to apply the patches to your sony ericsson phone. Get Far Manager from here, now we’ll be using the SEFP plugin (Sony Ericsson Flash Plugin), you can download it from here. Now install Far Manger and  Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wanted to compress your huge 4GB+ DVD movies to 700MB dvd-rips while still retaining the original DVD quality? Well thats what we’re gonna learn today. You might be familiar with the regular 700MB dvd-rips ‘scene’ releases, where most underground DVD movies are in 700mb compressed avi format. Today we’ll learn how to compress your personal DVD movies to small 700MB compressed format like the ‘scene’ releases, so that you can keep your DVDs safe in your drawer and enjoy watching the compressed rips from your hard disk drive.

Now if you’re familiar with the ‘xvid asd’ compression format used for those tv-shows rips, you might know how nicely compressed those videos are. You get a complete 50minutes season video in a 350MB avi file. We’re gonna use that sort of superb compression for our DVD today in this following tutorial. You’ll see that even when our ~4GB DVD movie is compressed to a 700MB dvd-rip, there wont be much difference in the video or audio qualitybecause of the compression softwares and audio/video settings we’re going to use.

We’ll be using this very nice Xvid/DivX conversion tool called Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first guide in the series about modifiying (modding) GTA: San Andreas. We’ll be starting modding by adding new vehicles with cool designs to GTA: San Andreas. There’ll be more guides about modding GTA sereis games here on TechLighten. Today, we’ll cover about replacing the default San Andreas cars with new, cool ones. We’ll be taking San Andreas’ Police Car as our replacement example. The default police car looks pretty dull as you can see in the image. But San Andreas is gonna rock after we replace this dull police car with a shiny new Aston Martin DB9 (designed by a friend, Jack).

GTA: San Andreas default police car

Default Police car replaced with a DB9

You’ll be needing IMG Tool 2.0 to replace the necessary car files in GTA: San Andreas. After downloading, extract the compressed file, and run IMGTool.exe contained within. Read the rest of this entry »

Need to make an ISO image of your precious CDs & DVDs?, so that you can keep your original discs safe in your drawer and keep using the virtual images? Here’s a small guide on how to do that.

There are many ISO-making tools out there that let you make virtual images of your optical media.I prefer using IsoBuster for all my ISO making tasks because its free and very easy to use. And you also get the ability to makes ISOs of scratched/damaged CDs also.

Before we continue our guide on ISO making, you need to download the latest version of IsoBuster from here. After downloading , run the setup file and install it. Once installed, you can run ISO buster from either the QuickLaunch, or you can run it from Start Menu > Programs > Smart Projects > IsoBuster. The first time you run IsoBuster, it’ll ask you for a serial number and email ID, just click on ‘free service only’.

The ISO-making process:

Now you can start the ISO-making process. Inserting the CD/DVD that you want to make an ISO image of, ISO buster will detect the disk and you’ll see the contents of the disc. Now Right-click on ‘CD’ (or ‘DVD’ if you’ve inserted a DVD) in the tree-list on the right as shown below.

IsoBuster v2.4 in Windows Vista

You’ll see a menu, Read the rest of this entry »

Flashing a Sony Ericsson phone is a pretty easy and straight forward process. I’ll be covering Sony Ericsson’s K750, W800, K790, K800, K810 in this guide, although this guide is generic and works for flashing nearly all of the currently available phones.

You’ll be needing a flashing program (XS++ v3.1 in this case), a DCU-60 cable (the USB cable that you got with your phone) & the two flash files (Main + FS). So first

1. Get the flashing program, XS++ v3.1 from here (go to the applications folder to get it)
2. If you own a K790, K800 or K810, get its flash files (Main + FS) from here (go to the Firmware folder and select the subfolder for your specific phone. No download the MAIN and FS files. In my case I chose K790_R6BC002_FS_America_2_RED52.rar & K790_R6BC002_Main_generic_EV_RED52.rar . Notice the difference in the two files, one is FS and the other is Main, both FS & Main should be the same version (R6BC002 in this case) and both files are CID52 (see? the files end with RED52).If you own a K750/W800, you can get you FS file from here and Main file from here directly. If you own some other model of Sony Ericsson, you’ll have to google search for its FS & MAIN files.
3. Extract the FS & Main files to a temporary folder if they are compressed

Next we’ll start the flashing process by starting XS++, just extract the XS++ file that you downloaded earlier. Click on the ‘connect’ button, then turn off your phone and press the  while keep pressing the ‘c’ button on ur phone connect the cable. XS++ should detect your phone now and you’ll see a screen like this:

If XS++ is unable to detect your phone, don’t worry, google search for USB flash drivers for your specific phone and try again then.

Once your phone is detected by XS++, its time to select the FS & Main files in XS++, then select your phone model from the dropdown box below, Read the rest of this entry »