Convert Your Typing Skill into Money with Captcha.Trader

Happy New Year Everyone! By the time this post is out in public, most of the countries in Eastern Hemisphere are in 2012, while the rest of countries are still in 2011.

Let's this blog start off with a making money post. A lot of us have somehow, somewhere and sometime in our life have played or seen Typing game or Typing training software. Either a freeware or a paid game or Facebook game, they are not really fun anyway, well, it was fun at beginning, but somehow we get bored and never touch the game or software again, unlike Angry Birds which can be pick up after long but still feel excited for it. :)

The service (or a product??) that I want to introduce to you is Captcha.Trader.

Let's understand Captcha first. Captcha has been widely use in file-server services, to prevent machine/robot or automatic scripts being use to occupied all the download bandwidth. Captcha also being use on some website to prevent spam comments by robot/scripts.

Captcha.Trader can be use in JDownloader and MiPony to help to automatically resolve captcha. I will cover JDownloader and Mipony in future post(s). Captcha.Trader also available for Android, WP7 and iOS!

Since captcha need human eye to solve it, so Captcha.Trader need real people to solve the captcha for they customers. Here's how it work:
1. We open an account at Captcha.Trader.
2. We earn credits by solving captcha for Captcha.Trader. Captcha.Trader will give us the captcha and we type the answer into Captcha.Trader.
3. Captcha.Trader allow us to cash the credit.

100 Captcha.Trader credit is equivalent to 1 cent (US Dolar). You can choose to cash out by Amazon gift card (minimum $5), or Paypal (minimum $2.50, or AlertPay (minimum $1).
Even though the money is small, but here a calculation you can refer to:
1. Every captcha that Captcha.Trader send is around 20 to 30 seconds. Let's take 30 seconds as worst case.
2. Average users need 7 seconds to solve it. Let's take 10 seconds into calculation as worst case.
3. If a person work at home, in front of computer for 8 hours, he or she can key-in 720 captcha.
[ (8*60*60)/(30+10) = 720 ]
4. Usually one captcha worth 7 credits. So 5040 credits.
[ 720 * 7 = 5040 ]
5. 5000 credits is worth $0.50. Looks small but by doing that for 20 days only, we can get around $10.

Since we going to surf net and facebook-ing anyway, why not make use of the time to earn some extra money? Beside earning money, there is another good thing to have Captcha.Trader. I will write about it in future.

To sign up, go to link below:
Captcha.Trader.

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source: I wrote this!

Battle of the Gadgets

Today is the last day of 2011!
Now, before we go to face the 'End of The World year - 2012', there is a summary of battle of technologies and gadgets.

If you are old enough, you should have known these products or gadgets from somewhere or used these products or gadget before.

The infographic included:
Betamax vs VHS - both are dinosaurs now :P
Sega Genesis vs Super Nintendo - both are retired now
Laserdisc vs DVD - DVD still popular since BD still expensive
Nook vs Kindle - on going fight!
BD vs HD-DVD - BD won, but for how long since nowadays more and more people are moving to online streaming
PS3 vs Xbox360 vs Wii - on going fight!
Zune vs iPod - iPod won, most people at countries outside of US never ever see the Zune real product anyway.

Click on the image to see in full side.

Happy New Year!


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source: dailyinfographic.com

Play LEGO without buying LEGO

Excuse me? How to play LEGO without buying LEGO?
Imagination in my brain?
Not really, we are really able to play or design LEGO with need to buy the LEGO first.

Introducing LEGO Digital Designer.

The downloaded setup file size is about 140MB and installation need about 200MB only.

Here is the interface (from Lego website, I don't need to explain it again here, haha):


It will calculate how many of each type blocks that you need to build a Lego project, which is very convenient when you going to buy the real physical Lego to build the real Lego project.
It also include the Lego with micro computer, Lego Power Function, which make it a is a very good planning tool to plan for a Lego project, either huge or big or small.

Talking about Lego, I posted a few video showing Lego projects that people built using Lego:
How to waste 8mins on Tuesday
Build film projector with LEGO
Predict eclipses with LEGO
ARM that solves Rubik's Cube

To download this software, go this this link, choose either Windows or Mac OSX. Supported Windows version are Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
http://ldd.lego.com/download/default.aspx

And yes, it is absolutely free!


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pix source: LEGO website
video source: http://ldd.lego.com/getstarted/default.aspx

Making Intel Graphics more comfortable to see

If your laptop is the new Sandy Bridge platform and using Intel's integrated graphics, and if your eyes sometimes feels very tired after staring at laptop's monitor after a while, then you are on same situation like me.

In order to prolong the battery life, the default setting of the refresh rate on Intel Graphics is most likely is set at 40Hz only. This is a very good feature on Sandy Bridge platform to preserve power, my few months old Sandy Bridge HP laptop on single charge can last up to 7 to 8 hours on wired network, or 4 to 5 hours on WiFi [okay, okay, it should be longer, but I always open at least 15 Windows at same time, not including over 30 Chrome tabs :P ]

However if your eyes are sensitive like mine, 40Hz refresh rate would be more like a burden than convenient. I would rather bring along the charger than killing my eyes.

To make Intel Graphics more comfortable to see, here are few simple steps:
1. Open Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel (the top left icon in below picture) by double click on it.


2. Change the refresh rate from 40Hz to 60Hz. Save it as a new Display Profiles.


3. Repeat the step while the laptop on charging as well. My laptop has both on charging and on battery at 40Hz refresh rate, so I have to change the refresh rate and save the Display Profile for both.

Do note that changing power profile might change it back again to 40Hz again, use the above step to make your eye comfortable. :)


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source: I wrote this tutorial!

How to run Windows XP programs in Windows 7?

If you have programs (or we call them apps nowadays, thanks to Apple) that runs only on Windows XP and will not run on Windows 7 at all. Even you tried to execute the program by setting "Compatibility" (in properties) to run as Windows XP, the program will stubbornly not run at all. It is time to install a virtual PC on your Windows 7.

There are other methods  to allow you to run the native Windows XP program:
1. Install Windows XP and Windows 7, and make the PC dual boot - Windows XP and Windows 7 co-exist on same system. However this will create quite a messy files system and I am not sure will it works.
2. You can also install virtual box on Windows 7 and then install the Windows XP. However you will need the original setup CD of Windows XP. Who would ever keep the Windows XP setup CD?
3. Buy a second hand system that come with Windows XP. Or install Windows XP on the old system, but need the original Windows XP setup CD as well.

Microsoft is kind enough to provide this Windows XP virtual [read: MS is not always so generous, okay]. Here are what to do:
1. Go to the virtual pc website of MS
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx
2. Choose to download for Windows XP virtual pc.
3. The website will need to verify if your Windows 7 is a legitimate, you will need to allow the download and execute this file "WindowsActivationUpdate.exe". I have to use IE to do this, using Chrome to download and execute taking forever (Probably MS purposely make it that way?).
4. After verification, it will bring you to the actual download page. There are 4 steps to follow, first step is to save that web page or print it for reference. I skipped the first step and jump to step 2 to step 4. :P
5. There are 3 files to download:

1. Windows XP virtual PC (WindowsXPMode_N_en-us.exe) ~460MB.
2. Virtual PC update (Windows6.1-KB958559-x64-RefreshPkg.msu) ~16MB
3. WinXP virtual PC update (Windows6.1-KB977206-x64.msu) ~4MB

6. Install the files in order listed in step 5. It will ask to restart in every step, I just wait until all has been install.
7. After restart your PC, time to run Windows XP virtual PC for first time.
a. Start -> All Programs -> Windows Virtual PC -> Windows XP Mode
8. You will have to wait a while for the first time because it will install the Windows XP.
a. Key in a password for the Windows XP virtual PC when it ask for it. Not needed to be same with your Windows 7 password.
9. After Windows XP boot up in virtual PC, you will able to see this. Note the BlueStacks gadget next to it. :D


10. The C drive and D drive in this virtual PC is not the same one on your Windows 7. They are virtual disk on this virtual PC. However your actual disks on Windows 7 should be link as a network disk in the virtual PC.
11. Go ahead and install the programs that you want to use in Windows 7.

Things to note: there are no shutdown option in this virtual Windows XP. Click on "Ctrl+Alt+Del" on the virtual PC windows and select shutdown. Or course no hibernate for this Windows XP as well.

It took ~2 to 3GB of disk space from the Windows 7 system for the Windows XP virtual PC default installation, not including the additional software you going to install on the virtual PC.


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source: I wrote this!

How to embed PDF in blogger?

This should works for PDF and any document that uploaded or created in Google docs.
I posted this so that I can find this blogging tips easily next time when I want to embed another PDF or Google docs in my blog.

1. Make sure you are using "Edit HTML" mode when adding the code below (Otherwise, it will try to load the document in "Compose" mode as soon as you paste the code).
<iframe frameborder="0" height="75%" width="50%"
src="http://docs.google.com/gview?
a=v&amp;pid=explorer&amp;chrome=false&amp;api=true&amp;embedded=true&amp;srcid=
0B6E4pzOCFjPAMjA1MTFiNzQtOTZiYi00NTM4LWEzZDItMzcxOGI1NTRlNTIz"
width="100%"></iframe>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

2. Open the PDF or google documents at docs.google.com, copy the documents ID from the URL and replace with the ID in the code above (bold and purple font). It should be a bunch of numbers and letters starting at srcid= and ending with =en. Or between srcid= and double quote.

3. Adjust the height and width of the PDF or document you want to display in your blog. It can be in percentage or pixel. The example showed here is in percentage.
height="75%" width="50%"

4. Hit "PREVIEW" button to preview it to make sure it is in the size that you want. If not, go back to step 3 to edit the height and width.

I used this method to embed a PDF which is a ebook of this blog in previous post:
Publish your blog into PDF and Kindle and ePub


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source of this tips: http://www.google.ca/support/forum/p/Google+Docs/thread?tid=2e81a3ec8fc33480&hl=en

Batman (1966) in Lego

Lego is fun and it can be remake of every movie, video and songs. Here is Intro of Batman from 1966 using Lego. Have fun.



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source: youtube!