This is what happened. I placed an order for two Dell Inspiron 1420 laptops on the Dell Online Store at www.dell.com.my. The order completed successfully. However,  the next day, a Dell sales personnel called me to tell me that the Dell Inspiron 1420 is out of production, and they will give the exact same specifications but on the Dell Studio 14 laptop for the same price!

I did a quick check and with the same specifications as the Inspiron 1420, the Studio 14 was costing about RM 500 more. So here I was being offered a free RM 500 upgrade! I asked the sales personnel if the model was out of production, then why still offer it online? That’s when she explained that Dell Online store is actually beyond their direct control and the offers they place are for 3 months at a time.

So, ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is what I call a window of opportunity! I just checked, and the Insipiron 1420 is still being offered at RM 2499 with a Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz processor, 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2 MP Webcam, DVDRW Drive, the works! And the best part is that if you order, they cannot deliver it to you since its out of production and you will get these specs in the Studio 14 laptop.

So, if you want a free upgrade to your brand new Dell laptop, now is the time to grab it!

Initially, I thought it was just due to the update server being too busy, with AVG boasting over 80 millions users worldwide. The next day, the symptoms were exactly the same, and I thought there was something wrong with my Internet connection, or perhaps the updater was being blocked by the firewall. I quickly ruled that out when it still would not update even using my wireless connection at home.

A search on Google revealed many other disgruntled users with the same problem, but no solution was to be seen. I then decided to check through every option in the Tools…Advanced Settings menu in AVG. Under the Update settings, I discovered that a checkbox saying ‘Use dial-up connections’  had somehow become selected. I unchecked this and restarted AVG, and voila! It was hungrily downloading the updates it had been deprived of the past few days.

So if you don’t know why your AVG 8 antivirus decides to stop updating all of a sudden, double check this setting to make sure it didn’t get switched on somehow.

So, this morning when the option to enable offline access to Gmail appeared under my Google Labs options in Gmail, I quickly grabbed the opportunity. You see, Gmail has been the perfect solution to all my email needs, especially with the virtually unlimited storage and multiple email address support. But the biggest gripe was it was not available offline since the emails are stored on Google’s servers. This was a major disadvantage compared to downloading emails to an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook.

So lets see how to go about enabling this feature for your Gmail account. First of all, you will need to check if this feature has been rolled out to your account yet. In typical Google style, the features are rolled out to their users in batches. Just click settings in Gmail, and then click on the third option from the right, Labs.

Here you will see a list of fascinating features which have not been officially released as part of the Gmail offering, but are available for mass user testing. While the title at the top says experimental features, based on my experience, all of Gmail Labs features work very well. That’s Gmail just being extra careful with which features they deploy.

Anyway, coming back to the Offline Gmail feature, click on the Enable radio button to enable this feature for your Gmail. Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on Save Changes. Next, go back to your Gmail inbox, and you will see the word “Offline 0.1″ on the top right hand corner. Click on this to start the entire Offline installation process.

Essentially, the Gmail Offline feature uses Google Gears, an application designed by Google to help bridge the gap between web-based and desktop programs. If you do not already have it, you will be prompted to install Google Gears. Based on your usage, Gmail Offline will automatically decide how much email it will save on your desktop for offline access. In my case, it decided it would fetch email from up to a year ago.

While the synchronization process is running, you will see a green rotation icon indicating the sync process is in progress. Placing your mouse pointer over this icon will show a quick status on how much of your email has been synchronized, including attachments. After the initial sync process is complete, it will continuously and intelligently sync your emails between the Google server and your computer to ensure you always have access to your emails, be it online or offline.

So if you thought Gmail was incomplete because it was only accessible online, think again, and enable the Offline mode access to enjoy Gmail in its fully glory.

This post is intended to focus on WeTool, a simple straightforward application designed to forward SMS messages on the iPhone plus other great features. Best of all, its FREE. This post will walk you through how to install this free iPhone SMS forwarding application on your iPhone, step-by-step.

WeTool is designed and developed by Aaron Jang, over at www.weiphone.com. If you go to this page, however, chances are you will not be able to make anything out as its written in the Chinese character set. This fact alone may scare some people away, wondering whether WeTool is really compatible with their iPhone. But the good news is, while it may not be easy to locate the software on WEIphone.com, it is really simple to install it, and yes, the interface is completely in English.

Some of the features of WeTool is as follows:

• Forwarding of SMS messages
• Sending SMS to multiple recipients
• Deleting individual SMS messages
• Deleting individual call entries (recieved, made, missed)
• 18 cool screen transition effects

At the time of writing, the latest version is 0.3.7.1 .The installation procedure is very simple, as follows:

1. Launch Installer on your iPhone
2. Tap sources, then edit, then add
3. Type in http://app.weiphone.com/installer/ in the prompt
4. Tap OK, the Installer Sources will refresh
5. Tap Install, then tap All Packages
6. Look for WeTool 0.3.7.1 (or a later version)
7. Tap Install

Once it downloads and installs, you will have a new program called WeTool which you can then use either as your primary SMS application or use it in conjunction with the default iPhone SMS application.

While viewing PDF documents is free with the Adobe Reader, Adobe charges big money for its Adobe Acrobat software which is their solution to creating PDF documents. But we don’t want to have to pay to create PDF documents, do we? So I scoured the web and discovered that there are in fact a few free PDF creation tools available for FREE!

BullZip is perhaps the best of the lot, and is downloadable free of charge from here : http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php. It works just like Adobe Acrobat, since installs as a printer driver. The generated PDFs do not contain any kind of advertising or popups which is a major plus point for this program. The only limitation is that its FREE for personal and commercial use for up to 10 users. In most cases, this is not a limitation anyway.

BullZip’s features include :

• Print to PDF from almost any Windows program
• Runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/XP x64/2003/2003 x64/Vista/Vista x64/2008
• Supports 64-bit operating systems
• Direct output to the same file each time or prompt for destination
• Control if the printer should ask if you want to see the resulting PDF document
• Control output and prompts programmatically
• Setup can run unattended
• Graphical user interface
• Password protect PDF documents
• 128/40 bit encryption
• Quality settings (screen, printer, ebook, prepress)
• Set document properties, Watermark text, size, rotation, and transparency.
• Superimpose/background documents.
• Appending/prepending documents.
• User interface control.
• Command line interface to all settings.
• COM/ActiveX interface for programmatic control.
• Support for Citrix MetaFrame
• Support for Windows Terminal Server
• Multiple output types supported: BMP, JPEG, PCX, PDF, PNG, and TIFF.

So, if you are looking for the perfect solution to being able to create PDF documents from any Windows program for FREE and without any hassle or limitations, go get BullZip. You will thank yourself you did.

Wordle.net is a word cloud creation software written by Jonathan Feinberg. The basic idea behind this software is to key in a bunch of words, specify color, font and layout options and a visually appealing word cloud is generated. You are free to use the word cloud in any which way you desire. Looking at the default color and font themes, it is easy to guess that t-shirt designs was among the main uses Jonathan had in mind when creating this.

There is also a Gallery section which allows people to showcase their beautiful creations on the website. Its a good idea to go through these to get ideas and to help you with your own creative process.

Interestingly, the use of this software has gone beyond the initial purpose the author had in mind. He has received numerous inquiries from teachers and those in the education field for permission to use this software as an educational tool. This naturally came with requests to have some form of censorship, as currently the content in the Gallery is not moderated. Quite unsurprisingly, this is not an easy to do task, since at the time of writing his software gets about 3 Wordle generation requests per minute.

If you do not have a bunch of text you can think of immediately, some of the things you could do is paste in an entire chapter of an ebook to see which are the words which are repeated more often (they will have a larger relative size). Or better still, Wordle supports RSS feeds, which means all you have to do is key in the path to the RSS feed your favorite blog and it will automagically generate a beautiful word cloud from the contents of that blog.

The fonts used in the system are not only pretty to look at, they also support international character sets. Therefore, its possible to use the system out of the box with other character sets such as Arabic, Devanagri and Hebrew.

So, what are you waiting for, head over to Wordle.net and unleash your creative genius!

Hey, I’m back after a long hiatus… This time I would like to share a nice fun-with-photos website aptly known as PhotoFunia! Its amazing how this has not become as ubiquitous as Facebook, but nonetheless, here is the URL : http://www.photofunia.com

Once you get there, there is little explanation needed. But in a nutshell, this website allows you to upload your own (or anyone elses) photograph and have it automagically transformed into one of many works of art, for FREE!. Its really amazing to see how breathtaking the final effect is. My personal favorite is the Pavement Drawing effect (third in the images below).

Please do note that your photo will be publicly viewable, unless you take care to place a checkmark on the ‘My photo should not be available to public’

Here are previews of a fraction of the awesome effects available for FREE!

Ok, now quick pose in front of your webcam, smile and head over to PhotoFunia to create your art masterpiece.

At the time of writing there are 4 great themes offered for free download under the Free Themes section, namely Missile, Styleicious, Chameleon and Loveblog. Each theme is accompanied by a full feature list, a live demo site and of course the download link. Among these, Loveblog is my personal favorite, mainly due to the clean lines and easy to read layout.

The Portfolio section is where the author shows off his ability in creating designs for various platforms including Wordpress, PHP Link Directory, Forums and General Websites. Just taking a peek at the cleverly made Wordpress design previews you can tell that thaslayer is indeed capable of churning out an entire range of designs and themes suited to the needs his clients.

So the next time you are in need of a custom designed Wordpress site or other web design, head over to thaslayer’s website and check out what he has to offer. I am sure you will not be disappointed.

OPTION A) The free but lengthy way

STEP 1 : Identifying the video

Identify the full address of the video which you want to download including the YouTube address (eg : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk. You can get this from the address bar at the top of your browser window or by clicking on the More Info link at the right hand bar, from the URL box. Copy this address and have it ready to be used in the next step.

STEP 2 : Preparing for download

Open up a new browser window or tab and go to http://keepvid.com/. Here you will need to paste the address of the video you copied in STEP 1 into the box which says “URL”. Next click on the download button on the right hand side of the box DO NOT click on the Download, Convert and Play icons they are just advertisements.

STEP 3 : Downloading the video

Depending on the video you have chosen, you will be shown links which allow you to download the video file directly in a green box at the bottom of the page. Here you can choose to download either the low quality (FLV) format video or high quality (MPEG 4) format video by right clicking on the relevant link and choosing Save As. If you choose the Low Quality (FLV) option, you will have to rename the file from get_video to something else with an FLV extension, for example you may call the video “funny.flv”

STEP 4 : Playing the video

Depending on the video format you saved your file in Step 3, you will either need to have an FLV player to view the lower quality video file you downloaded in the FLV format, or an MPEG 4 player to view the high quality video file. FLV Player is a good player to use to view FLV video files. Apple Quicktime and many other video players are able to handle MPEG 4 videos without problems. Enjoy!

OPTION B) The cheap and quick way

STEP 1 : Download VideoPiggy

If you do not want the hassle of performing the steps above each time you need to download a video from YouTube, and want a quick and easy way to get your YouTube videos, I recommend VideoPiggy, an excellent piece of software which will make it effortless to download videos from YouTube and to convert them into any format you choose for various applications (such as inserting into PowerPoint presentations). Video Piggy will also download videos from other video servers including Google Video, Metacafe and MySpaceTV!

Click here to get VideoPiggy now!

The Internet has been responsible to liberate a lot of such constraints which have been imposed on Malaysians all this while, most notable is the easier access to uncensored local and foreign news on the the World Wide Web. But what about TV? We are still restricted as to what we can and cannot watch.

iSoftwareTV is the perfect answer to this problem. Essentially, it is a piece of software which gives you access to over 3000 channels featuring Full DVD Quality Movies, International TV Shows, Music Videos and much more! This amazing piece of software has received acclaim from CNN, MSNBC, CNET and America Online. The best part is that since it is software, it will work wherever you are in the world! All you need is access to an Internet connection.

Your Astro subscription easily sets you back RM 80- RM90 a month on average, and you get to watch reruns of the same shows again and again. If you are in the United States, traditional satellite TV and Cable services can cost easily in excess of $90/month. iSoftwareTV costs only $39.95 ONE TIME. There is no monthly recurring fee to be paid at all. Even if you convert that to Ringgit Malaysia, it comes up to about RM 120 which is what you are paying A MONTH if you subscribe to every channel on Astro (not including Box Office shows).

So the next time you switch on your TV and start flipping channels looking for something worthwhile to watch, consider getting . It is simply liberating!