How to avoid maximum download limits from download websites such as MegaUpload

If you are like me and spend a large portion of time trawling through Internet forums to download the latest software, games, music, tv shows or pretty much anything in general, you will be quite familiar with the commonly used download websites such as MegaUpload and Rapidshare.  You will also note that if you are a big time user of these sites like I am, unless you buy a membership, you will hit your limit of downloads quite quickly, as they usually only allow you to download one file every 90 minutes or something to that effect.  The way that these sites do this is to track your IP address and limit its use on the website.

I have found that there is a very simple way to get a round this which doesn’t take too much effort.

1 – Go to “Start > Run”  or on your keyboard press the Windows key and the R key at the same time.  This will bring up the Run window.
2 – In the Open textbox, simply type cmd and hit enter on your keyboard, this will then open up the Command Prompt window.
3 – In the command prompt type the following 
                           ipconfig /release
    This disconnects your network adapter.  (there is a space between the ipconfig and the forward slash)
4 – Now type the following
                         ipconfig /renew
   This now renews your IP address.  (again, there is a space between the ipconfig and the forward slash)

Give it a few seconds for your computer to reconnect to the Internet and you will be back up and running with a brand new IP address that the Download sites will think is a new computer and therefore not restrict your use!

Do this every time you want to download a new file.

How to keep battery life on your iPhone 3G

In a previous blog of mine, I complained about the battery life of the iPhone 3G in comparison to the original iPhone, and I have since discovered a way to improve the battery life quite considerably after having been on holiday to the South of France on my own.  While on holiday, I had no need for data roaming of any sorts, so i turned off that feature along with the 3G ability and also the Wi-Fi ability.

One of the days I was out, I managed to listen to music for about 6 hours, then watched 2 episodes of Lost before I really needed to plug it in to charge it up a little to watch the 3rd episode!  It would appear that having your Wi-Fi active even if your not connected to a network really seems to nail the battery… along with the 3G capability.

If you don’t need them, turn them off and only turn them on when you genuinely need either of those abilities because you will notice a significant difference in your battery life, and if you are like me and use your iPhone as more of an iPod than a phone, you will want as much battery life as you can get for listening to music!

Turning off these capabilities is very easy, and is simply done through the Settings menu.  I wouldn’t bother turning off Data Roaming unless you are abroad… I just turned that off so I don’t feel the expensive wrath of my supplier!
To turn off Wi-Fi, simply go to settings, and then Wi-Fi and flick the slider to the ‘Off’ Position.
To turn off 3G capabilites, go to the settings menu, and then to “General”… from there, you need to click “Network”.  The first selection available within this submenu is “Enable 3G” … simply make sure this is set to “Off” and that is it…  hopefully this will help out considerably with increasing your battery life.

How to make an iPhone ringtone for free

Had an iPhone for ages now, and only just figured out how to actually get my own custom ringtones on to the phone for text messages, phonecalls and also alarms, without having to buy the song off iTunes twice.

1. Locate the song that you want to use in Windows Explorer and just make a copy of it simply by copying and pasting it in the same folder it’s already in.  I chose to rename it to ‘songname – ringtone.mp3′ so i could try and distinguish between it and the real song in iTunes.

2. Now open iTunes and go to File and Import, then locate that duplicate file you just created and import it.  Then go in to your iTunes library and listen to it… write down the time you want the ringtone to kick in at and the time you’d like it to end… it can’t last any longer than 40 seconds thought from what I’ve read.

3.  Once you’ve written down the times, right click on the song and “Get Info”, then click on options.  There are then Start and Stop time parameters.  Enter the two times you wrote down in the previous step and click ok.

4.  Now right click on that song and go to “Convert Selection to AAC”.  This will then drop a new file into your music folder called songname – ringtone.m4a … go find it and rename it to songame – ringtone.m4r
(If you can’t see the file extensions, go to “Tools > Folder Options > View > Hide Extensions for known file types”)

5.  Simply go back in to iTunes and import that file in to iTunes and it will go into the Ringtones subfolder.
From here, you need to click on the iPhone icon on the left and then click “Manually Manage…”
Simply drag & drop it on to the iPhone and it will then become available in your ringtone menu and also in alarm menus

The iPhone 3G… not that impressed

So I get my original iPhone wet and have to claim for a new one on the insurance policy I took out on my phone… it takes a while because o2‘s customer service is shoddy, but that’s not the point.

When I first got my original iPhone, I was in love with it… I didn’t put it down, I didn’t go anywhere without it because of how versatile it was and how good the battery life was.  Now when I call up o2 to find out what’s going on with my new iPhone they tell me, they no longer deal with the original non-3G version and that I’ve got to have the 3G version.  I get it through the post (eventually) and yeah, it looks nice, although I did prefer the brushed metal on the back of the original as opposed to this crappy black plastic that looks like it’ll scratch at the first opportunity.  The first thing I notice after a few days of having this marvellous piece of kit is that the battery life is craptacular in comparison to the original iPhone!

My old iPhone, I went to Latvia with, and managed to get away with having it on all weekend without charging it (and that was with watching an Episode of Lost on the flight out), whereas, this past weekend, I take a 4 hour trip down to Southampton to visit family, and watch Dodgeball which I downloaded from the Rental Films on iTunes.  I finish watching the film and find that I’ve only got about half the battery left (and I charged it the night before as well!)
On the return journey, I listened to music all the way home, so like I said, about a 4 hour journey… I ended up with about 30% battery life by the time I got home and had to charge it again…  granted I’d sent a few e-mails and checked the GPS Maps a few times to see how far away from home I was, but still that shouldn’t nail the battery quite that much!

The other thing that I’ve noticed quite a bit is reliability… my original iPhone never crashed… ever… and I had jailbroken it and installed ZiPhone for all the nice apps before the App Store was released, and nothing ever went wrong… since I’ve had the new 3G version, I’ve already lost count of how many times it’s crashed.  Last night, flicking through my Coverflow albums, it crashed on me twice in the space of about 4 minutes, then driving home last night from a friends house, it was half was through playing a song and it just cut out and went back to the home screen.  Talking of which, my iTrip no longer charges my iPhone either which is rather annoying, because I can’t go on a long journey listening to music quite so freely because it hammers the battery so much again!

Overall I’m not impressed… I’d rather have my old iPhone back as it was the best and most reliable phone I’ve ever had.  Granted this is still an excellent piece of kit, and I wouldn’t change it for anything (other than the original iPhone), but I think that some things have just been overlooked before releasing it to be honest.

Stay tuned, as I will be back with a “How to make an iPhone Ringtone Tutorial”