div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/a5/ce/0009cea5.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/a5/ce/0009cea5_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_642725"//a/divbr/ bdiv class="center" Guitar Pro 5.2 + RSE + Over 120.000 Tabs/bbr/ RS | 450 MB/div

After school today, Matt and Anthony came in with Anthony's busted Ipod Video. They asked me how good I was at fixing iPods. Never having been inside an iPod before, I replied, "well let's see what you've got." It appears that the back came off the ipod, and now it was bricked. Anthony was pretty upset, wondering if all his songs would be missing, and what he would do without his beloved tunebox. It would not power up at all. He showed how it could be opened by grabbing at it with his nails and separating the back. so much for specialized antimar tools.

We did a few searches on replacing ipod batteries. One page that looked promising turned out to be about the wrong generation. Not knowing which model it was, we looked up the various models to get the generation right. His turned out to be a 5th gen iPod.

Next we needed to know what to expect inside. I could see a couple of ribbon cables that appeared to have just pulled out of their fittings. If they could be placed properly back into their slots, that would be fine. They needed to go back into place in such a way that the back could actually be reattached.

Inside, there was a bunch of cool stuff. The 80gig hard drive was incredibly small. I couldn't believe how much capacity could be stuffed into such a small package. The screen was neat too. Real thin, backlight coming from the top. There was some foam and spacers in there to keep things from flopping around. Everything was held together with ribbon cables.

The ribbon cables would be fine as long as they did not get torn. I found the fitting for one of them on the side, and saw that there was a flip latch to hold it together. After securing that one, the next was the one at the bottom. We got it to go into the slot, clicked the case together and hit the power button. About this time, Anthony got about his 50th text message of our short session. The Ipod would not fire up. Anthony was upset. Then his father called. He explained that he was in the middle of fixing his iPod. There was some discussion of Best Buy and their warrantee policy. I was pretty sure that there was no chance of this relic being still covered.

While they were talking, I cracked the thing open again and took a look at the second fitting, down near the charger port. It was stiffer, with reinforcement of a piece of white plastic. I figured that it had to be that the fitting was not all the way in. I used my Warrantee Voider to get the ribbon into the fitting all the way. Once I got it running, I showed it to him, and he reported happily to Dear Old Dad that all was well.

On looking at the catches on the case, we could see that one of them was more worn than the rest. I figured that it would be good for a while, but it would eventually pull apart, so I suggested that we make a skin for his newly functioning Ipod. He said he had nothing planned, but I could tell that now that his iPod was running, his daily routine was about to resume. We didn't have a whole lot of time.

First we looked up the dimensions for the 5th generation iPod. The thing I was looking for was a good, full dimension drawing that I could use to make the image for the skin. I wanted to make it so that the sticker on the front would reach over to the back and hold the two together. The image and dimensions did not jump out of the browser at me, so we grabbed a ruler and went over to the computer to design up a skin.

We used CutStudio, which comes bundled with the Roland CAMM1. I don't like the software much, but it ports right to the cutter. Once you have the thing designed, you can only cut it, I have not been able to find a way to export it for editing in a more powerful program like Gimp or Inkscape.

Rather than having him do the design work, I chose to do it myself. His texts and calls were coming with increasing frequency, and I knew word had gotten out that he no longer had an excuse to be absent from his pressing duties. We had to work fast. A couple of quick measurements, some alignment of shapes, and the overall design was done. To add tabs to the sides so they would reach over the back, I had to trace over the outline and duplicate most of the shape. Anthony was impressed that it was possible to design something that was so close to the outline of his beloved.

When I sent the file to the cutter, it was done in a few seconds. He couldn't believe it when I showed it to him. Then we weeded it and put it on transfer tape. It took a few tries to get it onto the iPod squarely, but eventually it went on fine. In looking at it, I told him that it wasn't such a great fit, and looked kind of unprofessional, but would keep the back from falling off. I invited him to come back on Monday to make a better looking skin, maybe with a picture that he made on it as well.

He cruised out the door about 45 minutes after coming into my room for the first time ever, happy as can be with his resurrected iPod in one hand and buzzing phone in the other. Problem solved.

Do you have tales of repairs and making things right? How about advice on how to get the right patterns for skins to fit various models of phones or audio players? Would you like to make new skins for your laptop, digicam or even dashboard? Share your ideas in the comments or add pictures and video to the Make Flickr pool.

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/anthonys_busted_ipod.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/anthonys_busted_ipod.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/anthonys_busted_ipod.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/diy_projects/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in DIY Projects/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F11%2Fanthonys_busted_ipod.htmltitle=Anthony%26apos%3Bs%20busted%20ipodbodytext=%20After%20school%20today%2C%20Matt%20and%20Anthony%20came%20in%20with%20Anthony%26apos%3Bs%20busted%20Ipod%20Video.%20They%20asked%20me%20how%20good%20I%20was%20at%20fixing%20iPods.%20Never%20having%20been%20inside%20an%20iPod%20before%2C%20I%20replied%2C%20%26quot%3Bwell%20let%26apos%3Bs%20see%20what%20you%26apos%3Bve%20got.%26quot%3B%20It...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

New shell for the PSP from Nikocronaldo
Changelog:

-Create your password, login and select your language (the password by default is "ilifepsp" )
-The CPU speed depends on CPU.conf
-As file menu, delete files and folders, rename files and folders, create folders and cut and paste files only.
-iLife Update avalaible.(It doesn't work yet correctly)
-Autoboot to iLife PSP.
-Added Chat and CPU settings.
-Bugs fixed.
-The time is fixed too. Now you can see the seconds and the date.
-System information improved, now you can see some informations in MB
-As regards playing songs and and loadings files:
Load PSX games at format .PSX (only officials PSX GAMES)
Read texts(still BETA)as txt,log, pdf,htm or php.
Loading Lua and prx files fixed.
BMP format is included . Now you can rotate the images.
PLayings songs improved. CPU Speed is reduced, Ogg files fixed. R and L to play the next song or to play the pevious song . When song is finished, the next plays. Now you can see the percentage and the Songtime.
You can browse images while you are listening to music
Write the name for the captures.


CONTROLS:

X to accept.
Or to cancel.
R1 and L1 to move the tabs.

SELECT to make a screenshot.
/ _ To launch your UMD.

START to load file menu.


BROWSING IMAGES:

O to cancel
Jostick and directions to rotate the images

IN THE PLAYER:

[] to stop.
X to pause
O to browsing in the menu while you listen to music,
R1 and L1 to play the next song or to play the previous song.




HOW DOES iLife Update WORK?


When you select the iLife Update option, it starts the Internet browser and will offer you search the file and download it (if is available), called iLife_PSP.zip (downloaded from PSPStation server, thanks to the admin). Save it in the folder PSP / COMMONS, and exit from the Internet browser. Then, you start iLife, and when you login, will start installing the new version of iLife PSP.

There is a bug originally from Luaplayer that doesn't delete iLife_PSP.zip after the installation . If you do not want to cause some problems, after delete it by connecting your PSP to USB MODE.


To report bugs or to send suggestions, send them to us at ilifepsp@gmail.comDownload and Give Feedback Via Comments
Attached Files iLife_PSP_v2.rar (2.22 MB)

Last I heard about Leapfish (this was a couple of years ago), they ran a useless but fun tool that provided you with a free appraisal for your domain name based on a variety of ratings and criteria. Now they’re back with an equally useless tool, this time without the fun part.

The company just revamped itself under the ownership of California-based DotNext, morphing into what they refer to as a “multi-dimensional information aggregator,” which is actually nothing more than yet another meta search engine. You know the kind: sites that pull together search results from real engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo and attempt to differentiate themselves by adding tabs for meta-searching images, videos, Q&A, blogs, and so on. Leapfish also displays a number of static, non-customizable widgets on their homepage for the latest news, weather reports, and a stock market summary, which is a kind of step backwards from all the start page personalization efforts we’ve seen over the years.

The company is actively contacting potential advertisers to buy keywords for top positions in their search result listings for a flat fee—typical registration fees are reportedly around $1000 and there’s a yearly renewal fee of 5% of the amount spent —which would give them a “lifetime” guarantee for a top slot for that keyword, but they also get the opportunity to resell it later to another advertiser. Of course, this is only beneficial if Leapfish becomes big, and the chances for that are slim.

The premise of meta search engines is that the aggregation process digs up the most relevant results across different sites and technology platforms, all on a single page. What I want to know: if these meta search engines (and boy, are there many) deliver significantly better results or a greater experience than a Google’s or Yahoo’s core search technology can on its own, then why doesn’t everyone flock to them instead?

The answer: people don’t want to get as many search results as possible and they don’t care about how large the unindexed part of the internet is, let alone what they might find on this so-called “invisible deep web.” All they want is a quick, convenient way of obtaining decent information from a source they know and trust. Or do you honestly visit Search.com, Dogpile, Zuula, Fazzle, Clusty or Mamma.com to get what you need? (I can go on with this list forever, but ask Mark Cuban about how much that last one is worth).

Don’t get me wrong: I see the value of startups trying to improve search and driving innovation both on a technology and a business level, and I’m sure some will be able to compete and carve out their piece of the market. In fact, I hope some of them will. Because no matter what your opinion is on human-powered search, semantic search, vertical search, or social search engines, you have to admit several companies in that space are trying to push the envelope, often drawing attention from the big guys or keeping them honest at least (see yesterday’s announcement about Yahoo Glue, for example).

For me, though, wanna-be search engines like Leapfish don’t clear that hurdle.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/suvs/" rel="tag"SUVs/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/euro/" rel="tag"Euro/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/porsche/" rel="tag"Porsche/a/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/1175103/"img width="450" vspace="4" hspace="4" height="303" border="1" align="top" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/09cayennediesel_lo_01.jpg" alt="Porsche Cayenne diesel" //abr / div style="text-align: center;"span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"smallClick above for a hi-res gallery of the Porsche Cayenne diesel/small/spanbr //div br /Porsche made it all official today. New European regulations that result in tax credits for diesel vehicles have spurred the automaker to drop an oil-burner under the hood of the Cayenne starting in February, 2009. Audi's 3.0L TDI V6 gets the call and will give the Cayenne diesel 240 horsepower, a peak torque rating of 405 lb-ft and a 25 mpg fuel economy number. The all-important (in Europe) CO2 emissions number is 244 g/km. There are no visual indicators to distinguish the diesel from the gas-powered base Cayenne. You have to look under the hood, where the engine cover is emblazoned with "3.0 V6 Turbo Diesel Injection" if you're hell-bent on finding some branding. br /br /a href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/1175101/"img width="250" vspace="4" hspace="4" height="187" border="1" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/09cayennediesel_lo_05.jpg" alt="Porsche 3.0 V6 Turbo Diesel" //aWhile the diesel Cayenne is a Europe-only model for now, Porsche pretty much says that other markets and countries are to follow. Will that include us? Who knows. You can bet that Stuttgart's going to keep tabs on how well Mercedes' new Bluetec trucks and Audi's forthcoming U.S.-market Q7 TDI do in the States before it makes a decision. We don't see them shipping over the Cayenne diesel unless it's pretty clear that it'll find an audience. span style="font-style: italic;"The full press release from Porsche is pasted after the jump./spanbr /br /div class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/"Porsche Cayenne Diesel/a/strong/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/1175103/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/p09_0398_a5_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/1175102/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/p09_0403_a5_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/1175104/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/p09_0411_a5_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/1175100/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/p09_0421_a5_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/porsche-cayenne-diesel-1/1175101/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/p09_0474_a5_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/divbr /[Source: Porsche]pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/officially-official-europe-gets-diesel-porsche-cayenne/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emOfficially Official: Europe gets diesel Porsche Cayenne/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/officially-official-europe-gets-diesel-porsche-cayenne/"Officially Official: Europe gets diesel Porsche Cayenne/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:31:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/officially-official-europe-gets-diesel-porsche-cayenne/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1378287/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/officially-official-europe-gets-diesel-porsche-cayenne/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/2rqa-eaYGYk_u8wmB05nwhidB6c/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/2rqa-eaYGYk_u8wmB05nwhidB6c/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=e348vuFC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=e348vuFC" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=8wmQznOL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=8wmQznOL" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/MwWXLCdjLLE" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/la-auto-show/" rel="tag"LA Auto Show/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hybrids/" rel="tag"Hybrids/Alternative/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/green/" rel="tag"Green/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/tech/" rel="tag"Tech/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/honda/" rel="tag"Honda/a/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/la-2008-honda-insight-eco-assist/1174323/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/eco_assist_system_1_opt.jpg" alt="" //abr / div style="text-align: center;"span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"smallClick above for high-res image gallery of the Honda Insight Eco Assist dashboard/small/spanbr //div br /There's more to driving green than just the car you choose. The way you pilot the vehicle makes a huge impact on your fuel mileage, and automakers are now beginning to endow their new wares with technology that teaches you how to drive green. Honda's upcoming a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/02/paris-2008-honda-insight-live-reveal/"Insight/a is a perfect example, with its new Eco Assist dashboard that keeps tabs on the driver's right foot and relays information back via a color-changing speedometer and and "economy scoring function." Honda aims to make "the hybrid experience more fun and rewarding" with these technologies -- kinda like a video game -- that are activated by a green ECON button on the dash. When pressed, the CVT transmission changes modes and computers adjust the operation of the A/C, stop the engine from idling sooner and increases regenerative braking capabilities. br /br /With this announcement, Honda joins Ford in the eco-dash wars. The Blue Oval recently revealed its LCD gauge cluster called a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/29/video-ford-smartgauge-with-ecoguide-in-action/"SmartGauge with EcoGuide/a, which will debut in the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/19/la-2008-2010-ford-fusion-redesign-revealed/"2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid/a and a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/19/la-2008-mercury-debuts-2010-milan/"Mercury Milan Hybrid/a. The tech wars are heating up fast and new innovations such as these green gauge clusters may make driving a rewarding experience for a completely new reason. Progress?br /br /div class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/la-2008-honda-insight-eco-assist/"LA 2008: Honda Insight Eco Assist/a/strong/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/la-2008-honda-insight-eco-assist/1174323/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/eco_assist_system_1_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/la-2008-honda-insight-eco-assist/1174324/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/eco_assist_system_2_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/la-2008-honda-insight-eco-assist/1174325/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/honda_06la_6_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/la-2008-honda-insight-eco-assist/1174326/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/honda_08la_4_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/la-2008-honda-insight-eco-assist/1174327/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/11/honda_08la_5_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/divbr /[Source: Honda]pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-honda-shows-off-insights-eco-assist-dashboard/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emLA 2008: Honda shows off Insight's Eco Assist dashboard/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-honda-shows-off-insights-eco-assist-dashboard/"LA 2008: Honda shows off Insight's Eco Assist dashboard/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:31:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-honda-shows-off-insights-eco-assist-dashboard/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1378162/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/la-2008-honda-shows-off-insights-eco-assist-dashboard/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/kA9TJ__5KkUtSAKn7F6325TC87M/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/kA9TJ__5KkUtSAKn7F6325TC87M/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=bMevRSs8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=bMevRSs8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=RCP1KzVv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=RCP1KzVv" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/Ujy2SsiOUB0" height="1" width="1"/

Investoscope 1.0b6Investoscope is a portfolio tracker for the individual investor. With a compelling and intuitive one window user interface, Investoscope lets you monitor the performance of your investments in stocks, bonds, mutual fonds and other securities. Futhermore, Investoscope's built-in reports removes the pain of preparing those tax reports.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.0 beta 6:

pI have long been a fan of Pageflakes, but had concerns when I saw that it had been sold onto Live Universe a href=http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2008/04/pageflakes-conf.htmlearlier this year/a. Until then there had been a very lively group of beta testers, and lots of interaction with the company. After the acquisition everything went silent on that front. There have recently been problems with access - I lost a entire day (ironically it was a teaching day, so I had to use Netvibes instead, so that#39;s a group of people who are already going down another track) and I#39;m aware that other people have lost even more time because of one reason or another. The blog hasn#39;t been updated in a long while, the Pageflakes community pages have closed, the press pages haven#39;t been updated either. Not good./ppI noticed that new users were having advertising flakes put onto pages when they created new accounts, but it was just on the very first page, and secondary tabs didn#39;t have advertising. None of my pages had advertising at all. Today however in the space of a few moments I#39;ve got advertising on every single page, and it#39;s large, intrusive and I can#39;t move it or close it down. Screenshot below:/ppa href=http://philbradley.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345223b869e20105360af254970c-pi style=display: inline;img alt=Pageflakesadvert border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d8345223b869e20105360af254970c image-full src=http://philbradley.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345223b869e20105360af254970c-800wi title=Pageflakesadvert //a br /Pageflakes - what on earth do you think that you#39;re doing? You want to make money - fine, I can deal with that. I like (liked?) the resource enough to pay money to use it, but I#39;m not being given that choice. You#39;ve not consulted your users and are just going ahead with sponsored content./ppGiven the attitude, the lack of contact with users and the up/down nature of the product, I think it#39;s time to consider a switch to Netvibes. I really do hope that you change your minds, but I#39;m doubtful. What#39;s really stupid is that if you#39;d said you wanted money - I#39;d have given it willingly. I would advise everyone to start to explore other options - I have a listing of them on my #39;a href=http://www.philb.com/iwantto/startpages.htmI want to/a#39; pages which I#39;m currently updating. You can also check out my Web 2.0 weblog for other more recent a href=http://philbradley.typepad.com/i_want_to/create_a_personalised_start_page/start page/a offerings. /p