Let me reminisce for a few seconds on an event which happened 5 years ago.  I was walking through the city of York with a friend when we came upon this girl who was having an asthma attack.  We called an ambulance, which said it would be five minutes.

In the meantime however we were stuck with a girl who could not breath and did not have an inhaler, what should we do?

Needless to say, we did not know whether we needed to keep her warm or cool, whether to get her a drink or not, all in all we were a mess.

Which is where the new iPhone application comes in. This medical application gives help and advice on thousands of medical conditions, straight from your phone.  So no matter what has happened, within seconds you could know how to act to save someones life. This application is over 60mb, so get it via WiFi if you can, but please do get it, you never know when it may help you save someones life.

If nothing else get this medical iPhone application so you can browse it when you are bored, you would be surprised what you can learn, and even more surprised when it comes in useful.

Fortunately Truphones have come along with a sleek, handy iPod Touch app which utilizes the iPod Touch’s WiFi capability to at least some way convert the iPod Touch into an iPhone.  By using the iPod Touches WiFi Capability you can use the iPod Touch as a phone to call other Truphone and Google Talk users completely free!

This iPod Touch to iPhone conversion tool is a great application for adding additional utility to the iPod touch, and while it is currently limited to other users of Truphone or Google Talk they are working to update it soon with landline and mobile calling functionality.  Even better the Truphone iPod to iPhone Conversion tool is completely free, available to download from the Apple iStore and the Truphone website.

This is the second release of Windows 7 to b released by microsoft since the Pre Beta was released in October.

You can view the full information on teh Windows 7 Beta 1 Release on the MIcrosoft Technet blog Here

This is great news for those lokoing for a slightly less cluttered and annoying version of Vista, as Windows 7 is rumoured to be much simpler and intuative compared to its ratehr overhyped predecessor, we can only hope Microsoft have learned from their previous mistakes on this score!

Today Adobe announced the upcoming launch of Photoshop CS4, and more importantly a major new landmark feature which is set to revolutionise the graphic designer world.

Unlike all previous versions of Photoshop CS4 is capable of utilizing your graphic card’s power, rapidly speeding up the speed at which Photoshop can zoom, manage and manipulate high end graphics on your PC.

This move is set to be a large blow to Apple users who were previously one of the few people able to access GPU compatible graphics design packages, at the cost of limited software and high hardware costs.  To the Graphic design industry at large though it is going to mean faster graphics processing and cheaper hardware for the pro’s!

But CS4 does not just stop there. Adobe Photoshop CS4 has 64bit support greatly increasing processing power on 64 bit machines.  Not to mention Macromedia Flash design incorporated, giving awesome vector support and bringing third party addon integration to a whole new level!

Feature wise there is now pixel bending support, giving faster special effects application, panoramic stitching for full 3d view support and direct to object 3d painting ability!

All in all the brand new version of Adobe Photoshop CS4 is lightyears ahead of its predocessors, making full use of the latest technologies to really bring digital image editing into the modern age!

• DownThemAll

DownThemAll is a firefox add-on that can be used to manage downloads right inside the firefox itself. No need to install third Party software for download management. It also accelerates the downloads and speeds up the download speed upto 400%. It allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time.

• PDF Download

PDF Download Add-on is a leading tool for handling and viewing Web-based PDF files. It eliminates the pain most of the people face when encountering PDF files online. PDF Download converts the PDF failes in HTML and makes them ready to read without even downloading them. It also lets you convert your Web pages into high-quality PDF’s that are ideal for archiving, printing and sharing.

• Fast Video Download

Fast Video Download lets you download videos from site that have the video embedded. With this add-on, you can download Videos from major Video sharing site like Youtube, dailymotion.com, hi5.com, metacafe.com, vids.myspace.com and many others in just a click on your mouse button.

• Sourceforge Direct Download

If you frequently download files from Sourceforge projects, use this extension to automatically convert download links to use your favorite mirror instead of having Sourceforge prompt you every time you try to download a new file or software.

• Save Image In Folder

Save Image in Folder add-on has a capability of Easily saving images in personally customized folders. If you Browse for images and Photographs regularly, this is a must have add-on for you. When you are on a site having your favorite photograph on it, just “right click” on the images and Click ‘Save Images in Folder’ option to download that particular Picture/ Image.

• Facebook Photo Album Downloader

With this add-on, you can Easily download whole albums off Facebook. Now you don’t need to open and wait for every photograph to load. Just download the Entire album to your computer at once and then watch them at ease. To download, right click on a link to a facebook photo album and select “Download Photo Album”

• Save Complete

As more and more sites use CSS, Firefox’s built-in complete save becomes increasingly less effective as it doesn’t support stylesheets. This extension fixes this, and saves the complete page, including all images and all stylesheets associated with the document, even imported stylesheets and images referenced in the stylesheet files.

It may not seem like much but the Windows Quick Shut Down application quickly terminates running processes, removes any USB devices and shuts down windows with impressive speed.

To make things easier it also has a windows taskbar button that can shut down or reboot your PC depending on if you single or double click it.

Windows Quick Shut Down is 100% free, very configurable and one of my top freeware applications on my PC. Using this utility has considerably speeded up the speed in which windows reboots and shuts down, I dont think I could use windows without it anymore!

You can download the free tool to let you shut down windows quickly Here!

The update is music to gamers ears as it takes a users stats and stores them remotely, allowing people to goto any location, be it an internet cafe or a friends house and play with their own profile and settings.

Valve was initially condemed by gamers due to its copywrite management systems implimented to prevent piracy.  However after a rocky start, and with the help of the half life 2 realease, Valves Steam system proved to be a huge success, allowing the fast efficient downloading of games across the internet.

The newest update is a great addition to an already fantastic program.  By integrating a fantastic game management service and including stats, and roaming profile, the new system is something that thousands of gamers are eagerly awaiting.

First Things First.

In Windows there a fair number of programs that sit in the background and for most people will do absolutely nothing.  This includes things like Fax tools, Tablet PC Compatibility, UNIX Application Compatibility and the like.

These can easily be disabled by going to your control panel and clicking ‘Uninstall or Change a Program’.  In the Tasks Pane on the left you will see a text link called ‘Turn Windows Features On or Off’

This will bring up a list of basic windows programs that are automatically loaded with windows.  Disabling these can speed up both your Windows Vista Startup Time and Vista overall performance.

Once you have done this you can take a more in depth look at the programs starting with windows.  To do this click the start button and type services.msc

Here you will see a list of more detailed services on your computer, these can be harder to decipher, but most have good descriptions.  If you see something that you are not too sure of then you can usually find an answer by having a quick search on google for its program name.  In nearly all cases though you can disable things such as Windows Error Reporting, tablet PC Input, Remote Registry and Distributed Link Tracking Client.

Be careful what you disable however as there are some integral services that are required for Vista to run on these lists.  It is a good idea to keep track of what you disable so you can re-enable it if required!

Another good place to check for erroneous startup items is in MSConfig.  Again, you find this by clicking start and typing msconfig.  A box will come up (The same as in Windows XP)

To speed up your windows boot time here you can click on startup and remove any programs that you do not want loading automatically with windows.

Disabling these will not disable the program, it just means it will load when it is needed, not on Vista Startup.  This will greatly increase your loading speed.

Readyboost is the next feature you MUST look at to experience a much faster boot times for Vista.  Readyboost is a unique Vista feature that turns any USB flash device into ‘extra memory’.  While it will not be as fast or as effective as internal memory it will help speed up your computer at a relatively cheap price!

This will not only increase the speed windows loads but it will also increase the overall performance of your PC!

Laplink is a great little tool designed to ease the the transfer to a new PC by making an exact copy of your computer and moving it across onto your new system, allowing you to keep your settings, files and more without the tedious re-installing required when normally doing this.

If you want to enter the 25th anniversary of Laplink, get a free copy of Laplink and even Win a Free Laptop take a look Here!

But this post is not about CD DRM nor MP3 DRM.  It is about PC Games and Their Digital Rights Management Systems and WHY they are wrong.

Yesterday for instance I felt aq little nostalgic and went to play Rise of Legends.  I inserted the CD, pressed play and for my troubles was greeted with… nothing.

Three hours of browing support forums later I found that there was a fairly simple solution to my problem.  I merely had to reinstall windows and refrain from using any anti-virus software.  And the worst part is that the error I received was not caused by any part of the game itself, merely by its anti piracy measures.

And I am not the only person suffering, nor am is it the only game causing problems.  A Huge amount of Microsoft and Electronic Arts (EA) have become so obsessed with combating piracy that they are causing serious problems for gamers, causing a huge amount of them to boycott The games made by these manufacturers (I too am boycotting them, especially when they announced that two of EAs latest games would require you to insert the DVD every ten days and do an online authorisation or your account would be disabled, the fact they have even considered this is enough to make me stop buying their products)

So why do computer game manufacturers use these methods?

They think they are combating piracy.

To any computer games manufacturer out there let me point out several things.

Firstly, Anti-Piracy measures, inconvenience and annoy your regular gamer, in fact your CUSTOMER who you should be trying to please.

Secondly, Despite all your claims anti piracy measures are cracked within days of game release, so those that you are trying to prevent are actually suffering from less inconvenience than your customers.

Thirdly, As much as you like to, including money spent on DRM (USually tens of millions) should not be counted in the lost profits due to piracy scenarios.

Let me sum it up for you guys, more people are being driven to piracy by your measures than are drawn to it.  Hell the only way to get your games working sometimes is to download NO CD cracks, and once someone is introduced to this then downloading games is only a stones throw away.

Online Authorization for games is a mere inconvenience to gamers and easily circumnavigated by crackers.  It was something first used wide scale by Microsoft and was touted as making Windows XP uncrackable.  I think we all know how that turned out for them, Cracked before release i think the headlines stated.  Genius.

So what is my point?

I think DRM and anti piracy measures should be removed.

They hurt the customer base.

They cause next to no problems for Software Pirates.

They cause huge amounts of game errors.

They give companies huge amounts of bad publicity.
Sorry for the ramble but I am ever so slightly annoyed because I still want to play Rise of Legends but still cant due to a windows re-install and getting all my old programs back likely to take around one week.