Category Archives: Apps

Get 10GB of Dropbox free for life

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dropboxMany people use Dropbox these days because its a handy file sync tool. However the paid service is quite pricey at either $10 per month or $100 per year for their 50GB package.

The free 2GB package is well used. You can get 250MB of extra space for every person you refer, up to 8GB. In other words, you can have up to 10GB of space for free through referrals.

And it also happens that Google Adwords are giving away $75 free advertising coupons like they’re candy.

Combine the two, and you can run an Adwords campaign for Dropbox using your referral link for free. As people sign up, you get bonus space.

I just did it myself, and for about 2 days nothing happened. Then tonight all of a sudden 10 referrals have rolled in as Google have activated my ad campaign. I guess I’m staying up until I get up to my 8GB which should be very soon.

The following video is a good guide on how to do this yourself:

Formatting images for Zen Cart

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I found it hard to get my head around how to do this mainly because the Zen Cart documentation on the subject really sux.

Adding images to products is a very standard thing – every product should have at least one image to represent the product. However because the image is displayed in a number of different sizes, you need to provide several different images in the appropriate sizes.

Product images are displayed in 3 forms. Small, Medium & Large. Small images should be no more than 100×80 pixels. Medium images should be no more than 150×120 pixels. Large images can really be any dimensions however for consistency I make them no larger than 500×400 pixels.

The images should be JPG, GIF or PNG.

The best method to upload is via FTP into your /images directory. The Zen Cart admin page can upload images however it’ll only do one and not the 3 formats required. It also won’t do multiple images for a product (on top of the 3 different formats).

When you upload your small image the path should be prefixed with /images. When you upload your medium image the path should be prefixed with /images/medium. When you upload your large image the path should be prefixed with /images/large. Medium and large images should also have _MED and _LRG in their file names.

So, a complete set for the file product.jpg would look like:

/images/product.jpg – 100×80 pixels
/images/medium/product_MED.jpg – 150×120 pixels
/images/large/product_LRG.jpg – 500×400 pixels

Also for reference, categories and manufacturers have their own dimensions. Categories should only have a single image sized to no more than 100×57 pixels. Manufacturers should only have a single image sized to no more than 100×80 pixels (same size as a small product image).

Hamrick VueScan Pro v9.0.61 Multilingual Cracked-EAT

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Today I updated my copy of VueScan as I had to scan and send away a few things. VueScan is essentially an app to allow you to use older models of scanners with newer versions of Windows, even if the manufacturer provides no driver, as VueScan provide their own drivers.

Of course I simply pulled it up on rlslog, copied the scene release name and searched NZBClub, then used my Astraweb account to leech at high speed.

However if you’re povo and don’t pay for usenet – you can get it here, here or here.

SimpliGio+ for Galaxy GT-5660S

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I’ve finally decided on a firmware for my Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-5660S. It is SimpliGio+ which sadly was the very first firmware I tried so I now have to revert back to my first firmware loading attempt.

I didn’t like GioPro because I found the ADW desktop would frequently crash.

I didn’t like Particle because WiFi didn’t work. I mean really, whats the point of buying a phone with WiFi just to disable it in software?

And I didn’t like the so called “Official Firmware” from XDA-Developers because it isn’t actually an official firmware because Samsung Kies cannot update it and the desktop frequently crashes causing application services (like sipdroid) to exit. Really annoying if you actually use VoIP like me.

SimpliGio+ is very easy to load. The best features of SimpliGio+ are the replaced boot screen animation & sound, Titanium Backup Pro included, SuperUser included, and normal components of Android (that aren’t always used) are installed optionally to save memory (you need to get this file and use Root Explorer to copy them across).

  • Get ODIN 4.42
  • Get this file
  • Extract the rar file
  • Turn on your phone by holding the volume down, home and power buttons. You should get the “Downloading…” screen. If not, you did something wrong
  • Connect your phone to your PC with the USB cable
  • Load ODIN 4.42
  • Click the OPS button and browse to GIO_v1.0.ops
  • Click the BOOT button and from the files you extracted from the rar file, select the one that begins with APBOOT
  • Click the PHONE button and select the file that begins with MODEM
  • Click the PDA button and select the file that begins with CODE
  • Click the CSC button and select the file that begins with CSC
  • Click the Start button
  • After 5 min you should have SimpliGio+ loaded onto your phone. If it doesn’t boot correctly, turn off your phone, then turn it back on by holding the home and power buttons – and perform a factory reset

Root & Unlock the Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-5660V

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I’ve previously blogged about how to root & unlock the Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-5660S. My brother in law really loves my Gio and wanted the same phone so today he bought one from Optus. Unfortunately they supplied him with a slightly different model to my own which cannot be unlocked and rooted in the same manner. But never fear, that doesn’t mean it can’t be unlocked and rooted.

You will need:

So first we’ll start with rooting/flashing. Unlike the 5660S you cannot use “root gb updated.zip” and you need to reflash the firmware with ODIN.

  • Turn on your phone by holding the home, volume down and power buttons. Make sure the power button is the last one you press. Your phone will boot up and say “Downloading…”. If it boots up normally, you did something wrong
  • Connect your phone to the PC via the USB cable. Wait until all drivers are loaded correctly (Samsung Kies will install them upon connection)
  • Load ODIN 4.42
  • Click the OPS button and select GIO_v1.0.ops
  • Tick the “One Package” checkbox
  • Click the “One Package” button and select GT-S5660M_MUGKG3_stock_rooted_ROM_v2.tar
  • Hit the Start button
  • After a few minutes your phone will reboot. The handset I used didn’t boot correctly after flashing probably because of the user data. To fix this I held down the home and power buttons and performed a factory reset, then rebooted the phone again, and it booted normally

So now the SuperUser app is installed and the phone is running firmware from Bell. So to unlock the phone its now the same process as the 5660S (so I just copied and pasted from the previous blog):

  • Install the Java Developer Kit
  • Install the Android SDK
  • Run the Android SDK Manager and install the “Android SDK Platform-tools”
  • Open the command prompt with administrator privileges
  • Run the command:
    cd "\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools"
  • Connect your Samsung Galaxy Gio to the PC with the USB cable
  • Run the ADB shell. This is a command prompt viewable on your PC which is executed on your phone. The command is:
    adb shell
  • Once the ADB shell has loaded you’ll need to step up into rooted mode. Run the command “su”. After executing this, on the Samsung Galaxy Gio the SuperUser app will pop up requesting permission to grant superuser privileges
  • Now we can start with the actual unlocking. Run the following commands:
    mount –o remount rw /
    mkdir /efs
    mount –o nosuid,ro,nodev –t vfat /dev/block/stl5 /efs
    cat /efs/mits/perso.txt
  • There will now be an 8 digit number that is not entirely made up of 0’s on your screen. This is your unique unlock code. Write it down.
  • Turn off your phone and replace the SIM with a card that is locked out of your phone – ie. a SIM card from a different provider
  • Enter in the unlock code you wrote down when requested
  • Your phone is now rooted and unlocked

Photoshop and ICO files

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I created a favicon.ico file for this blog today.

I got the ICO file format plugin for Photoshop from Telegraphics.

Then all I need to do is resize the image to ICO dimensions (64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 16×16 or 8×8 pixels) and save it as an ICO file.

The new Firefox 8 brought it to my attention that I didn’t have a favicon.ico – as Firefox 8 now puts a little dotted square box as an icon for any site lacking a favicon.ico.

Offline installers for free Adobe software

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Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader are both very popular products. For some reason Adobe seem to think they shouldn’t have offline installers too accessible and make anyone wanting an offline installer apply for a distribution license.

I have a distribution license because my auto-installer script requires an offline installer.

I thought I’d provide the links so others don’t need to apply for the distribution license.

ClockworkMod for Samsung Galaxy Gio

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I performed this mod to do some firmware loading the other day so I thought I’d detail how to install ClockworkMod.

  • Download gt-s5660-cwm-recovery-20111007-1.tar.md5 or newer
  • Download ODIN 4.42
  • Turn off your phone
  • Turn your phone back on by holding down the volume down, home and power buttons to enter downloading mode
  • Load the firmware into ODIN as a single package and hit the Start button
  • 2 minutes later your phone will reboot
  • Load the Market and install ROM Manager
  • You now have ClockworkMod installed

Root & Unlock the Samsung Galaxy Gio

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Today I rooted my Optus PrePaid Samsung Galaxy Gio and also removed the Optus carrier locking. Quite a simple process – it was easier than I imagined.

First off you’ll require a few things:

So we’ll start with rooting. You’ll need “root gb updated.zip”. If this link is broken, I have the file, so just post a comment and I’ll update the link.

  • Copy “root gb updated.zip” to your SD card
  • Turn off your phone
  • Press and hold the home button and the power button
  • When recovery mode loads, select” “Add update from SD card” then select “root gb updated.zip” as the update
  • Reboot your phone and you now have the SuperUser app installed

Now we’ll remove carrier locking.

  • Install the Java Developer Kit
  • Install the Android SDK
  • Run the Android SDK Manager and install the “Android SDK Platform-tools”
  • Open the command prompt with administrator privileges
  • Run the command:
    cd “\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools”
  • Connect your Samsung Galaxy Gio to the PC with the USB cable
  • Run the ADB shell. This is a command prompt viewable on your PC which is executed on your phone. The command is:
    adb shell
  • Once the ADB shell has loaded you’ll need to step up into rooted mode. Run the command “su”. After executing this, on the Samsung Galaxy Gio the SuperUser app will pop up requesting permission to grant superuser privileges
  • Now we can start with the actual unlocking. Run the following commands:
    mount –o remount rw /
    mkdir /efs
    mount –o nosuid,ro,nodev –t vfat /dev/block/stl5 /efs
    cat /efs/mits/perso.txt
  • There will now be an 8 digit number that is not entirely made up of 0’s on your screen. This is your unique unlock code. Write it down.
  • Turn off your phone and replace the SIM with a card that is locked out of your phone – ie. a SIM card from a different provider
  • Enter in the unlock code you wrote down when requested
  • Your phone is now rooted and unlocked

I’ll later blog about custom firmware because the Optus firmware is bloatware.