Lenovo recently launched their new IdeaCentre A600 desktop, and I was one of the few invited to try it out first hand.

As you can see in the image to the right, the A600 is an absolute beauty. The A600 is not aimed at the regular desktop user, but at the high-end user who wants a sexy PC that can be kept in the living room and used as a regular HDTV as well. As a direct competition to the Apple iMac range, the Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 offers a whole lot of new features that are currently not available in any other competitive desktop offering. The entire package consists only of four units — a 21.5″ Full High Definition (HD at 1080p, 1920×1080) LCD monitor, a wireless optical mouse with on-the-fly DPI change capability, a super-sleek keyboard that also has a trackpad (the ones seen on notebooks), and a unique remote control with some amazing features (more on that later).

The 21.5″ Full HD display is an amazing monitor with beautiful representation of contrast ratios and rich colour. The display also has a feature where it emits a sound warning the user that he is sitting too close to the display! The display also has touch controls that are built into it. Besides that, it has got everything that you find on any other monitor.

If you were wondering where the “CPU” or cabinet is and why it’s not in the picture shown, that’s because there isn’t any! As I said before, the A600 is a direct competitor to the Apple iMac range that has the whole package built into the monitor. This stunning beauty has everything that it needs to run built into the back of the 21.5″ display, and yet, it still measures an astounding 1″ at its thinnest, and a cool 2.2″ at it’s thickest!

The A600 does come with a hybrid analog and digital TV Tuner. How does the idea of you watching your favourite sport in your room, and the next hour your wife watching her cooking show in the kitchen, sound to you? I wasn’t sure of labelling this as a desktop first, because the A600 can be picked up in one hand and taken off to another room or house! In spite of it having everything in the display, the A600 is quite light weight and completely portable. It belongs to a category that’s neither a desktop nor a laptop!

Wait, don’t think that the best part about the A600 is over, because the remote control bundled with it makes for a whole new series of “talk”. The sleek 4-in-1 remote control can be used to make Skype calls over VoIP! The remote can also be used as a wireless mouse that’s either controlled by the buttons present on it, or by just moving it up and down in the air! That’s right, move the remote up and the mouse pointer moves up, and so on. But wait, it also features a ‘motion sensor’ with which you can use the remote to play games on the A600, just like how you do on the Nintendo Wii. Tennis anyone? Did I mention it can also be used as a simple remote control to control Windows Media Centre? =)

Lenovo has not forgotten the audiophiles among us. They’ve included a decent 2.1 channel Dolby-certified home theater system that can R.O.C.K the house. =)

Most would probably say that Lenovo must have sacrificed on the performance to achieve such a sleek design, but NO! The A600 features a 2GHz Intel Core2 Duo T6400 Processor, 640GB of hard disk space, an ATI Radeon graphics card with DX10 support, and — wait for it — 2GB of DDR3 memory! How’s that for blasting your way through Crysis?

Lenovo has also added their VeriFace application that allows you to use your facial image as the password to the A600. A one-touch recovery system that features Norton Antivirus is also present. This allows you to backup, recover, and/or perform antivirus scans without having to boot into Windows. In addition, around 6 USB ports, a Firewire port, 802.11n wireless networking, and a 6-in-1 media card reader are also part of the package.

The Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 costs Rs. 69,500/- (inclusive of all taxes) in India. A very good deal.

Michael Myers returns to Haddonfield to finish what he started in the 2007 remake. Watch the Teaser Trailer of Halloween 2 (H2), with the movie releasing in August 2009.

Wanted to check if a particular Twitter user was following you or any other user? Here’s how. My friend Lakshman Prasad, also known as @scorpion032, has written a small application that checks whether a given user is following another specified user.

The application, hosted over at Appspot, allows you to specify a Twitter username and check if that user is following another user that you specify. Check the following screenshot to understand better.

Twitter-Follow @Appspot.

If you’re looking for a light weight calendar with an integrated to-do application that’s free, Rainlendar 2 is probably the best choice.

The application takes a little over 25MB of memory, fully loaded, and sits anywhere you want on the desktop with a very pretty transparent interface. Rainlendar can list all the events for the day in a neat list, and can also list all of your To-Do notes as well. Check out the screenshot below.

The days marked with a star indicate an event or activity on that day. There’s an option to keep an alarm for the event, which can go off a little while before the actual start of the event. Rainlendar can also contain more than one calendars, for example for your personal and business lives. You can assign categories to events, such as ‘Birthday’ or ‘Anniversary’ which means that the event will recur every year.

The pro version of the software has the ability to sync with Google Calendars. A very handy feature. For me, the best feature in the pro version is the ability to show Outlook calendar events, since I sync all my devices with Outlook. Makes me contemplate buying the pro version, but the EUR 9.95 tag is a little too much in my opinion.

Download Rainlendar 2 for free. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Tired of Twittering? Or too lazy to write a 140-character tweet? Hey, don’t worry, you’re not alone. There’s now a dedicated website setup to generate random status messages that you can use as not only tweets, but as Instant Messenger status messages as well.

Social Status Generator is a website which generates messages based on tags that you choose from their cloud. For example, check out the following status message generated for the tag “food”.

(Yes, I find it quite amusing that my display picture was incidentally of Stewie Griffin’s. The status message is quite like what he would say. Family Guy FTW!)

Why wait? Go generate some wacky status messages over at Social Status Generator.

Here’s something you don’t see everyday – a little devil of a software booting you out of your own computer, then demanding you to send a premium SMS to deactivate itself.

PandaLabs reports a newly discovered ransomware that locks the affected user’s PC, and demands a premium SMS sent in order to deactivate it.

The malware, Trj/SMSlock.A, doesn’t have any self-propagation functions and appears to be coming under the form of a typical fake codec that has been affecting users for over a week now. The message (in Russian) demands that the affected user sends an SMS with the pseudo-unique number to the given number in order to receive deactivation code.

If the prospect hasn’t scared you yet, the images surely will.

Google has finally launched a mobile-friendly version of Google Product Search. The new feature is currently available only to iPhone and Android users in the United States and United Kingdom.

A search for a product gives a ‘Shopping Results’ link within the search results page. Clicking on it will take you to the Product Search page that is specially formatted. Take a look.

Here’s a comparison of how the results look in Opera Mini and the iPhone/iPod Touch. Not that good on Opera Mini now, is it?

Recently, I changed my broadband plan to BSNL’s Home 500C. The advantage is of 2Mbps speeds and unlimited usage at night between 2am to 8am. Not many would want to stay awake at 2am to switch on the computer and start the downloads, not to mention (in some cases) rebooting the router or modem, and then turning off the router and computer before 8am. Here’s an easy method to automate the whole process of scheduling night unlimited downloads, right from restarting the router at 2am to switching off the computer at 8am. This is for people running Windows. I’m yet to check whether the same can be done on Linux.

Part 1: To Automatically Reboot The Router At 2.10 AM

1. Please make sure to install Firefox if you already haven’t. Not only is it the best browser, but we need it for this article.
   
2. Install it in C:\Software\Firefox. (choose “custom” while installing and give the directory I mentioned). This is for convenience. If not, don’t worry, we’ll do the required modifications later.
3. Download this file: [right-click link -> Save As..] Reboot.bat
4. Move it to C:\
5. Add a new Scheduled Task (learn how to here). When it asks you to choose a program, choose the “reboot.bat” file under C:\ that you just downloaded. Give it a name (say “reboot”), assign it to run everyday, specify the time (maybe 2.10am), enter your password (if any), and specify it to open the advanced tasks.
6. Under the “Start In” box, type: C:\Software\Firefox



7. Follow steps 5 and 6 to create ANOTHER task with the run time as 7.49 AM. This is more of a precaution than a necessity.

Part 2: To Automatically Shutdown The Computer Before 8 AM:

1. Create a new Scheduled Task, only this time do it by the File -> New method.
2. Rename it if you’d like, to maybe “shutdown”. Open it.
   Copy and paste the following into the RUN box:

   C:\WINDOWS\system32\shutdown.exe -s

   Copy and paste the following into the Start In box:

   C:\WINDOWS\system32

3. Set the password (if any).
4. Under the “Schedule” tab, change the time to 7.50 AM.

Additional Points

• Firefox HAS to be running prior to the 2 AM mark AND you need to be logged in to your router’s admin page (http://192.168.1.1). This is because Firefox has an annoying security feature where it asks you to confirm logging in to the site. If you know any work around to this, please leave a comment and you’ll get credit.
• Don’t forget to create a Scheduled Task for uTorrent to start! I’d suggest running it at 2.12 AM. Also, learn how to make uTorrent download only between 2am and 8am. So even if the computer fails to shutdown for some reason, uTorrent won’t download past the 8 AM mark.
• If you installed Firefox in it’s default directory, change the path in Part 1: Step 6 to C:\Progra~1\Mozilla or what ever it is. Also, edit the reboot.bat file (right-click -> edit) that you downloaded in Step 3 to highlight the necessary changes.
• The reboot.bat file contains the default password of most routers (ie. “admin” as username and password). If yours has a different username/password combination, don’t forget to edit the file. Example, admin:password instead of admin:admin.
• If Windows does not shutdown automatically because of an annoying “End Task” alert, you might want to read this article on how you can disable that.
• P.S. – I’ve been following this method for about 3 weeks now. It’s never failed. BUT, I am not to be held responsible if anything goes wrong, you get billed for excess usage, or ANY other incidence. This is just a guide, and is not definitive. Do so at your own risk. (I stayed up 3 nights to see if this works, and for me, it did work.)

A week ago I finally decided that it was time to jailbreak my iPod Touch 2G v2.2.1. Using redsn0w, I was able to jailbreak it in just under 10 minutes. I had Cydia up and running, downloading all the great new packages that aren’t available on the Apple App Store. However, after re-connecting my iPod to the computer, iTunes would not recognize my iPod.

A few searches online revealed nothing informative. Most of the sites suggested that iTunes be uninstalled and reinstalled. This is a real pain, taking up a lot of time. However, the iTunes Repair option was something that worked like a charm.

Open up Add/Remove Programs under the Windows Control Panel, and hit ‘Change’ for iTunes instead of ‘Uninstall’. Select the first option to “Repair” iTunes. Unplug your iPod/iPhone. The uninstaller should ask you to reboot. Do so. When Windows boots up again, plug your iPod in and iTunes should recognize it and pop-up automatically. This way, all your settings and library are still intact, and yet you have a new-ish installation of iTunes.

Be ahead of online criminals by using a free stand-alone software by AVG that scans a web link for malware real-time!

With AVG LinkScanner, scan a web site for potential harm even before you access it. AVG LinkScanner runs in background and scans the links as you browse the Internet, but you can also manually scan a link in the application before accessing it.

Malicious websites are ones that deliberately install malicious software on your computer, and hacked sites do just the same, only these are legitimate websites that have been compromised into infecting visitors. So there is no real way to know whether the website that you visit a dozen times a day is infected by just looking at it.

AVG puts up the following statistics on their site:

• 100,000-150,000 threats a day seen by AVG alone.
• Online criminals set up their own websites or poison legitimate ones (even just single web pages).
• 60% of all pages hosting web threats are poisoned for less than a day, making the threats difficult to catch unless they are viewed on the actual page in real-time. This makes AVG LinkScanner essential protection.
• One in eight web users will unknowingly come across a poisoned page at least once a month.

All basic settings have been pre-set, so most of the time you will not have to worry about anything – just let AVG work in the background and protect you without any effort on your part. Get the free application here. Available for Windows XP and Vista.