Just another regular dumbphone. Emphasis on dumb.

First off I just want to say, I do NOT like this phone, nor do i recommend it. I mean seriously, it uses a proprietary connection for charging and connecting headphones. ‘Nuff said.  I mean what kind of music phone doesn’t have a 3.5″ plug? How can you advertise it as a music phone if you can’t even use a decent headphone. And come on people, no mini USB or micro USB for connectivity? My old Motorola PEBL from 2+ years ago had that. But don’t stop there, there’s still more crappiness leaking from the phone, even as a regular phone and NOT as a music phone which the phone is advertised to be.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

*disclaimer: I do not condone hacking other people’s wireless network. This was done for educational purpose.

This article is provided for informational purposes only. [byvolce] and its affiliates accept no liability for providing this information. Please only use to test configurations on your own equipment. Accessing WIFI networks that do not belong to you is ILLEGAL.  -from thew0rd (though it applies to this post)

If you’re nerdy like me, you have probably seen articles on WEP hacking and how to do so. It may seem daunting when you first look at it (I mean all those scripts to type into terminal, come on!), but I can honestly say that it is really weak and does not require a genius or a nerd, or even a grown up really, to hack into a WEP protected router. All you need is to be able to follow direction. You probably won’t even need perseverance.

How easy is it? Broken on the first try in less than an hour by a high school student. You don’t even need fancy tools or to waste money. All you need is a computer with wifi.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

It’s ok guys, I am not dead yet! Neither am I lost, because I have my trusty Becker Traffic Assist Highspeed GPS (Also known as Becker Traffic Assist Highspeed 7934 GPS outside of the US) with me! Well not really because of it but it makes a good intro doesn’t it? So like what you would expect from me I got this gps on sale and it was a pretty good deal. I know it’s not the usual Tom Tom or Garmin (it’s a German brand so it is not as common on this side of the Atlantic) but it’s a pretty good gps overall. The device has a 3.5″ touch screen with a 400MHz processor and an SD card slot for the map and storage and runs on Navteq and Navigon. The device officially can view pictures and play mp3/wma; but if you’re into hacking you can do so much more. More on that later.

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Popularity: 63% [?]

UPDATE: After about a year of use, the keyboard paint on the M-6827 starts wearing off. Both the silver and the letters. The most common buttons, like enter, spacebar, s, e and shift are worn off to the extent that the letters are not visible any more. So if you hate cosmetic defect, here’s one.

A couple of days ago there was this awesome deal on the Gateway M-6827 laptop. It was sold for $549 instead of the regular price of $699 (at Office Depot).  If you haven’t seen the pattern in most of the things I reviewed, it’s the fact that I like good deals. So what makes this laptop awesome? Let’s start with the spec (I promise you, it gets way more interesting):

• 15.4″-diagonal widescreen WXGA (1280 x 800) UltraBright™ LCD screen
• Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5750 operating at 2.0GHz 2MB L2 cach
• 3GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM memory (2GB + 1GB)
• 160GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive
• Multiformat DVD drive with Double Layer support (reads/writes DVD±R/RW, DVD-RAM, DVD±R Double Layer, CD-R/RW); supports disc labeling on Labelflash media
• Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g) wireless LAN
• Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam, for live video chat and still photos
• 5-in-1 memory card reader: reads SD, MMC, xD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with up to 384MB shared memory

And on top of that, it has a pretty slick and new design. Which leads me to wonder why it was so cheap.

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Popularity: 34% [?]

Unlike your usual bunch of USB watches, Timex Ironman USB Data Link System is not a usb storage on a watch (it only has 31424 bytes of memory). Instead, it is a prime example of geekery (Binary time anyone?). In fact it is advertised as “the watch that thinks it is a PDA”. And unlike other smart watches (notably Casio’s databank), it is not completely ugly and looks relatively normal. The watches even have a dress, sport, and normal version. The ~$70 watch allows you to install apps from your computer via USB. But of course, Almost like everything I buy, it was on sale. It was a steal at $20 from Walmart.

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Popularity: 20% [?]

If you are reading this you are lucky. My hosting provider (Hostmonster) has been very unreliable lately. It was down for almost a day yesterday and still crawling today. I don’t recommend them. Sorry if you weren’t able to reach me then.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For those unfamiliar on February 2009, analog tv will no longer work and you will need either a digital tv or a converter box. Thankfully the US Gov. has set up a program that will let you get a discount of $40 toward a converter box. So I decided to sign up and I got 2 $40 coupon for a DTV converter from the government, presumably from the 100s of dollar we pay to tax. The real price was $59 but with the $40 coupon it was obviously $19. But after tax, the total cost ended up at ~$25. So in the end a portion of their gift was sent back to them. But I digress, So here is a simple video of the un-boxing narrated by ATT Labs text to voice for bonus nerd points.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

So a couple of days ago, I decided my computer was starting to lag too much and I should reinstall it. The original plan was to create a new partition (using my trusty sysresccd which has qtparted. A free hard drive partitioner that can resize ntfs.) on my hard drive to place all my files into and reformat the other partition. Then after reinstalling the OS I would place the file back, then join all the partition back. Sounds great right? On paper it did, but when I went ahead and executed it, a big giant head exploding problem happened. My computer crashed while partitioning. Naturally my first hope was to check if my files was still there, no dice. At that point a part of me died. (more…)

Popularity: 3% [?]

Happy almost 1st birthday 53m1/ Canabis Day (No I don’t smoke canabis, unfortunate isn’t it? But if you do, here’s your present. Sorry I couldn’t get you a canabis)! Yes you have stumbled upon 53m1, now renamed “novus.volce”. So After almost a year, I’ve decided to rebrand everything. An evolution if you will. What’s amazing is that coincidentally, this is the 51st post. (more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

So last weekend I went to, you guessed it, Hoover Dam and The Grand Canyon. It was a pretty cool trip, albeit long. So I brought you guys a present, some pictures! Exciting isn’t it? Use them as wallpapers, stocks (non-commercial), and much more. I don’t really mind. Just give credit where it’s due. Also multi/big screen owners and big project lovers don’t fret. Their taken at 7mp (3264 x 2176) so you won’t be left out in the rain. I’m sure you’ll find one perfect for you. There is 100+ pictures in all its glory. imagine uploading 100+ pictures at 7mp. It took over a nice long 2 hour. So where can I get these picture extravaganza? Here of course!

Also I’ve taken the liberty to play with photoshop, and use my own stock. I know they aren’t that great. I sorta gave up after my computer started lagging like mad. Opening a 7mp picture on a 512 ram ( I know I should upgrade) and editing in photoshop is deadly. But here goes nothing.

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Popularity: 2% [?]