Red Alert 3 demo fast download

For all those patiently waiting for trying out Red Alert 3, why not get a taste whether it's worth it.

Get the demo of the Red Alert 3, that contains the tutorial, including intro to the dual nature of units and how to boss over your co-commander.

Plus it has two fully playable campaign from the retail game's campaigns, one from the Soviets and also the Allies. Along with these, it also has the full intro 7-min video included.

It's a pretty nice game, sprinkled with jokes and it is quite funny. The download's at 1.83 GBs, but this one supports download managers and so you can get high speeds. I got about 200 KBps on this one. Way better than others, like gamespot, which was crawling at about 16 KBps.

A part from the site     

" The single-player demo includes the entire 7-minute opening cinematic from the game, along with three of the game’s interactive tutorials and one campaign mission from both the Soviet and the Allied campaigns for a full-blown taste of Red Alert action:
Krasna-45: Circus of Treachery – The second mission of the Soviet campaign, players will immediately be introduced to battling the series’ newest faction, the Empire of the Rising Sun, escorting the Soviet’s commando Natasha to a launch facility, protecting her from the Imperial ambush division waiting to attack.


Heidelberg: The Famous Liberation – Players will then switch their attention over to the Allied cause, in the third mission in the Allied campaign, teaming up with an in-game Co-Commander to take out the Soviet’s powerful Iron Curtain and headquarters in Germany.

The demo gives gamers a great opportunity to try out Red Alert 3 before the game’s first major patch is released later this year. The upcoming update will include the WorldBuilder, the game’s map-making and mod tool and a community favorite, enhancements to AutoMatch for multiplayer, balance fixes and an easy-to-use de-authorization tool that will allow players to de-authorize previously authenticated machines that they no longer wish to play Red Alert 3 on, ultimately giving them the freedom to play on an unlimited number of computers. "

More info here.

Or you can skip all this and get to the direct download from the above mentioned site here. But do check out the site mentioned for the full listing of the features of the game

Contro Optical Drives from the Taskbar

This trick is for the lazy ones, like me :)

But it has other uses too. Too much pressing of the eject button could ruin it. And if you're like me, changing between 5 optical media in under half an hour, then the buttons will bless you for this. Along with this, you could just show off to your friends and be cool.

Now for this trick you need a software with which you can do more than just this trick. Get the software here.

After you get the software, start the 50KB exe and the program will start. No need to install. But I recommend that you put Tooler in the Program Files under it's own folder, so that there's no confusion. Then open the program, and do the following:

1. For shortcut location, select Desktop

2. For Function select, for each of your optical drives:

        a) Eject CD-ROM Tray

        b) Close CD-ROM Tray

3. For the Drive letter, put the appropriate drive letter

Like this:

After this, get the shortcuts to a separate folder for safe-keeping. Then right-click on the taskbar and click lock the taskbar, if it's already locked.

Right click the taskbar again, and select Toolbars -> New Toolbar... and navigate to the folder where you kept the newly created shortcuts, and select OK to confirm.

Move your mouse over the newly created toolbars doted vertical line until the pointer changes to a double-headed arrow. Drag the toolbar out and drop it off at the corner of the screen until it docks to the side. Then rightclick on the docked toolbar and select show text and show title to remove the text and title from the toolbar.

At this point, right click the shortcuts and click Properties and then change icons. Navigate to %SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll in the box that pops up and you'll get XP's icon repository. You can also use your own icon collection too. If you have a good icon, please do mention and I'll show it here, and I might use it too. ;)

Remember to choose icon that'll tell you what each shortcut will do. Then rightclick on it again and select rename and put in the proper sentences.

Then drag out the docked toolbar and place it on the taskbar and resize the toolbar until you are satisfied with it. After this, rightclick (this is the last time!!) and select Lock the Taskbar.

Now check your shortcut.

nJoy....

Red Alert Free Downloads

Welcome fellow commanders!

As yo have no doubts heard about the latest release of Red Alert 3. To celebrate this great release as well as the 13 years of giving us gems in the names of Command and Conquer, EA has decided to give off a full copy of Red Alert, the very first game, for free!

You can download the 2 disc in ISO format, along with the guides for installing on Vista and XP here. This might not be such a great news for new comers, but it has a high nostalgic value for the veterans of Red Alert series. As it's the first that started this series.

So if you're one of those persons who're nostalgic about it and would like to keep in your collection, a gem, then go on and download this. It's totally Legal. Hope you enjoy it.

Download Original Red Alert here.

All about Naruto

This one's for the Anime fans. Fans, like me, of the Anime Naruto.

Have you ever wondered what is the true power of the Sharingan is? Or who the parents of Naruto are? And so on.....

If you've ever wondered about these facts relating to this anime but couldn't find it, I'm sure you'd find it here. It not only covers the first Naruto, but also the second chronicle after 2 and a half years, known as Naruto Shippuuden. Every facts that's ever been revealed, or may be you can think of, it's there. Best of all it's a dedicated Wiki of Naruto, so if you think you can contribute to it, then you can do even that. There's even a community portal that you can use to ask questions and get answers. But be warned, there's lots of spoilers there.

So, go on and find those answers you're dying to find here: Narutopaedia

As for the uninitiated, Naruto is the story of a boy, who lost his parents when a vicious Nine-Tailed fox attacks his village. The village is saved only after the 4th Hokage (head Ninja, pronounecd: ho-ka-gay) seals the fox's spirit in the newly born Naruto. But the villagers live in fear of this very spirit, fearing that the boy is the monster thus levaing him alone. The serious chronicles his struggle with life to earn the respect of others and friends along the way, and of attaining his lifelong dream of being the Hokage. 

Naruto Shippuuden, chronicles his life, 2 and a half years after the events of Naruto. He has grown and all his friends have become chuunin or jounin, with Gara becoming the Kazekage. But it is only Naruto who is still the Genin in their age-group.

GMail Introduces New Themes

Google has introduced special themes for their E-Mail service Gmail. I got mine activated yesterday, but there were reports that not everybody has got the update. But by now, everybody has been given access to it.

The themes are really wonderful, and it just adds to the great services of GMail. Unlike other themes, these are Google themes, and thus the speciality that some of them changes with time or even weather. If the theme is changeable then it'll ask for your city location with a pop-up box, and will adjust the theme with that city's timing.

"In some cases, you can also customize by location. Some themes change during the day, and we use the location information you provide to correctly time these changes with your local sunrise, sunset, and/or weather. If you select one of these themes, you'll see a Country/Region drop-down menu appear."

You can read more about it at the official Google Blog.

Here's a screenshot:

Free Game Bundle Download

Free Game Bundle Sponsodered by

The U.S. Air Force

Well this is a rare thing that you won't come across everyday, or even once in a week. The U.S. Air Force is sponsoring 3 Games for free downloads. The Games are Area 51, The Suffering: Ties That Bind and Rise & Fall: Civilization at War.
You can download the games without any registration, and the games are for yours to keep and play forever.
No official deadlines are mentioned, so I don't know for certain for how long this offers going to be. So, just give it a try. You might like it. All the games are for PCs.
You can also read the Review of the games below:

1. Area 51
2. Rise & Fall: Civiliazation At War
3. The Suffering: Ties That Bind

Get the Game Bundle here.

Free ZoneAlarm Pro: Happy Birthday ZA

ZoneAlarm's offering FREE ZoneAlarm Pro with One-Year's License to celebrate the Birthday of their Firewall.
Hurry the offers only from 6 A.M. 18th November 2008 for 24 hours!!!!!!
For your free copy head over to http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/sum/index.html

Maximise your Game Budget

So, you've saved up a couple of cash and are ready to go out and buy a game for the holiday season?

But wait, what if you could buy 3 games using that money instead of just 1?

Sounds interesting? Then watch this video: Game Collector - Big Game Hunter

The games featured in this video have all got an 8+ points in GameSpot and so, you can rest assured that they're a good deal.

There are 10 Games in total and I'm sure that you'll be satisfied with your purchase. Just give it a try!

AMD Fusion for Gaming

Okay here’s another gem of software, directly from the stables of AMD. It’s been in its beta stage for a while, but nonetheless, it’s worth giving a try. For those of you people, who like to squeeze out every last bit of power from your machine for gaming, I give you AMD Fusion. It’s an ingenious product, and best of all it’s free!

I, for one, am among those people who turn off all the background apps and keep only the bare minimum running while gaming. But still there are plenty of services in Windows, as well as the processor that we are not aware of, or are not needed at all, while gaming. This is where Fusion comes in.

It’s a software that is designed to disable the various process that are run by windows and the CPU routinely, but are not needed at all while gaming. Like, for example, the process related to internet, or networking, or even indexing, is not needed when one is gaming. So, why not turn them off? After all that’d be a boost. Fusion simplifies the task by giving the user the freedom to do that all through just a simple, but awesome, interface at the click of a button. Then after gaming just turn Fusion off, and you’re back to the way you started before Fusion was turned on.

Now, coming to the mechanics of the software, it’s divided into two types of boosting: the Hardware and the Software, although you can mix up both of these to get your sweet performance point. The Hardware is further divided up into AMD Boost, AMD Overdrive (CPU), ATi Catalyst AutoTune (GPU) and Hard Drive Acceleration.

Now as the name suggests, the software parts are related to processes that are windows specific and specific to some software’s. Overall it’s very efficient and powerful. It even turned off the volume icon from the tray, along with the Anti-Virus and Firewall, when I selected all of the options available. So, beware, choose wisely here, if are going to use it for Multiplayer games.

Now for the Hardware part:
AMD Boost: It’s specific to AMD processors only. It turns off some of the processes that are built into the processor which are not needed when gaming. Hence, the freed CPU cycles can be better utilized for the game’s number crunching.

AMD Overdrive (CPU): As the name indicates, it needs you to install Overdrive before applying this. It tunes up the frequency, automatically. So, no need to panic, as it’ll go nowhere near the possible limit of the overclocking, but will do a decent and safe overclocking.

ATi Catalyst AutoTune (GPU): Again a specific to the AMD family, don’t try with nVidia’s hardware. It uses the Catalyst to automatically and intelligently overclock the GPU clocks.

Hard Drive Acceleration: It’s just as the name suggests. It’s the only part of the Hardware, which can be used without any specifics.

Now coming to the interface, I’ve got one word: Awesome. The minimalistic interface makes me feel like I’m running some kind of sci-fi software. There’s even sound to accompany the starting of the software. Very well thought out. You just click on the interface once, and it starts spinning while it applies the patches, and then the AMD sign glows green. After the gaming, click once again to start the spinning once again as it undo the patches. It recommended that you leave the mouse and keyboard when it does that. Then the AMD sign goes fade and everything stops, you’re good to go. The making of new profile or even existing in-built one’s are really easy. Although, you won’t be needing a new one, unless you are a little bit curious or you know what you’re doing. Just click Edit or New and select the patches you need applied, give a description and a name and save it. Check the Make default at the bottom to make it your default profile. There’s just one bug that I noticed. While in the profile management window, if you close the window, the app exits. You have to press the concentric circle thingy, to get make to the main interface.

This software really boosted my rigs performance by about 15-20% overall. And I did notice a frame rate increase in my games. But there have been complaints about people’s machine hanging. But a restart solves everything. It never messed up a single machine. As for me, even after using it for sometimes, I did not face any problem at all, not even a single hang.

All said and done, here’s the page of info over at AMDs, and you’ll get the thing for here.

Now enjoy some screenshot of the same below.

And here's a video of it in action (you'll find it at the page mentioned above too :), but anyways):

And my comments boxes are open, just drop by a line.

Devil May Cry 4 GamePlay, Mission 10 Boss Fight: A Must See

This one's a complete insanity. You just gotta see it to believe it.

A Fun Time With Legends: Tradewinds Legends

It was one of those days, when I was looking around for a decent game, which I could play. I was on the lookout for a good strategy or a tycoon type. It was on that day that I stumbled upon the game Trade Winds Legends.

I’ve never played any games from this series or have ever heard of it. But it was the genre of the game that attracted me. Its story line is that you’re a ship’s captain in the Arabian Nights era, and your aim is to discover the story of the character as you build up your fleet and earn unimaginable wealth and fight different Bosses along the way. Now, this may seem to be the standard fare of any given wealth, but I decided to give it a try. And believe me that was one of the best things I did till now.

Upon starting the game you have to choose your character, based on which, you’ll get a different storyline. There are characters ranging from a Widowed Bride out to take revenge to a mysterious Chinese woman. The story’s different depending on your character. Depending on the character, your starting conditions vary, some might have Big debts, but all of the character will start from a basic ship. The starting city will be your home base, and it’s from here that you get your main storyline missions. Also this is the only city that has all the commodities. The game play mechanic is pretty simple: You accept missions from the palace of the city, starting from your city, which in turns opens up other cities whose rulers, get to know you on carrying out the missions and thus eventually you get access to all the cities. Complete the missions and the helpful people will give you hint about your main quests and thus put you down the storyline. In between all these you have the option of trading the various commodities up for sale at the market and make a profit by buying low and selling high, so keep an eye out for falling prices. But beware there are some commodities that are considered contra-band and will be seized on being found at some ports. The trading is optional as you’ll get paid handsomely for the missions, but in order to build up a pretty strong fleet to keep the pirates from sinking you you’ll be needing lots of ships. And yes, some places are only accessible, only when your entire fleet consists of Air-Ships. Yes, you read it right, it also features air-ships and you get 3 choices in it.

Now coming to game play, the thing that’ll keep you latched onto this game is the great sense of humor. The dialogues in the game are, in one word, brilliant. They made me laugh quite loudly and it’s a nice addition to a game that might get repetitive, especially after running around the ports looking for a runaway.

The game is not from a big budget game company like Crytek and so don’t expect high quality 3d graphics that’d make your GPU cry. The graphics are decent and sharp. The ports are pretty nice-looking. The animations are very good, with the sliding in and moving out of the different menus. The sound effects are great for this game, giving you all the sounds that you’ll be expecting to hear from a sea-faring games.

So, if you’ve played the previous games then this games worth playing. But if you haven’t and are looking for a game, and like good jokes, then you won’t be disappointed with this one. I for one had to go back to play it multiple times for its great funny dialogues. And given it’s price, you can rest assured that it was a wise purchase.

Here's a screenshot of the action going on : 

You can find more screenshots and also the download link here.

AMD Live Explorer

Well here’s another reason for owners of AMD processors to be proud: The AMD Live Explorer. It’s a little utility that allows you to view your Music, Video, Pictures and TV collection in 3D! Not only that, but it also allows you to log onto the net and get your online TVs streamed onto your PC.

The effects are great with the media zooming in at you and starting to play. You can go full screen with the button at the top, or go back to the previous view, which will cause the media to play at the top right hand corner of the Explorer. In the video tab, the main focused video in the Live Explore Mode, starts playing so that you can preview it. But sadly, this happens without the sounds. But then again some people might want the preview to be this way. You also get a “live” search, where the media starts to lists it as you type in the search letters, much like the search feature of Vista. Very “Lively” indeed. And…oh yeah…it also have a tiled view, if you don’t want the 3D view, which can be switched with a single click.

Weighing at around 5MB, it’s a very light weight installer. But the program does a very good job of showing all the media. On my first run, it automatically detected my media, my songs and videos stored in a separate drive, automatically. It’s very easy to configure, all the things through the settings link located at the top right hand corner of the interface.

But all these things come with a catch. You need a pretty good processor to be able to pull this, a dual core is minimum, although a quad-core is recommended. And it’s also one of those things that only the users of Vista can enjoy, as it doesn’t support the earlier OSes. The official minimum Requirements are:

AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor 4000+
1GB DDR RAM
DirectX9 GPU (e.g. ATI X1200 or NVIDIA 6150)
Windows Vista®
10MB Free HDD space
Broadband connection to Internet

And the recommended:

AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor 5200+
2GB DDR2 RAM
AMD 580X chipset or NVIDIA nForce 500 chipset (AM2 socket)
DirectX10 GPU (ATI 2400HD or NVIDIA 8300)
Windows Vista® Ultimate or Home Premium
SATA2 7200 RPM HDD with 16+ MB cache and NCQ
TV Wonder™ 650 Combo PCI-E tuner
Wired, high speed connection to Internet

You can also run it on a Laptop, for which the requirements can be found at here.

Too bad there's no skins for the Explorer. It would've been a very good addition. Though there are separate plugins for it, available on the above mentioned page. Though I haven't tried them out yet, mainly due to technical reasons, I'll be trying them out pretty soon. But I would recommend the users of iTunes to go ahead and download the FusionTunes plugins to integrate their iTunes Library into the Explorer. Get it here.

As a recommendation, since this uses Windows Media Player for playback, ensure that you have the necessary codec (K-Lite Mega Codec Pack recommended) installed for being able to view all the media, specially the videos.

Before I leave it’s not that Intel users can’t use it, but it’s a software tailored and made by AMD. After all it’s just a software, and besides I didn’t have access to an Intel Core’d system.

And here are my screenshots:

The Download link's here. Just click Accept and your download'll start.