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February 3rd, 2010 by WordPlopThis very simple tutorial will show you how to change the battery in a first-generation iPod Nano. It should also work for other models in a general way, even though some steps and parts might be a bit different.
The bare minimum required tools for this job are:
- replacement battery
- scissors
- tape
- knife
Recommended tools are:
- replacement battery and prying tool
- soldering iron
- wire stripper or scissors
- utility knife (X-Acto)
- electrical tape
A note before you begin: this may damage your iPod. You may injure yourself in this process. This will void your warranty. We are not responsible for anything that happens as a result of you following these directions. Use your head.
The purpose of replacing the battery in your iPod Nano by yourself is to avoid the absurd costs of having Apple do it for you. They love to make loads of money replacing batteries, and refuse to implement user-replaceable batteries in their electronics, even though 99% of other MP3 players let you change the battery with the press of a button. Of course, the reason for replacing the battery in the first place is because it can’t hold a charge anymore. All batteries lose their charge over time and won’t recharge anymore. Follow the steps below to replace your iPod Nano first-generation battery. If you have any questions, ask in the comments below.
1. Buy a replacement battery
This should be very easy and inexpensive. If you go on eBay and search for “ipod nano 1st gen battery” you should see what you’re looking for. Make sure the battery you get is for the first generation Nano (or whichever iPod you are using). They are different in physical size and will not fit if you get the wrong version. You also want a higher capacity battery. The stock battery is 340mAh. eBay has batteries that are 400mAh. These will last significantly longer than the stock battery. This battery should cost you around $5 and most come with tools to help open your iPod. I cannot comment on brands of batteries, as most seem generic. Beware of the risk of fire, leakage, explosion, or any other risks that come with all batteries.
2. Pry apart your iPod
Before you take apart your iPod, discharge any static electricity from yourself by touching a metal object. Also, you should put it on Hold so you don’t accidentally turn it on while it’s open. Now.. The first gen iPod Nano is held together by plastic clips which are located on the inside of the case. To open your iPod, you just need to pry apart the plastic front from the chrome rear. You can use the tool provided with the battery, or a dull X-Acto knife (or anything similar). I found the plastic tool to be no better than using a knife. Either way, you might break pieces of plastic off the case and scratch it. As you can see in the photos, my iPod is in such a bad shape cosmetically that I absolutely didn’t care about getting it scratched. Take your time when you pry it open. It might take a while. You might need to use force.
3. Cut the wires
Very carefully pry the battery out of the iPod using your fingernails. Cut the three wires that connect your current battery to the circuit board. Cut as close to the battery as you can. Don’t worry, the extra wire won’t prevent the case from closing.
4. Strip the wires
You need to strip the wires that are connected to the circuit board, assuming the wires on your new battery came stripped from the factory. If you really don’t know what you’re doing, you need to cut the insulation off the wire, but leave the wire itself uncut. You can use a wire stripper, but due to the small size of the wire, I found it much easier to use scissors. Be careful not to rip the wires from the circuit board. If you still can’t figure out how to strip wires, watch a YouTube video or something.
5. Solder the wires
Now time to insert the new battery into the iPod and twist the wires together. Make sure to match the right colors to each other, and do not let any wires from the battery touch any part of the circuit board, or themselves. This will create a short and will fry your iPod. Now, if you don’t have a soldering iron and really don’t want to spend the $20 to buy one, you might be fine just leaving the wires twisted together for this step. However, this has a decent chance of resulting in a loose connection that might come apart for fractions of a second, cutting power to your iPod. Soldering is highly recommended. If you don’t know how, watch some YouTube videos and Google it to learn the proper technique.
6. Tape up the exposed wires
If you want to test your new battery and its connection at this point, you can plug your iPod into your computer. If you do this, be very, very careful not to let the exposed wires touch anything or short anything out.
Now you need to tape up the exposed connections. If you don’t have electrical tape, regular tape should work. Electrical tape is recommended. Wrap each exposed wire individually and make sure all parts are covered well. Then tape all three together to help with straightening them out and making them fit.
7. Put it back together
Make sure the wires are out of the way of the two connectors to the right. Push them as far left as possible, and make sure they are flat against the circuit board like in the photo above. Now carefully put the other half of the iPod Nano case on. Make sure the Hold switch on the iPod is lined up to the position you left it in. This might take some time if you don’t want to scratch your iPod. Be careful not to bend it too much, as it’s much easier to bend without the two sides connected. This might take some force. Just push the two together until the two sides clip onto each other all the way around. If it doesn’t work when you try to turn it on, the battery probably needs to be charged. Plug it into your computer and it should start charging as usual.
And that’s it, you should now have an iPod Nano with a brand new battery, for less than $5.
Apple Releases the iPad, and it’s Just an Oversized iPod Touch
January 27th, 2010 by WordPlop
Where can I even begin? Apple just announced their very own tablet PC. Called the iPad. Let’s start with the name – it’s absolutely terrible. And I’m not even complaining about the stupid “i” scheme. Even iTablet would have been better.
Moving on. This thing is just an oversized iPod Touch. Even the software is almost the same, just on a bigger screen. The screen is 9.7 inches, which is way too big to fit in your pocket, and way too small to type on with both hands. Of course there are no physical keys. And when you type, the giant on-screen keyboard blocks a huge amount of screen.
And then, how do you even type on it? It’s too heavy to hold with one hand and type with the other. You can’t put it on your lap because you won’t see the screen. You can’t put it on a table because you’ll have to look down over the iPad, which will hurt your neck, shoulders, back, etc. The only way you will comfortably be able to type on the iPad is through an external keyboard and a stand for the iPad to prop it up like a normal computer screen. And all of that costs a lot of money if you buy it from Apple.
The screen will get scratched. Where are you going to put the iPad? In your backpack or briefcase. It will get scratched unless you get a cover for it, or protect it very very well. And a cover costs a lot of money coming from Apple.
Speaking of money, the iPad starts at $499. With only 16GB of flash storage. And no real operating system, unless you consider a slightly adjusted cell phone OS an operating system suited for a netbook or laptop. And that also means there’s no flash support. Oh but there’s over 100,000 apps! Well, with a real netbook, there are literally millions of apps.
So what do you get for almost $500? 16GB of storage, a glossy (meaning unreadable with other light sources present) 9.7″ screen that’s only 1024×768 resolution, and a 1GHz Apple processor. There are no USB ports, and Apple doesn’t even state how much memory (RAM) the iPad has.
What did I get with my Acer Aspire One for $314? A 1366×768 screen that’s 11.6 inches, a full sized keyboard, a 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. It also has USB ports, a camera, and it doesn’t need a case. Where does the iPad beat my Acer? It has a touch screen, an accelerometer, and a compass. Apple claims the iPad has 10 hours of battery life. My Acer claims 8, but can actually do 10. Oh, and I almost forgot, the iPad can’t multitask. You can only do one thing at a time. Amazing.
Now time to wait and watch the Apple fanboys camp out in front of Apple stores to buy this useless giant iPod.
Chainlink Extreme 4×4 Has 7 Feet of Travel
January 5th, 2010 by WordPlop7 feet of up OR down motion on each tire. Seven feet. Full specs can be found on YouTube. They include a fuel injected Ford 5.0L V8, c4 transmission and t-case out of an early bronco, ARB air locker running chain gears on the ends. Swing arms are hydraulically controlled, and can be controlled individually or together. In addition there is coil spring and shock suspension. Chains inside the swing arms turn Hummer gear reduction hubs at each wheel. 39.5 inch tires. Steering is linked through the swing arms. Body construction is steel tubing. Total weight is 5900 pounds. Check the video below.
Google Caffeine Update
December 17th, 2009 by Chris LittleGoogle is rolling out a new update that involves injecting some caffeine into its system. The “Caffeine Update” is rumored to contain a few interesting items.
Speed is now a factor in your rankings. Google will measure how long it takes for your website to load and compare it against the average loading time of other websites. If your site loads faster than the average, you get a tiny boost in your rankings, if it loads slower, then you get a tiny penalty. So this if course raises the immediate question – how do I know if my site is loading at the right speed?
Fortunately, Google Webmaster Tools can answer that question. If you login to Google Webmaster tools, under the “Labs” section they’ve added a new “Site Performance” tool that tells you how fast your website loads compared to everybody else:
As you can see – the site in the above image loads faster than 83% of other websites. I think that’s safe to say this particular website will get a nice boost once Caffeine hits the live results pages. The other nice feature of this new tool is that it identifies ways to speed up your page, a really common suggestion it made to my own websites was to enable GZIP compression, which I am in the process of doing right now.
Another factor that is being speculated about is whether social bookmarking will be used in the ranking of your website. It’s possible that Google will rank your website higher for ranking on sites like Digg.com. Now this does raise the question of social bookmark spamming, and in fact there are services out there that will guarantee your story to appear on the front page of Digg.com for a price (expect these types of services to gain massive popularity when this update goes live).
While we are on the topic of ways to enhance your website, here’s a few optimization tips you can use to give you a small edge in organic rankings with Google:
- Check for any crawl errors in Google Webmaster Tools. If Googlebot is having issues with your site, it will tell you so you can fix them and stop being penalized.
- Check for any HTML suggestions from Google Webmaster tools. This is another great feature that gives you some basic tips for optimizing your website in various ways. It will alert you if there are any meta tag problems, duplicate content issues, and such. It can be a real life saver if checked frequently.
- Another great tool is Web Page Analyzer (by WebsiteOptimization.com). It will crawl a single page on your website and run various tests to measure how fast it responds and how long it will take an average user on various connection speeds to load your page. It also identifies other great features such as really large images or external files that are slowing your site down, and makes recommendations on what to fix so you can enhance your site to it’s fullest.
If you would like more information on the Google Caffeine update, here’s a few useful places to check:
Initial Announcement of Caffeine by Google
Google Caffeine Hits After the Holidays
Interview with Matt Cutts re: Caffeine Update
You Don’t Need Much to Power a Media Center PC
December 9th, 2009 by WordPlop
Have you every considered setting up a dedicated computer to act as a media center in your living room? Well, if you have some older hardware around, you can do this right now.
Surprisingly, you don’t need a lot of powerful hardware to have a good, functioning media center. Case in point: I recently set up my old Dell Dimension as a media PC for my 1080p TV. This computer is around 4-5 years old, and guess what, it works perfectly as a media center. It is a Pentium 4 at 3GHz, 512MB RAM, and a Radeon X300SE graphics card with 128MB of onboard memory. Sure this sounds very weak compared to modern hardware: 4-8 GB of memory is now the norm, as well as quad core processors. But for playing 720p video, my setup works flawlessly.
Yea, believe it or not, that little X300 and Pentium 4 can play 720p video without any lag whatsoever. It can’t handle 1080p, but I’m 100% satisfied with 720p on my 52″ screen. And how much did I spend to make it all work? $7 at Radio Shack for a headphone-to-headphone cable. I plugged the TV in as if it were a monitor, using the standard blue VGA cable. Then plugged in the audio cable just as if the TV was a speaker system, and there you have it: a budget home theater system, while saving a computer from being thrown out or put in storage.
So if you have an old computer, but not too old, laying around, give it a shot and see if it will play high-def videos. You might be surprised. And if it can’t, you can always buy a $50 video card from eBay or Newegg. If my X300 / Pentium 4 computer can run a 1080p resolution and play 720p video, you can see right there that you don’t need to spend hundreds on a home media center.
How to Make a Disk Brake Rotor Wall Clock
December 8th, 2009 by Thomas MunkaHere is a simple tutorial on how to create a functional clock using a disk brake rotor. The rotor was taken off a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee (ZJ). When completed, this project can compliment your man cave very nicely.
Supplies needed:
-Disk brake rotor
-Functioning clock
-Silicone glue (or another flexible adhesive)
-Rubbing alcohol or another quick drying cleaning product
Tools needed:
-Cutting tool (like a Dremel or Jigsaw)
-Drill
Step 1:
Set down your disk brake rotor.
Step 2:
Drill a hole in the back of the rotor which will enable you to hang it up.
Step 3:
Cut out the center of the clock (a Dremel with a cutting disk works best for this).
Step 4:
Clean the inside of the center of the rotor. Glue the clock into the center of the disk brake rotor using silicone or some other kind of flexible adhesive. Be sure the clock is centered, and let the glue dry with the clock placed with its face down (as in the picture).
Step 5:
Set the time and hang up the clock!
EA Wants to Sell DLC to Pirates
December 8th, 2009 by WordPlop
Electronic Arts has been known to try everything possible for the sake of combating pirates. They have included all kinds of much-hated DRM in their games. But now the CEO of EA has said that pirates are a new market that EA needs to make money from.
While this is great news for the anti-DRM activists, it might not be good news for gamers who actually buy their games. John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, wants to sell DLC – download content – to everyone who has the game, not just those who bought it. But this might turn into a very bad thing: DLC will contain most of the game, while the game itself will be more like a platform to add features onto. This would degrade the quality of games severely. And a lot of today’s games are already terrible enough.
It’s good that EA has recognized pirates as something they cannot defeat. It is impossible, just as it is impossible to stop all robbery and theft in the real world. Why waste money and resources fighting a war you cannot win? However, DLC is not the answer, at least for PC games. DLC can be illegally downloaded just like the game itself. And the biggest issue here is developers degrading the initial game on purpose so they can sell lots of DLC later on.
Download content for games is growing already, and I think developers are starting to see the profit in it. Personally I don’t like the whole DLC model because paying $50 for a game is too much in the first place. A lot more games would sell if they cost less, and in the end, the money made from the game would be the same, if not more. But pushing DLC on pirates will most likely produce no real results. Only inexperienced pirates might buy the DLC – people who know what they’re doing will just pirate the DLC.
Whether piracy affects the sale of media is still being debated, but one thing that’s been proven is that DRM only hurts legitimate gamers. DRM can only delay a game from being cracked, and that delay is typically only an hour or so. All games can be and will be cracked, shared, pirated. How game developers, movie producers, the music industry, and software companies will react to piracy depends on their success. I think it’s time for them to drop DRM, and find a way to profit off the games even if they’re pirated. DLC might not be the answer, but how about something like in-game advertising (only if done realistically and tastefully, like in Battlefield 2 or TrackMania Nations)?
Source: Kotaku, image via flickr
ISP’s Are Banning People from Playing Modern Warfare 2
December 8th, 2009 by WordPlop
It looks like internet service providers don’t like it when people play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on their connections. Gamers are reporting that some are receiving notices from the internet providers informing them that they are not allowed to use P2P so frequently, or that they are not allowed to host servers on their home connections.
And why is this happening? Because the smart people at Infinity Ward gave PC gamers a big middle finger, and removed dedicated servers from the game. But how can you play online then you might ask? Why, IW.net will just use your computer as a server. And that’s not allowed on any consumer ISP.
So what can you do now? Nothing really. Infinity Ward can try to pay every ISP there is to not recognize Modern Warfare 2 traffic as running a server or downloading through P2P. But there’s nothing you can really do, because the game is in fact using your computer as a server, and it is in fact using P2P protocols to let you play online.
Putting aside the issues of security – you are opening ports on your firewall and router to play the game after all – this issue with ISP’s could have been predicted. Everyone knows you can’t run a server from home if you’re using a normal internet service provider. So you can’t really do anything but stop playing CoD MW2 online. Sad, huh?
I will never buy Modern Warfare 2 because of the way Infinity Ward has treated PC gamers. The answers they gave in interviews regarding lack of dedicated servers made it seem like they were doing this just to dumb down the PC version, so it could be as simple as the console version. This is exactly the opposite of what everyone wanted. And the reviews show (take a look at the user score).
Sources: Infinity Ward forums (although most posts are probably now deleted), GossipGamers, ModernWarFail2
2009 San Francisco International Auto Show Wrap-Up
December 8th, 2009 by WordPlopThe following is a complete list of WordPlop’s coverage of the 2009 San Francisco International Auto Show. We could not get photos and information about every single car that was at the show, but we tried to include as much of the interesting stuff as possible. And since most people don’t buy interesting cars unfortunately, we also covered as much of the boring cars as we could.
It took a lot of work, and this has been the biggest “project” on WordPlop so far. We took 684 photos, which amounted to 2.28GB. We narrowed this down to 336 photos, and compressed the size down to 125MB. We then watermarked the photos and renamed each one so you would be able to easily search for a particular car. Finally, we divided the photos into posts, and typed up all the information about the cars we had. This whole project took many hours of hard work to put together. So please, do not use our photos without linking back to the post from which the photo came from. Feel free to share, but give credit and a link.
Special thanks goes to Thomas Munka, who wrote about the SVT Raptor, ML 350, Corvette, and Toyota. He also provided transportation to and from the auto show, and helped with taking photos. Thanks!
All the posts below can be found through the San Francisco International Auto Show 2009 tag. The list below is a compilation of links to the articles and photo galleries, in alphabetical order. If you’re looking for something particular, you can use the site’s search function in the sidebar.
San Francisco International Auto Show 2009
1927-1937 Classic Car Gallery
1932-1970 Hot Rods Gallery: Bel Air, Corvette, Mustang, and more
Aston Martin Gallery
Audi R8 Gallery and Information
Bentley Photo Gallery
BMW 335d, M3, and Z4 Roadster Info and Gallery
Cadillac Converj Photos
Chevy Camaro Photo Gallery
Chevy Corvette Convertible, Grand Sport, ZR1: Photos, Information, & Review
Chevy Volt Photos
Dodge Challenger Photos
Ferrari Photo Gallery, Including Upgraded F430
Ford Gallery: SVT Raptor, Fusion, Mustang, Shelby GT500
Honda Galleries: Civic Si, Fit, Insight, S2000
Hyundai Genesis Coupe Info and Photos
Jeep Commander and Wrangler Unlimited Photos
Lamborghini Photo Gallery
Land Rover Range Rover HSE Info & Gallery
Lexus GS 350 & IS 350 Sharpie Edition Gallery & Info
Lincoln MKS, MKT, MKX, MKZ, Navigator Gallery & Info
Lotus Evora Photos
Mazda Photo Gallery and Information
Mercedes ML350 and SL550 Photo Galleries
Mini Cooper Photo Gallery & Info
Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution Rally Photos
Nissan Leaf, GTR, & Skyline Photos
Porsche Photo Gallery
SFPD Police Interceptor, Rolls Royce Phantom, Modified Scions, Pink Smart Car
Subaru Impreza WRX & STI Photo Gallery
SV 9 Competizione Photo Gallery
Toyota 4Runner, FJ Cruiser, Prius, Tacoma, Yaris: Photo Galleries and Info
Volkswagen GTI, Jetta, & Touareg Information and Photos
Posted in Auto Tech | No Comments »
Chevy Corvette Convertible, Grand Sport, ZR1: Photos, Information, & Review
December 8th, 2009 by WordPlopGeneral Motors – known in the past for solid steel and big block cars; currently known for putting out plastic crap. Not even the 2010 Chevrolet Corvette differentiates itself from this plastic extravaganza. Open a door and feel the plastic door panels creak. Take a seat inside, feel the not-so-solid backings of the seats on a $60,000 car wiggle back and forth. Let’s turn on the radio, hopefully the knob won’t fall off. And if you feel like opening the trunk, be sure not to press too hard, you might crack the plastic body panels.
We got a chance to see and feel the 2010 Corvette at the 2009 San Francisco Auto Show. The first thing we noticed was a peeling racing stripe decal (see picture below) on a car valued at $60K; you might expect racing stripes to actually be painted on a car of this caliber. After adoring the cool looking body, we took a seat inside only to find that the seats wiggle back and forth about ten inches; no big deal, I suppose they’re not clicked in. So we get out of the car, play with the seat controls, and they still wiggle like crazy. I asked a company representative about this issue: he checked the seats on the Corvette and told me they shouldn’t be doing that. He proceeded to another corvette, only to find the seats doing the same thing. And later, when we were looking at the SV 9 Competizione (which is built on the Corvette platform), we noticed the exact same problem. Enough about the seats – the whole interior creaks and the quality of it feels like it belongs in a ten year old, worn and used sedan. Well, to fish out some positives, it puts out amazing horsepower (436 HP for the Grand Sport and 638 HP for the ZR1) and excellent gas mileage (16 MPG city / 26 MPG highway for the Grand Sport and 14 MPG city / 20 MPG highway for the ZR1) for a price you can’t beat ($54,770 for the Grand Sport and $106,880 for the ZR1) – just don’t expect the 2010 Corvette to feel as sturdy and solid as, say, a Porsche or Ferrari.
EDIT: Well this is interesting: looks like GM just raised the MSRP on the 2010 Corvette ZR1 from $106,880 to $108,180 according to their website.
Photos taken December 2009 at the San Francisco International Auto Show.
Chevy Corvette Convertible
Chevy Corvette Grand Sport Coupe
- MSRP of $54,770 (the one pictured is $60,550)
- LS3 6.2 Liter engine making 436 HP
- Dry Sump Oil System
- 6-Speed manual transmission
- Active Handling
- Traction Control System
- 4 Wheel independent suspension
- Power speed-sensitive variable ratio rack-and-pinion steering
- Limited Slip Differential
Chevy Corvette ZR1
- MSRP of $106,880 (the one pictured is $121,000)
- LS9 6.2 Liter Supercharged V8 making 638 HP
- Dry Sump Oil System
- 6-Speed manual transmission
- Active Handling
- Traction Control System
- 4 wheel independent suspension
- Power Speed-Sensitive Variable Ratio Rack-and-Pinion Steering
- Limited Slip Differential
Posted in Auto Tech, Multimedia | 1 Comment »
