Where to get Standalone SWF Player

One time while working on a Flash project with a team, I found myself not having installed Flash on my PC. I need to view the output SWF file that they come up with but the only way for me to open the file is through a browser.

I would drag the SWF file into my browser but it will display everything (including things outside the canvas) at maximum size so it’s really ugly. On PC’s with Flash installed, they can open the SWF into a standalone player.

So where can I get that player to play SWF videos separately? Google search pointing to Adobe points to Flash player and a Shockwave player but both don’t really work.

What is needed is the Flash Player Projector and this can be found in this Macromedia link. Here’s for Macintosh. Just download and store it somewhere. No need to install but set your SWF files to be opened by the projector every time.

Wooden cases for your iPod from Vers

If you’re tired of those futuristic looking shells for your iPod then you might want to tone it down with these beautiful wooden cases from Vers. These are not your plastic casing with fake wooden coating but these shells are made from real wood.

The Vers cases are precisely crafted from select US hardwoods such as Cherry, Bamboo and Walnut. They have a case for your iPod Classic, Touch, iPhone and even the nano. The casing for the nano costs $35 while the rest will go for $39.99.

Don’t worry about the trees. For every tree that they use, the will replant 100 to re-forrest areas damaged by fire and other natural disasters.

How to add greater than and less than symbols in Blogger

If you’re customizing your Blogger template, you will notice that it will output and error when using “<” and “>” symbols. These symbols are widely used in scripts such as Google AdSense.

Since Blogger’s template uses XML, you must replace those symbols in their Escape HTML format. Instead of finding and replacing those symbols, what you need is a Parser.

Blogcrowds has this HTML parser that converts symbols in their acceptable format. Just paste your code and click Parse. Copy the result and paste it to your Blogger template.

Grooming is key to a successful career

Wanna know a secret on how to land that job despite having plenty of competition? Try to be the most well-groomed than the others.

A recent study of more than 500 HR professionals indicate that 84% of them agree that a well-groomed employee climb the corporate ladder faster than those who are not. For job interviews, 90% of the HR professionals place more importance to being well-groomed than a firm handshake.

If you’re a guy and want to get some advice on how to groom properly to ace that first impression, Gillette has launched the Gillette Career Advantage. Professionals and job seekers can get expert advice from career expert, Mark Jeffries and GQ style correspondent, Brett Fahlgren. There are also resources to help your rise above the competition in your office or against other job applicants. The HR Guide looks very interesting and will most probably give you an advantage as it tells you what HR professionals really think.

If you want to get more information about Gillette products or want to verify the survey findings and get advice from grooming and career experts, check out the Gillette Resource Center.

Hmmm, I’d better get rid of this scruffy beard of mine then. Of course this won’t work on online chat or e-mail interviews unless you send a photo or use a webcam.

Mafia Wars Tigers Unleashed special loot items

Mafia Wars Facebook Users can now enjoy the Moscow expansion. As a way to celebrate, Zynga introduced the special loot items called Tigers Unleashed.

Check out the 8 special tiger-themed items for you to collect:

You only have until Monday, September 28 at midnight (Pacific Time) to collect all 8 so better hurry. If you really want to collect them all the soonest time possible, do the mugging job in New York over and over again.

Kunai USB Flash Drive brings out the ninja in you

We all know that ninja’s out there have shurikens and kunais as staples in their weapon arsenal… oh don’t forget those black marbles that produced smokescreen too.

Anyway in these modern days, ninjas need a secure way to store their ancient secrets. Scrolls just won’t cut it anymore. I mean haven’t seen a printer that accepts scrolls.

That’s where this Kunai USB flash drive comes in. Now ninjas can store their jutsus on handy USB drives that would compliment their outfit. This Kunai USB drive can store up to 2GB memory and costs $125.

Seems like ninjas have a lot of money.

[Geek Stuff 4 U]

iTwinge puts a keyboard on your iPhone

If you’re having difficulty composing messages using your iPhone’s touch screen, then you might want to consider a slide-in keyboard.

The iTwinge will convert your iPhone into a Blackberry in the sense that you will have an actual QWERTY keypad to press when typing. It is docked onto the base of your iPhone and positioned perfectly on top of each keys when you call in the keypad (of course it won’t work on landscape mode). The iTwinge doesn’t require a lot of power to operate nor does it need any software.

via ChipChick

A glimpse of Mafia Wars Moscow

Starting on Thursday, September 24, the popular online game by Zynga Mafia Wars will launch its latest expansion, Moscow. Every MW fan is pretty excited about it so here are some screenshots of the expansion.

As mentioned in the teaser page, as you enter Moscow, you get to choose between two factions. Vory, the princes of thieves or the Mafiya who are the KGB and corrupt military officers. Depending on the side you choose, you will have different loots so choose wisely.

Each tier in Moscow is subdivided into chapters and you can’t hop into a job if you’re not yet finished with the previous chapter. They also brought back boss fights which were non-existent in Cuba but the fights won’t be as easy as New York.

There would be six new achievements, five new businesses and six new collections for longer playability. For me, I’d be happy to collect these Matryoshka dolls!

Hurry and finish Cuba up so you can focus with Moscow.

Info and screenshots are courtesy of games.com.

Online screen recorder tool, ScreenToaster

Sometimes you want to quickly capture a video demo or tutorial to share to your family or friends. The problem is you don’t want the hassle of downloading or installing any screen capture applications.

The solution? ScreenToaster! It is a FREE web service that allows you to record screen videos and publish them on their site to share to your friends. All you need to do is sign up and start recording. No need to install anything (well aside from their plugin), you just need your browser and an internet connection.

Once done, it’s very easy to embed them to your blog or email the link to people. Pretty useful if you wish to teach your parents on how to do something with their PC.

You can also download your videos in SWF or MOV format if you want to have a copy to yourself.

Sony MH907, world’s first “motion activated” headphones

Sony just unveiled the world’s first motion activated headphones that sense the user, the in-ear MH907 which also has a built-in mic.

How does it work? When listening to music, take out one bud off your ear to pause and put it back on again to play. You can also use it to take calls. Pull out both buds to stop the music then plug in a bud to start talking then take it out when you want to hang-up.

It only triggers upon skin contact (like the iPhone touchscreen) so you can’t accidentally answer calls if it’s in your pocket or bag. Just don’t use it around babies though who might accidentally pull the bud off your ear while you’re talking.

Cool idea huh? Check out Sony’s quirky ad on the MH907 here.

Create flowchart diagrams online for FREE

Sometimes, you just need to create a really quick diagram for a presentation or an assignment. Problem is, either you use a graphics program or an diagram-maker like MS Visio.

Or you can simply try Lovely Charts. Don’t let the name fool you. Lovely Charts is a free web service that allows you to create professional looking diagrams, from flowcharts to sitemaps to org charts and network diagrams. You can export your diagram in JPG or PNG format.

Only drawback (although not much) is that you need to sign up for an account so you can save your file. It’s free anyway but you can only save one diagram at a time unless you opt for their premium service which also allows you to export to PDF.

Exploit the Wars glitch in Mafia Wars for lots of exp

You can earn loads of exp in Mafia Wars with a bug in their Declare War page.

How does it work? For each link you use, you will gain 3 exp per page reload. You can reload the page in 2 minutes to gain another 3 exp. So with 10 links (10 tabs), in 1 hour you can gain 900 exp!

Read more »

Direct TV for the digital age

With televisions in the US now going digital, it’s time to tune in to digital TV programming. Being digital, you are sure to experience high definition image quality for your viewing pleasure. Of course you need to have your HDTV.

Got your HDTV? Great! It’s time to shop for Direct TV Packages out there that can offer you the best bundle for your needs. You don’t want to be paying for a service where you won’t really want to watch half the channels do you? So you better look hard where you can find Direct TV Deals that will suit you.

For sports fans, Direct TV Offers exclusive content to NFL Sunday Ticket, NCAA Mega March Madness, and NASCAR Hot Pass. So check out the latest offerings from Direct TV to give you the best TV viewing experience that you want.

Adding "Read More" feature in your Blogger template

Finally, after 12470 years, Blogger has finally included the "Read More" feature in their platform. The feature which is similar to Wordpress' Read More allows you to show only a part of your post in the front page which is perfect for long posts.

Just like Wordpress, there's a "Read more" button on your editor that you can place on where you want the cut to happen.

There's a dilemma though. Some templates especially those heavily edited will ignore this feature without a little tweak. Fortunately, it's very easy to implement.

1. Go to your Layout > Edit HTML
2. Check Expand Widget Templates
3. Find this line of code: <data:post.body>
4. Directly below it, add these lines of code:

<b:if cond="data:post.hasJumpLink">
<div class="jump-link">
<a href="data:post.url%20+%20%22#more%22"><data:post.jumptext></data:post.jumptext></a>
</div>
</b:if>

That's it. You should see your Read More working.

Oh yeah, currently the feature is in draft mode right now so to activate it, go to Settings > Basic and near the bottom of the page, select Updated editor as your post editor.

Mafia Wars Loot Suggestion Contest

Hey Mafia Wars fans, wanna make your mark in the game? Try joining the Mafia Wars Loot Suggestion Contest. Suggest original items (weapon, armor or vehicle) for limited edition loot and you’d get the chance to contribute something cool to the game.The MW team will choose 10 winners and create your item as a new limited edition loot. Winners will get 50 reward points plus 501 of the new loot!

To join:

• Follow us on Twitter @MafiaWars
• Send a tweet with the following sentence: "I want [describe your item] in #mafiawars. http://bit.ly/MRIkY"
• Make sure you include #mafiawars and the bit.ly link!
• Enter as many times as you want. Any offensive or inappropriate entries will be disqualified.

Contest Ends Friday, September 18th.

Try to be really original. I would suggest putting your name or monicker on the item. Like maybe Big John’s Doorblaster or something.

The CrunchPad Tablet

This is the CrunchPad Tablet developed by Fusion Garage. It is not yet out but they're aiming for a November release just in time for the holidays.

The tablet reportedly weighs about 2.64 pounds, has a plain 1.6GHz Intel Atom and 1GB RAM . It also has a USB port for keyboard and / or mouse, built-in WiFi and 3G connectivity, and a port for mobile broadband.

This could replace your home laptop. :)

LG XD3 Slim HDDs make a good gift for girls

LG just launched a chic and slim portable external hard drive that might appeal to the ladies out there.

The LG XD3 has a snazzy brush aluminum exterior in a slim (13.mm) profile that houses a 2.5" hard drive. It is also protected by a rubber padding on its side to minimize shock impact caused by those occasional bumps and drops.

This LG XD3 slim drives come in 320GB and 500GB versions. As of now it has only been released in Korea with a converted price of $90 for the 320GB.

New iPod nano 5G comes with cool features

Apple recently announced their latest iPod nano. The iPod nano 5G features the same size and slim profile as the old one but this time, they made the screen bigger and introduced a video camera as well.

iPod nano 5G has a polished anodized aluminum finish in nine colours and a larger 2.2-inch colour display. Its video camera can capture VGA video with 640 by 480 pixels and up to 30 frames per second with AAC audio. Aside from that, Apple also included an FM tuner and a built-in microphone. Sweet!

The 8GB version will cost $150 and the 16GB will set you back $180.

Asus Designo MS LCD Monitors... Beautiful

ASUS announced their newest and most stylish LCD monitor ever called Designo MS. It's an ultra-thin LCD monitor with an unusual ring for a stand, makes it a head turner.

It has an ultra-slim profile at only 16.5mm with a glossy piano blackfront bezel and a pearl white rear bezel. It foregoes your typical buttons to adjust settings but instead it comes with LED touch-sensor buttons. Not only it is beautiful but it's packed with the good stuff as well. Full HD 1080p, 50,000:1 contrast ratio, 2ms response time and ASUS Splendid™ Video Intelligence Technology as its power saving feature.

No word yet on its price and release but it will come in 20", 21.5", 22", 23" and 23.6" display sizes.

[ASUS]

Backup your license keys with LicenseCrawler

One of the major thing people miss out when they have to reformat their PC is to backup or store the serial keys of the software they have installed. This is important if most of your applications are downloaded.

LicenseCrawler is a small and simple freeware program that goes through your Windows registry and retrieve serial numbers and product keys. Beats looking in different folders where you stored a particular serial number or going through e-mails.

Just save the output in a text file and you’re ready to reformat. Be sure you also backup the list that LicenseCrawler churned out before you format your drive.

Comfortable doing some online shopping

Online shopping is slowly becoming a norm here in the Philippines despite the lack of local online merchants. I’ve been buying my tech gadgets online as well as some apparels using my online earnings. It’s way much cheaper compared to going to shops in malls.

I typically use my PayPal to buy online but sometimes it’s not available so I have to resort in using a credit card. But before using my card, I try to find reviews about the merchant involved to see if they’re legit or not or if there’s a high risk that I may encounter problems with billing. It’s very important to only buy from merchants with secure credit card payment systems to avoid being scammed.

If people are satisfied with the service of an online merchant from shopping to billing up to delivery and support, it will most likely result in acquiring regular customers who will also spread the news.

Bata and Django won World Cup of Pool 2009

Our very own Efren “Bata” Reyes and Francisco “Django” Bustamante won the recently held World Cup of Pool in Quezon City. They won (11-9)against the German team composed of Ralph Souquet and Thorsten Hohmann in this scotch doubles tournament.

The other Filipino tandem in the event, Dennis Orcollo and Ronnie Alcano, were eliminated by the Germans in the semi-finals (9-6). Bata and Django meanwhile survived their match (9-8) against 2007 winners, China’s Li He-wen and Fu Jian-bo to set up the stage for the race to 11 finals.

Bata and Django stormed the finals with a 4-2 lead before the Germans tied it at 5-5 and eventually led by 1.

The Filipinos forced a tie at 6-6 before Souquet made it 8-6 in their favor. However, Efren and Django won five of the last six racks to win the title which they previously won in 2006 against the Americans.

They pocketed $60,000 and put the Philippines on top of the billiard world once again. Congratulations to our Filipino teams.

Mafia Wars Labor Day loot drops

Mafia Wars has just released a set of collectible loots to commemorate Labor Day. You only have the whole weekend to collect 8 special event loots.

Here are the 8 loots you have to collect:

Unfortunately, there’s no final loot if you’re done collecting all 8 unlike the Moscow loots. The stats are a bit lame compared to Cuban loots but they would still help out those who haven’t reached the El Padrino tier in Cuba.

Groovy like a movie video production

If you’re in the market for video production services for your tv commercial, corporate needs, marketing video, music video any kind of video promotions, you might want to check out groovy like a movie.

Groovy like a movie is an experienced national tv commercial production company based in San Diego. They are a one-stop-shop video production company that will help you from basic concept and will follow your spot all the way through delivery to your media outlet. Or… they can also interface with your advertising agency to implement their vision.

Their team uses an established process for writing scripts, scheduling shoots, movie and film production, post production, quality control and process for follow-up. Basically every process needed for your successful video. This means you’ll receive excellent customer service all throughout the video production lifecycle with them, not to mention high quality and polished video that will exceed your expectations.

Get 13 Daily Chance tickets in Mafia Wars per week

The lottery system in Mafia Wars gives you a free lotto ticket per day. At the end of the week during the draw, you can have 7 tickets if you claim them every day.

With the introduction of Ticket Mastery, you can claim prizes based on how many tickets you have submitted already. The prize is a bonus so you might want to take advantage of it when you can.

If you claim the ticket mastery prize on every 2nd ticket, you’ll get another free ticket.

So what you do is on your second ticket, claim your free ticket and use it (back to 1 ticket submitted). The following day, submit your daily free ticket as your 2nd and claim your ticket mastery prize of another free ticket. Repeat the process on the next day until the last day of the week.

This way, when it’s time to draw winners you will have a total of 13 tickets submitted giving you more chance to win better lotto prizes.

Treating symptoms by myself

People love to self-diagnose especially if they don’t have time or money to go to the doctor or their physician is not readily available. They would look for information on the internet for Treatment for Symptoms.

Well I am included in that group. A few weeks ago during a visit to a hospital, I developed this fever complete with colds and chills when I got home. It got me thinking, did I acquire AH1N1 virus from the hospital? I quickly check for AH1N1 symptoms online to see if I really had it.

It wasn’t clear at that time so the next step for me was to find treatment for the symptoms I had. I bought over the counter meds and followed the treatment plan. Fortunately, nothing bad happened and it went away after a few days.

Although it’s ok to diagnose yourself, it’s not really advisable especially if your ailment is something uncommon. You don’t want to receive the wrong treatment and make things worse do you?

Learn to understand the concepts of neuroimaging specialized by Dr Daniel G Amen, the founder of Amen Clinics.

How to remove LinkWithin from the front page

For Blogger users: If you added the free and awesome “related post” service of LinkWithin to your site, it will automatically appear at the end of each of your post.

Now if you’re in your main page and there are multiple posts displayed, you will also see the related posts of each of them. It will really clutter your front page so follow this simple step on how to tweak the code so that LinkWithin will only appear on single posts.

1. Login to your Blogger then go to Layout > Edit HTML.
2. Check Expand Widget. Look for the text “LinkWithin”.
3. Add the following lines (those in green) to your code.

That’s it. Your LinkWithin section will be limited to single posts.

The CinemaTube HD media player sure is tempting

HD Media Players is the rage these days and CinemaTube by Brite-View is probably the cheapest I've come across with that features Full HD playback, network streaming capability and torrent downloading.

Cinematube's slim design cannot house a hard drive unlike other media players but it has 2 usb ports at the back for you to plug your external drives. Aside from an HDMI and DVI port, it can also accept composite and component connections as well.

You can connect it to your network via Ethernet cable or buy their dedicated wireless USB adapter. In a network, you can stream videos and photos from your PC or have it act as your torrent downloader. Just make sure your have an external disk with ample space connected to CinemaTube.

It will be available in September 21 with an SRP of $130 but pre-order price will only cost you $99. Too bad there were only a hundred pre-order units in Amazon and they are all gone.

I would suggest holding back until you see some reviews about this unit especially the support they can give you. Aside from the lack of HD enclosure option, this player looks promising.

New Buffalo MiniStation now available locally

Buffalo's MiniStation line of portable hard drive dons a new look.

The MiniStation Metro is as still as compact and lightweight as its other siblings but this one is equipped with Buffalo's BumperBody which surrounds your hard drive with rubberized protectors to absorb shock.


One thing I like about Buffalo's MiniStations is their convenient wrap-around USB cord. No need to worry about losing your cable or having it snag onto something during transport.

Other notable feature is the optional way for you to automatically encrypt data on your drive with its integrated hardware encryption.

The MiniStation Metro comes in black, red or white and has an SRP of P4500 for the 320GB and P6500 for the 500GB. Price is a bit on the high end for 2.5" external hard drives but if you got the money then it's worth it.