Google Takeout - A Quick Way To Take Your Data With You

Google has just launched "Takeout." No this is not a fast food division but a fast data application. This new feature allows you to download everything that you have uploaded and inputted into Google applications. With Google Takeout you can download your contacts, Picasa photos, and your profile information all with a few clicks of a button.

This is a great new feature. It should hopefully help Google's new social network to gain the trust of it's users. It would allow them to download all of their personal information and then be able to close their account. This is a large benefit in comparison to Facebook. As we all know Facebook puts on an attitude that once you upload personal information and documents to Facebook server's; it's theirs and you are never getting it back. With Google Takeout you have the assurance that you can access all of the information you have shared and remove your Google identity from the Internet.

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iPhone and Android Binary Wallpaper

Someone recently requested that they would love to have the background of my blog on their phone as a wallpaper. Well since I have nothing better to do, here it is! You may download it for your iPhone device and your Android device!

Download

• Android (Mirror)
• iPhone (Mirror)
• Original (Mirror)

[Due to recent filesharing sites getting shut down these links have gone bad. I will be replacing them very soon, just bookmark this page and check back in a few days and I should have them updated by then. Thanks! 3-3-2012]

If any of these links go bad, I'm sure they will, just please leave me a comment, bookmark this page, and come back within 24 hours and I should have the link all fixed up! You can also contact me on Twitter and Facebook if you have any problems! Thanks!

Get An Invite To Google+

I just got invited to Google+ and now would like to share the love with all of you!

So if you would like an invite please like MyTeenTechBlog on Facebook or Twitter then complete the form below! Note: Please be sure to use the Google Form link at the bottom the this post to submit your e-mail. Please do not use the comments section for emails. Thanks!



Follow @MTTechBlog


Click here after following MyTeenTechBlog to submit your email.

Update: Google has closed invites for now. I will let you know if it re-opens. You may continue to submit emails using the form above and I will just add them later when they open it again.

Update Two: It appears that the invites are once again open. There may be a limit as to how many I can send but I will continue to share Google+ with everyone. So just follow the steps above and I will invite you to Google+!

DO NOT POST E-MAILS IN COMMENTS PLEASE. USE STEPS ABOVE! THANKS!

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Google Changes Their Look - New June 2011 Interface

Google has just updated their search engine and website design. They have made a few new changes to the homepage and the search results.

Before the change search results had the url under the result. Everything is was very simple and plain. Now they have a new theme with more color. The also have the URL directly under the title. In my opinion I like this new look much more!

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Google Launches Social Network - Google+

Google launched their new social networking addition to their website. It is called Google+. Although currently in invite only beta testing it still looks very interesting. This is the latest attempt on attacking the social networking buisness. Social networking is a largee part of society on the Internet and Google just said, "It's On."

Apple Sucks. Stupid iTouch needs to be restored.

For no reason my iTouch decides that it would be a good time to freeze up and make me redo the firmware. Great. I was just browsing in Safari and then the stupid device decided to turn off and reboot with the stupid "Connect to iTunes" screen.

So now I am sitting here waiting for the over sized bloatware to download. I also just realized that I have no recent back-ups of my iPod. These means that all of my settings, contacts, notes, and all my personal information is GONE. Thanks a lot Apple.

Ohh well, at least I just got a new smart phone running ANDROID! SCREW YOU iOS!

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Team Fortress 2 Is Now Free!

Team Fortress 2 Is Now Free In Steam! I actually have not played this game. I am not much of a gamer but I do enjoy playing around once and a while. I just heard that Team Fortress Two is now free so I am currently downloading a copy. Too bad it's like 8GB... AT&T really needs to provide some better Internet speeds where I live. Here is a video of the game that I found on YouTube! Looks like fun!

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LG Optimus V - Pre-Paid Virgin Mobile Android Smartphone Review

LG Optimus V

I recently purchased the Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V Android Smart phone. Overall I am enjoying it very much. It's a good solid smart phone. Especially considering that it's a pre-paid phone. I am under the age of 18 which means that I can not get a contract phone. Yes I know I could ask my parents but this is just easier and simpler for all of us.

 
So this phone is running Android 2.2 which, as my first Android device, is AMAZING! I have only owned it for about a week and I already know that it's a much better platform then iOS on my iPod Touch. It just has more customization. Also, it's Google, so you know it's good.

Dropbox Leaves Accounts Unsecured For Hours!

So on June 20th Dropbox made a little mistake. They unknowingly left some of their user account unsecured. This meant that for a few hours that day anyone could log onto someones account and all they would need to know is their email. They could log in with any password.

This bug was live on the Internet for four hours. That's a lot of time for personal accounts information to be at such a risk. It doesn't make sense how such a large and fast growing company can make such a serious mistake.

This is what Dropbox released on their blog.

Hi Dropboxers,
Yesterday we made a code update at 1:54pm Pacific time that introduced a bug affecting our authentication mechanism. We discovered this at 5:41pm and a fix was live at 5:46pm. A very small number of users (much less than 1 percent) logged in during that period, some of whom could have logged into an account without the correct password. As a precaution, we ended all logged in sessions.
We’re conducting a thorough investigation of related activity to understand whether any accounts were improperly accessed. If we identify any specific instances of unusual activity, we’ll immediately notify the account owner. If you’re concerned about any activity that has occurred in your account, you can contact us at support@dropbox.com.
This should never have happened. We are scrutinizing our controls and we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again.
-Arash

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New Domain Names! ICANN allows the purchase of custom top level domains

ICANN, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Which manages the Internets top level domains, has released news that they will be alllowing the purchase of custom top level domains. For those of you that don;t know what a top level domain is, it's the few letters that follow the url and the "." - for example ".com" ".org" ".gov"

At the moment ICANN regulates the TLD's that can be used. They are the ones you see every day. Now they are going to allow companies to purchase their own top level domain. So let's say "money" bank wanted a new domain name. They could purchase money.bank and when people went to money.bank in their web browser they would be able to visit the company's website.

This is an interesting idea but it's just going to lead to more confusion on the Internet. Sometimes it's already hard to remember if a website is going to be website.com - website.org - website.us - website.ly - website.info - you get the idea.

The thing that should keep the average person from buying a bunch of custom top level domains is that ICANN is going to put a fee on them. Right now a .com domain can be purchased for under $20 a year. Well if you wanted a custom TLD you would have to dish out an extra $185,000 as an evaluation fee. And then you will have to pay a renewal fee every year in the 200,000 dollar range.

Fortunately this should reduce the amount of spam that is put onto the new TLD's. Without these large fee's the Internet would be an even larger mess.

What do you think? If you had the money what domain would you buy? I would want a ".matrix" domain! :)

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How to hide updates from the App Store on iPhone and iPod Touch

I have a jailbroken device and sometimes there are updates that I just don't want to install. To fix this I found this little tool from Cydia.

The tool is called "Update Hider" and it's available in the default Cydia repositories. Just do a search for it and you will be able to download this amazing tool!

Update Hider from Cydia

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How to Install Custom Firmware CFW on your Sony PSP - Works With All Firmware!

Hello everyone! I spent many hours the other day trying to figure this out. Now that I know exactly how to do it I have composed this guide to show you how you can install custom firmware onto your PSP.

In this guide you will use a Pandora Battery and a Magic Memory Stick to install custom firmware onto your PSP. The Magic Memory Stick can be made using any memory stick you have that is at least 100MB. (I would recommended using a 4GB SanDisk because that's the one I used.) The Pandora Battery you will have to buy. There are guides online showing how you can make your own Pandora Battery out of a regular battery but that still require an additional battery that you may have to buy and once you convert it into a Pandora Battery you can't go back. The Pandora Battery that I ordered only cost about $8 with free shipping and it has a switch so that I can use it as a Pandora Battery and as a regular battery.

OK, So let's get started!

Apple Sued by iCloud because of iCloud

Apple's iCloud Logo

So you may have already heard about Apple's new "iCloud" that was announced a few weeks ago. To sum it up it was a massive online storage idea. Well now a company that has trademarked the iCloud title is suing Apple for trademark infringement.

iCloud Communications Logo

iCloud Communications is stating that everyone will now relate iCloud to Apple and not to their company which will greatly hurt their business. So iCloud Communications has asked apple to destroy

"all labels, signs, prints, insignia, letterhead, brochures, business cards, invoices and any other written or recorded material or advertisements" that use the iCloud name.

So we will see how this turns out. Apple is always stealing, but shouldn't iCloud Communications have know that putting "i" in front of their name would cause almost everyone to instantly think about Apple? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Installous Is Down! June 2011

I am not sure on the exact details but it sounds like many people are having this problem. I did a Twitter search for "Installous" and it sounds like many people are having the same problem. It's just probably some server downtime. They will hopefully be back soon.

I also checked out their website and that's not working either. Cydia also says that it can not reach the Installous website either. Check back to this post later to find out when Installous is back online. I will post updated to this blog, My Twitter, and My Facebook page.

UPDATE: Installous is still down as of June 16 at 3 PM EDT, 4 PM MDT, 5PM CDT, 6 PM EDT. I have not been able to find anymore information as to what is going on other then many other people are also having the same problem. Remember, follow My Twitter, My Facebook, and this blog for updates!

UPDATE  2: Installous IS BACK! Their website and app are now working as of 5:30 PM CDT

Pandora goes public!

This really doesn't apply to me but i thought that it was Interesting that Pandora thought that it was time to go public. They now have a stock that you can buy shares of.

The Pandora company has really become popular. I wonder what kind of effect it will have on the over the air radio. Almost everyone has a smartphone with some kind of Internet connection. So instead of running up the radio they can just launch Pandora and get music catered for them.

On the subject of listing to Pandora while in your car, know what would be cool? If more cards started to just have Pandora built in. You have your FM1, FM2, and AM buttons on the radio; well now they should start to include a Pandora button. That would be cool!

Anyway, if you would like to check out the Pandora stocks their stock symbol on the NYSE is "P". You can check them out on Google Finance.

7-ZIP The Best Open Source Archive Manager!

Today I bring to you 7-Zip! I recently, about a month ago, started to use 7-Zip as my archive manager. I am always downloading ".RAR" ".ZIP" ".GZ" ".TAR" ".ETC" and I use to have a program for just about each of those. Now I use 7-Zip. It allows me to manage all of those different types of file archives from one piece of software.

What's interesting about 7-Zip is that it doesn't really have a GUI or a program launcher. It has a file manager but that isn't very effective. What it does have is a right click or shell menu. I can right click on anything and send it to an archive! I love it!

So if you need a good free open source archive manager I would recommended that you take a look into 7-Zip! If you want to grab a copy right now you can use the links below!

Download 7-ZIP

• 7-ZIP 32bit (Mirror)
• 7-ZIP 64bit (Mirror)

Installed Custom Firmware CFW on my PSP!

So I have had this old PSP that I repaired a few months ago. It had a broken screen and a scratched up housing so I replaced the screen and the housing and now it looks like new. It's been sitting on a shelf just collecting dust so I decided that it might be fun to put CFW or Custom Firmware on it.

So I ordered a Pandora battery online for about five bucks and it arrived the other day. It was a cool battery. I read how you could have made your own Pandora battery but that would have still required me to purchase an additional battery so buying a pre-built Pandora battery was the way to go. It also had some cool features. It has a battery indicator on it and it also has a switch so you can actually use it as a regular battery.

Anyway... I got it all downgraded to firmware version 5.00 and installed the CFW! I might make a guide later on explaining how I did this. If you want to know when that guide is published just submit your email in the top right sidebar and you will be notified of any new posts!

Have a great day! :)

Free Angry Birds Game for your computer!

Enjoy playing Angry Birds? I know that I do! It's a fun addictive game! Well now I have a way to play Angry Birds on your computer for free!

Just go to http://chrome.angrybirds.com

The only catch is that you MUST you Chrome web browser. (UPDATE! I just played using Firefox 4!)

Enjoy! If you have any questions leave then in the comments!

AT&T Wifi at Grant Part for Chicago Blues Fest!

So I'm currently the Chicago Blues Fest on my iTouch. I noticed that the park is heated up with a blanket of wifi. The only problem is that the coverage isn't the best. Right now I am in the main park and I am getting full bars and achieving a great 1.5 Mbps!

It's nice that AT&T provides this in Grant Park. I just wish they did a better job heating up the entire park...

Location:Chicago, Grant Park

Setting Up A Primary Domain Controller PDC with Linux eBox

Setting up a Primary Domain Controller couldn't be easier! I was looking for a way to be able to have one logon with the same settings and shared files and folders. I thought that it would be fun to achieve this through a small domain controller that would allow me to log onto a domain vs. a local computer.

Now I could have done this with a windows server but I just don't had the money for that. Also you have to pay a hole lot more if you want anymore the like five clients.

So I researched and found a free open source alternative. It was called eBox, it goes by a different name now but I though eBox was easier to remember.

eBox is basically like a Windows server. Everything is wizard and GUI based. The cool thing is that it runs on a stripped down version of Ubuntu and it's all administered trough a web browser.

So I installed, on VMWare, and chose to set up and office environment server. This allowed mento run a mail server and a PDC server. It now works like a charm. (I hope to later post a how to guide on setting up an eBox server. Just subscribe to email updates in the top right hand margin to be notified of future posts!)

So if you need an easy to configure free alternative to Windows server I would highly recommend an eBox server.

Done With Finals!

I have officially ended my Sophomore year of high school. I just finished my consumers education final with about 50 minutes left. (They don't let you leave early....) The school also decided that it would be a bright idea to turn of the guest wifi account. At least my friend has a new Android phone that he can create a hotspot with!!!

Did I actually brick an iTouch 4th Generation?

Many people jump to the conclusion that they have bricked something and it will never work again. This is because they usually do not have the technological knowledge.

Wikipedia puts it as "In the strictest sense of the term, bricking must imply that software error has rendered the device completely unrecoverable without some hardware replacement"

That states that "bricking" a device means that it will most likely never work again. Most of the time when something goes wrong you can just reset it. That was not the solution with my friends iTouch.

I went to jailbreak it for his as a favor. I have done this to my third generation using GreenPosi0n so I thought that it probably wouldn't be any harder to do with his. I double checked that GreenPosi0n supported the firmware on the iTouch and then I went to jailbreak. I plugged in, entered DFU mode, and clicked Jailbreak. It worked for a while and loaded some code. After about two minutes the program said that the device had been successfully jail broken. I unplugged the device, which had nothing on the screen, from the computer and tried to turn it on. It wouldn't boot.

I was like, ok something went wrong. Restore and try again. I plugged into iTunes to do a full restore. The strange thing was that the device was already in DFU mode. So just to be sure nothing was wrong I help down home and power to completely turn off the device. I then plugged it back into iTunes and again, it was stuck in DFU mode. I was worried. This didn't seen right. 

I just went ahead and let iTunes do its thing, restore the iTouch. Once the restore had completed iTunes said that the device would reboot. The device did but one again iTunes reported it as in DFU mode and nothing would display on the iPods screen.

I went and tried just about every other trick in the book to get the thing fixed, TinyUmbrella recovery fix, etc; but nothing worked. I believed that I had actually bricked the iPod. I asked around on the Internet about what I should do next and they all said that I should try to take it to Apple and get it fixed. I wasn't sure if they would even look at it due to the jail-breaking.

I just gave it back to my friend and told him the situation. He said that he would try to bring it to Apple to see if they could do anything to fix it. I hope that he can get it fixed. It has been a week and I have still not heard from him.

What's the moral of the story here? Apple sucks. XD

Apple's new iCloud: Nothing new...

I just watched a news special on the new Apple iCloud on Fox news. All I have to say is WTF... This is nothing new, only because Apple released it has it become big news. Has anyone used box.net? I have. They have automatic sync with your computer and even have an iTouch, iPad, iEverything app.

There are a large number of ways to do this. I don't think that Apple name should mean that you are going to get anything good.

What happens when Apple crashes?

I have been using Orb to stream all of my music from my media server to my mobile devices when I'm on the go. What I like about this is that one, it's free. I don't have to pay Apple extra money to have my ripped disks with me on the go. Two, it's in my cloud; not Apple's. One thing that I don't like with this idea is that all of your data is stored on Apple servers. That can't be good... I don't want all of my personal files scattered about the Internet and all over data centers located all around the world. I want to know exactly where every copy of every one of my files is. With the iCloud there can't be any real security.

I don't think that Apple has any idea what they are getting into. Most likely it will just be another stupid thing all the noobs want right away. Yet again, I understand that not everyone is as computer literate as I am. Still, don't fall for Apple's trickery, it's all a joke.

For more updates about Apple's iCould be sure to "Like" our Facebook page!

Sony got hacked. AGAIN.

It seems just like a few days ago Sony had to shut down their entire PSN network due to hackers breaking in. Now they haven't gone as far as shutting down PSN but that have reported that even more credit and personal information was found by hackers. Who the hell is running the network at Sony? Whoever it is will most likely be out of a job soon...

So supposedly it was a group called Lulzsec thought that hacking into Sony's network once again would show that Sony itself is a bad company.

Some people say that even government emails and passwords were stolen in the attacks. Emails were found that had an extension of .gov or .mil that were using the play station network.

Also Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook was able to find the list of emails that were stolen and was able to secure all of the corresponding Facebook accounts. So for once Mark seems to care about someone other then himself! XD

Ohh well, hopefully Sony and clean this all up again. Maybe it's time to find a new network admin. *Raises Hand*

Free Computer Technology Magazine

A Free Computer Technology Magazine is available to you! Have you ever thought that it would be nice to receive a magazine in the mail at no cost that has a large amount of tech stuff in it? I recently started to subscribe to CPU or Computer Power user magazine. It's a great free magazine. I first found out about it by picking up a free copy at the local CompUSA store. Then I thought about checking out their website and they had all of the issues online in digital format. I thought that that was amazing, that I realized that I could get a full free copy sent to my house! So now for the bast 5 months I have been receiving a free monthly issue! So just head over to their website and click register! Then you will be able to select whether you would like a digital copy or a print copy sent to you every month!

How to find out what type of RAM you have in your computer!

My number one recommended place to find the type of RAM that your computer needs would be the original manual for your computer or motherboard. Now I understand that most of us probably have no clue where we last left our manuals. That is why today I am sharing with you this neat little program called System Information for Windows or SIW for short.

This program is a free download for non-commercial use. It will show you a lot of different useful information about your computer. It will also show you what type of RAM you have installed. Just scroll down to the Memory section in the left pane and it will tell you all of the information it can find about your memory.

System Information for Windows - Scan you computers hardware, memory, etc.

Download SIW System Information for Windows


Option Two

If for some reason the software does not work, it should, you can give this online scanner a try. Now I would highly recommended using the SIW software first but you may also want to give this site a try. It will scan your computer for the type of memory through a web browser.