So if your like me, you may have purchased yourself a blackberry on the premise that when you travel out of the country you will be able to use your phone. But… knowing corporate companies, its not supposed to be that easy. So heres a simple guide on how to accomplish this.

1. Get yourself a world capable BlackBerry Device.

In my case i had a BlackBerry Tour i wanted to use on a trip to London/India. Other devices include the 8830, etc. Research this on your own.

2. Now the next step is to analyze what you need to do. Almost all of the major U.S carriers offer international plans with insanely pricey call rates/SMS rates and expensive global data plans. So, how do we overcome this? No matter which U.S carrier you choose to buy your BlackBerry device from, as long as it is world-capable it will contain both of the primary wireless technologies found throughout the world. These are CDMA and GSM. So in other words, it doesnt matter WHO you get your BB from.

3. Get your phone unlocked. Your primary objective is to obtain a 8 or 16 digit unlock code. Now some carriers (like verizon) will provide you with a free unlock code if you have been a good customer with them. Others (like AT&T) may not be so generous. But have no fear! There are plenty of services online that will provide you with an unlock code for your phone if you pay the small fee.

4. Once you have your unlock code navigate using the following steps on your BB.

a. navigate to options->advanced options-> sim card

b. type MEPD (caps does matter, and no your not supposed to see anything happen)

c. type MEP2

d. now it should ask you for an 8 or 16 digit unlock code. Put in your unlock code.

5. Your phone should now be successfully unlocked.

6. Once you arrive in the country your traveling to, find a pre-paid SIM card office. In my case i used IDEA mobile while in india. It worked great, i had access to voice and SMS services through my BB.

Note: Many carriers will block you from using another carrier’s data options even if your phone is ‘unlocked’, in my case i was not able to access EDGE through IDEA because verizon had a lock on the data priority. The only way to overcome this is to flash your blackberry’s ROM with pure BB software. That i wont discuss in this article however.

Enjoy!

Several of my friends have asked me recently, how on earth do you delete a facebook application? The answer seems to be hard to find aswell, since the facebook help pages don’t provide much documentation on this topic. However, by reading this guide you will learn how to delete unwanted apps. You’ll even be surprised how many applications have access to your personal data.

1. Login to facebook.

2. At the upper right hand corner, click the down arrow and click application settings. (same menu as the logout button).

3. The next page will appear, hit the drop down box and click authorized applications.

4. This page will display all of your authorized applications. Click the X to the right of each application to delete it.

Enjoy!

Recently i was looking for an online backup solution. I know your probably wondering, why not just get an external hard drive. Sure, this is a great way to keep a copy of your files, and i do that, but what most people tend to forget is that in most cases your external hard drive is still located in your house. What if your house burns down? Hmm.. thought so.

So i went on google and started looking up various solutions, i ran into quite a few such as: Mozy, Carbonite, iDrive, Backblaze, Jungledisk, Elephant-drive, etc.

In the end i decided to go for the options that offered me unlimited storage and no bandwidth fees. These were Mozy, Carbonite and Backblaze.

I tried Carbonite first. It was easy to get installed and running, and i had most of my files checked off to be backed up within the first 10 minutes of using the program. Uploading was smooth and it didn’t slow down my network connection or computer. I was ready to purchase Carbonite until i read about their payment plans, they do not offer month-to-month payment. This was a huge disappointment to me; being a student, i don’t exactly have the luxury of shelling out $55 USD for a product i’m not even sure i will use 3 months from now.

So i went to mozy. I had seen commercials on TV and i figured if they had money to create commercials, they must be well off. Well i was wrong. Installation of the Mozy software was fairly straightforward, however it went downhill from there. I experienced frequent crashes, stalls, and at one point Mozy would actually lock up my computer. I mean come on, i run crysis on very high without any hitches so theres no way Mozy should be able to do that. So i got rid of Mozy.

Finally i came backblaze. I had read about backblaze back in 2009 and i heard about their cheap backup solution but never tried it. I installed the backblaze software and was up and running within 15 minutes. The interesting thing about backblaze is unlike the other backup solutions, backblaze automatically selects everything on your computer for backup. You do not need to worry about selecting which folders and files you want backed up. In total i had around 50 gigabytes of data to be backed up. I ran my computer 24/7 for 4 days until it was all uploaded and secure. The software did nothing to slow down my internet connection or computer, i even attempted a fake restore. It went very smooth.

Verdict: Backblaze is the clear winner for me. With unlimited storage, a low price of $5 usd/per month, and awesome software, it clearly deserves the crown for online backup. Carbonite is also a great solution, but thats if you are willing to pay $55 dollars upfront.

Well its not often i post on my blog about art or anything related to it, but i recently saw this video and i was pretty amazed. Enjoy.

APRICOT, short film by Ben Briand (sponsored by his incredible actors and crew) from Moonwalk Films on Vimeo.

I bought this adapter a few months before the release of windows 7, under vista it worked fine. When i upgraded, Windows 7 automatically located a broadcom driver that was compatible for it, so i never bothered to get the real Netgear driver installed. Recently, however, i had to reinstall my Windows 7 installation and i found myself without internet connection because this time around, windows did not locate a driver for me. So i did what pretty much any person would do, head over to the netgear website and try getting the software installed. This, however, failed to work, it would never recognize the card and would repeatedly give me obscure messages like “Windows could not successfully install your device”. I contacted netgear about the problem and even they did not have the solution to fix it. I did some experimenting on my own and found a very reliable way to get it installed. So just use these following steps and you should be up and running!

1. Uninstall any netgear software that you installed.

2. Shutdown your computer and insert the card into the PCI slot.

3. Boot up your computer and head over to device manager, Windows should have marked your card as needing a driver.

4. Download this file WN311B Drivers

5. Extract the folder to your desktop

6. Right click your device on the device manager list, and browse your way into the folder containing the driver on your desktop.

7. Select the driver and install

8. Enjoy!

Well i was reading an article on techcrunch this morning that i found very interesting, apparently there is a bug with the latest version of android for the droid device on verizon. Basically the exploit allows you to bypass a persons security “pattern” and go straight to their home screen. Heres how its done.
1. Have someone call the droid phone

2. Answer the device  and then press the back button during the call

3. This will leave you at the android home screen.

You can then go ahead and access anything you would like to on the phone. Google said their working on a patch to fix the issue, but this leaves you to wonder, what are their programmers thinking? Or was this intentional? It seems a little too ironic to believe that some of the best programmers in the world would not have caught on to such a simple issue.

While i was watching computex videos one night, i stumbled across this beautiful case, the silverstone fortress 2. As we all know, silverstone is responsible for some of the most beautiful and (expensive) cases on the market. I fell in love with the unique 90 degree tilt design and i just loved the overall look of the case, so i figured why not buy one, i was getting bored of my old case anyway. So here are the pics, it took about 2 weeks for the case to arrive after i ordered it.

I was recently reading an article via digg on a secret “God-Mode” option that was included in Windows 7. Basically, it allows you to access pretty much every setting on your computer and it can be very handy if you want to fine tweak anything. Heres how to enable it.

1. Create a new folder

2. Copy and paste this as the name for the folder: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

That is all, once you open the folder you should see every setting you need. Use the built-in search function to find what your looking for.

I picked up Bioware’s recent RPG title Dragon Age Origins a few days ago and i must say, it is a very stunning game. For a person who has never played a previous bioware game, i can say i am really impressed by their work. So, this is where the big question came to me, PC version.. hmm… cheats?

Yeah, i admit, i wanted to cheat to see what kinds of crazy sorcery i can do to the game. I began to investigate and i read about a “console” that allows you to run scripts that are essentially cheats. After several tutorials and guides online, i finally figured out how to get it to work. (No, there seems to be no one site that has this method completely written down). So without further delay, heres how to enable the developer console and essentially “cheat” in dragon age origins.

1. The first thing you will want to do is locate your Dragon Age origins directory, once you are in the folder containing all the game files. Create a shortcut for “daorigins.exe”.

2. Drag this to the desktop and then right click->properties.

3. At the end of the target box (after the quotes), type in –enabledeveloperconsole

4. You should have something like this once you are done. “D:\Games\Dragon Age Origins\Dragon Age\bin_ship\daorigins.exe” –enabledeveloperconsole

5. Apply settings and then launch the game using your new shortcut.

6. Once you are in the game, press the “`” key to turn on your console. (note: on the retail version of the game the console does not show what you type, so just hope you get it right)

7. Use one of the following commands and press enter. If successful you should activate the cheat.

Enjoy!

Short List of Commands: (note: there are several more commands available, just do a google search.)

runscript addxp x x=desired xp
runscript zz_money x x=desired copper
runscript pc_immortal
runscript zz_addparty NPCname
runscript killallhostiles

So, currently there are over 30 million Xbox 360 consoles world wide. Over 10 million of those consoles are actively connected to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. Sure its great for games and a variety of other tasks, but playing video files from the internet has always been a problem due to codec licensing. To counter this issue, Microsoft came up with the idea of media sharing through the home network, but once again the issue of codecs and licensing came into play. So how exactly can you get any type of video file to play on your xbox 360? This guide will explain.

There is a software called Tversity, it has been in development for quite some time now, but it definitely is a great substitute for Windows Media Sharing.

Disclaimer: I take no credit for the creation of Tversity, i only promote this software because i believe it is great free software.

Step 1:

1. Click Here to Download Tversity

2. Install the Tversity software, this could take some time depending on what your computers configuration is.

Step 2:

1. Add the folders that you wish to share into the Tversity interface, it will automatically scan these directories and add all appropriate media files to the repository.

2. Once the media files have been located and scanned in, turn on your Xbox 360 and head over to the appropriate media tab. For example, if you added a music folder using Tversity on your PC, head over to the music folder.

3. Make sure that the console and the computer are on the same local area network so they can recognize each other.

4. On your xbox 360 console, change the media source setting and once you open that page, Tversity should appear as an option to connect to.

5. Connect to it and enjoy live streaming of all your media from your computer.

Video: