How to obtain coordinate (latitude,longitude) using Google Maps

Knowing coordinate of a certain place can be quite useful to point to specific location. Google Maps offers a feature to obtain latitude and longitude of specific place instantaneously. 

To activate this feature, click Options in Google Maps page (gear icon in top right of Google Maps page) an choose Maps Labs. Scroll down and please enable LatLng Tooltip and LatLng Marker, then click Save changes to exit.
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Now, every time we press shift key on keyboard, mouse pointer will show coordinate (latitude, longitude) it currently points. From low altitude, Google Maps shows accuracy of latitude and longitude until five decimal digits. Right click - Drop LatLng Marker to mark certain location with its coordinate.

How to identify sound card model in your PC

Sometimes, we can't find anywhere CD driver of our PC motherboard contains drivers for sound card, LAN card, and VGA card. Usually, Windows XP is able to identify these card if it is not on-board (included in motherboard circuit). Any card inserted to PCI is usually recognized by Windows XP, but on-board cards (usually sound and VGA cards) are rarely recognized without 3rd party drivers.

To identify sound card, please look at a small IC chip located in bottom left of motherboard, it is so small so look carefully at what written on this chip (location within red boundary in the picture). It is a usual location for sound card circuit in motherboard. If your motherboard has sound card from Realtek, C-media, etc, its model is written right on the black surface of the chip. After that we can use Google to search and download its driver. There many available driver in internet, just pick the correct one!

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Download Youtube Video Using IDM (plus Firefox)

Videos posted in Youtube are not designed to be downloaded, they are to be watched online. But certain visitors prefer to download them as video files so they still are able to watch those videos even if there is no connection to internet. There are sites that offer links to those videos but they are often so crowded with visitors, make access slow or even fail.

We just need two applications, i.e. Mozilla Firefox (browser) and IDM (Internet Download Manager). Mozilla Firefox is available in Mozilla, it is a freeware application and IDM is available in its site, it is a shareware though.

After Firefox browser is readily installed, we just need to install IDM. Usually it is automatically integrated to Firefox. When restarting Firefox afterward, there is a notification that Firefox has added IDM extension. That's all. There will be IDM button above playing video when opening Youtube using Firefox (pictured) or the same button can also appear in bottom left of Firefox window. Just click this button and download starts instantly. Recent version of IDM is also integrated to Opera and Google Chrome.

How to choose a torrent file?

Bittorrent offers more choice to download anything, ranging from video, audio, ebook, etc., almost everything are available in sites tracking torrent files such as thepiratebay.org (this one is my favorite). From my experience, to choose a certain torrent file, we must consider several things first. As we have known all along, if we search certain video in bittorrent tracker as Pirate Bay, then there will be many torrents available for a video file we want. We must choose one of them carefully to get fast download and good quality files.

• First, try to choose a file with more seeder than other files, remember bittorrent logics that more downloader means faster download. Please consider comments on that file, usually good files receive positive comments. Be careful if there is comment about Trojan, bad quality file, and as such, try compare all of comments on that file and then conclude it afterward yourself. If we able to conclude wisely, then there is greater chance that we would get good torrent file resulting in faster download and good downloaded files.
• If you try to download video, try to look first to release date of home video of that movie, the release date of home video of a movie is available in IMDB or wikipedia. Good movie is always a good rip from released DVD or Blu-ray, so if a torrent file is claimed containing good movie file ripped from DVD before DVD or Blu-Ray release, it is almost absolutely to be fake, it can be a camera recording from a cinema, absolutely bad in audio and picture. Unless its uploader got a leaked video secretly from filmmaker.
• Generally, more seeder will cause faster download, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, I got slower torrent even if it had many seeders, I even got faster torrent even if there are less seeder than other torrent files. I didn’t know what the exact causes are, but I suspected that it also always depends on speed of seeder internet connection. If there are many seeders with slow connection, then considerably less seeder torrents with fast connection may surpass torrent files with more seeder.

There are no exact rules about how to choose a torrent files, we can conclude many rules for ourselves based on our own experience. It would be good too if we compare torrent files and then choose the best of them.
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Opera Turbo "The Minimalist"

The newest opera browser has minimalist interface, similar to Google Chrome, with main bar only showing tabs. Personally, I call this interface imitates Google Chrome. Turbo feature, now, is not a beta version again. It is included in every new Opera browser, to help user to speed up browsing in slow internet connection. Cookies problems are not an issues now when Turbo is on, so user can log to email, community sites, etc. without problems. Opera 10.51 is available here.

Solution for Opera Turbo Cookies Trouble

Using Opera Turbo once has a trouble with cookies, so a problem is encountered when a user tries to login to several sites, if these sites need Opera browser to switch on cookies, e.g. mail service, facebook, etc.

I don't encounter this problem again after I let Opera browser updated itself on-line (updating sign is shown in lower right corner window). after finishing update, there are not any problems with signing in to these sites. Of course it needed a bit long time, considering that I uses Turbo because of my slow connection. Remember that users only use Turbo if their connection is not fast enough. We would not need Turbo if we already have fast connection

Solving Cookies in Opera Turbo

Despite its usefulness in increasing performance of a browser in slow internet connection, Opera Turbo has one main disadvantage. Sometimes, cookies are not enabled even if browser setting has turn cookies on. So, user can not login to many sites that need cookies to access them. Checking email, login to certain web, etc. are impossible without turning on cookies.

The only one solution I know is close and open Opera window repeatedly until cookies is on. Cookies are on when user is able to log in to certain sites like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. To avoid typing ID and password repeatedly, do not log out before you close Opera window.

When we are ‘lucky’ and able to log in, avoid loging out before we close Opera browser, for example keep loging in to Facebook before we close Opera browser and shut down the PC. Later, when we use the PC again and open Opera Turbo, please type Facebook url. If we are automatically signing in, that means cookies are on. If not, please close browser, open, and then type Facebook’s url again until we can sign in without typing ID and password. This method is so simple, perhaps you do not need to read this to figure it out.

Bugs in Opera Turbo

Opera Turbo can be a solution in low speed connection, but it has some bugs. In certain condition these bugs are not comfortable for users who decide to use it to improve their speed in surfing.

The first bug is server overload (may be). There are times we can’t use Turbo at all in certain times, usually in several hours. It seems that in these hours many users use Turbo together, resulting in very low speed or even error. Users must wait until it turns to be normal again.

The second bug is cookies. Occasionally, even if browser has activated cookies, cookies don’t work at all when Turbo is active. This becomes a problem when users try to login to certain websites, in which need cookies to be activated in browser. The only solution is close and open Opera window several times until cookies turned active in Opera Turbo.

Opera Turbo still has other problem, especially when ISP is busy. The most notorious ones are broken interface and double interface of the same pages. These problems occur when your connection is in very low speed. In normal low speed, Opera Turbo can works very well, but it has tolerance only to certain range of low speed. So, if speed connection is too low, perhaps Opera Turbo is not a solution

BitTorrent: A Solution for faster download

Comparing to manual download, BitTorrent is incredible in particular things. In manual download, the process is getting slower when there are more users who download particular file together. In the contrary, using BitTorrent is faster when there are active more users downloading same files together.

Getting faster by adding more users is possible using BiTorrent because users don’t depend on single server. Users don’t download file on same source, but they are supporting each other. When a user has downloaded a part of particular file, he then uploads it to another user and next user do the same process in chain. Users are working together, so more users will result in more speeds. So, the term file sharing is more correct than download. See following animated image for more detailed process.

Usually I take BitTorrent files in The Pirate Bay and run them in Bittorrent client. I currently use a BitTorrent client, µtorrent, and it gives incredible speeds. This is a freeware and famous for its small size and stable performance.

Currently, BitTorrent is blamed for copyright infringement and becomes a medium to express anti-copyright movement. The Pirate Bay, a Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. was sued, accused facilitating infringement. By the way, I am not a supporter of copyright, so I just enjoy this BitTorrent.