TechLighten

So we’ve all been hearing about how the efficiency of solar cells is being increased after every couple of months, well how about solar cells that could generate energy even at night? And even cool your PC components in the process of generating energy for your devices? That’s the kinda solar cells the Idaho National Laboratory’s physicist Steven Novack and his team has been working on lately.

These flexible solar cells consist of massive arrays of nanoantennas, which can collect energy from light and other sources. These nanoantennas absorb a targeted wavelength range of mid-infrared rays. Since heat is mostly emitted in form of IR, so these solar cells can actually cool your future gadgets by absorbing those IR rays that your overheating gadgets release, and create useful energy during the process.

Another good thing is that our beloved planet Earth is actually emitting these IR rays all the the time, because of the sunlight it absorbs during day time. So if these solar panels actually make it to the mainstream market it’d be a massive upgrade to our current solars cells that operate during day time only. Hit the source link for more info.
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Like most of you Prince of Persia fans out there, I was surprised in a positive way to see pictures of this Hollywood version of the Prince of Persia, Jake Gyllenhaal, who is currently on the set of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The film is being shot in Morroco and the UK, and will be starring Gemma Arterton (as Tamina) along with Jake. Jake’s surely got the physique and hair like the Prince of Persia we all love and like, lets hope he proves to be as tough as the real prince when the movie is released in May 2010. More pictures, after the break.

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Word on the street is, Apple is working on dedicated video chips for their Mac line of computers. The rumored video hardware, which currently is “pure speculation” will supposedly loosen the load on Mac computers’ CPUs by taking the responsibility of most of the video processing activities. The video processing chips will support decoding H.264 videos, which by the way, is one of the codecs being used in Blu-Ray High definition video discs.

Alley Insider, which is the source of this speculation went as far as saying that Apple will be adding this dedicated video hardware to all of its upcoming Mac computers.

…the rumor I have heard, that I believe to be a fact, that has simply yet to be confirmed. I have heard that Apple plans to add hardware video decoding to ALL of its new computers beginning fairly soon, certainly this year.

Well this is good news for all you Apple-lovin’ folks out there, lets wait and see what else Apple’s got for all your geeky needs.
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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,

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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,

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I’ve been reading alot of posts by new users complaining about not being able to get the playstation2 emulator, PCSX2, to work properly. Since I’ve been testing my PS2 games on this emulator since its very early stages, I thought it was about time i wrote a configuration guide for all you guys who might be interested in playing PS2 games on your PCs. First of all, if you want to know about why you should test/play your PS2 games on PC, here are a few good reasons:

• PCSX2 lets you play games in very high resolution because of the advanced graphics plugins that it uses, compared to the low resolution of the PS2 console.
• You can save your PS2 games at ANYTIME you want without needing any ingame checkpoint, by using save-states. Thats a very big advantage for games that won’t let you save your game unless you reach a checkpoint or the end of a level.
• You can take high-resolution screenshots of games while playing on your PC and you can even record videos of your gameplay if you want to show off to your friends. There are alot more reasons but by now I guess you will be interested in giving PCSX2 a try anyway, so back to the topic.

The guide:

First of all, you’ll be needing to download PCSX2 (quite obvious ). After installing it, you’ll be needing a PS2 bios file (which is normally named like SCPH-XXXX.bin), this file basically contains all the information about how a PS2 plays a game. PCSX2 needs this file to play games on your PC. You will have to search for this file on Google as I can’t host it since its Sony’s property. After you’ve got the BIOS file (SCPH-XXXX.bin), put it in /bios directory of PCSX2’s folder.

Now its time to launch PCSX2 and configure it. So run the emulator.

Tekken4, a PS2 game, running on PCSX2 in Windows Vista

Now click on Config from the menu, and choose Configuration       

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Most of you IRC fans out there probably are using the most popular IRC client, mIRC. Well, mIRC is great for starters who prefer simplicity over style and functionality but for most of you who’ve been using mIRC for years there are many nice addons available out there to make your online life easier. One such nice addon is  NoNameScript.

NoNameScript gives mIRC a completely new look with dozens of extra features that’ll makes chatting on IRC more fun, stylish and convenient for you. NoNameScript equips mIRC with beautiful and efficient Tree-based view on the right side of the chat client to show which servers you’re connected to and which chatrooms you’re hangin’ out in.

Other than the visual candy which itself enough to impress many of your friends there are features like a lagBar to let you know if you’re lagging behind your server, controlled pasting options to let you paste huge articles without getting kicked out for flooding, lots of new slap messages to tease your friends with, bad-words/SPAM/flood protection & mail check.

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