Upgrading Those Rims

Does your ride look old or dull? Do your friends roll on tricked out cars? A major look enhancer for your car can be modifying the rims. Car rims are like hair on people. Changing that hairstyle can usually be a subtle change but can enhance your over all look. By principle changing your car rims may make your ride look sporty but that's all there is to it the look. But this can cause losses on power and on your pockets.

Choosing the Right Diameter Size

Initially everyone wants their ride to stand out from the rest, shoving an almost impossible to steer rims under that fender. Some would go as big as 20 inch rims for that Asian compact car, but would that be all worth all the hassle, all the trouble it can cause for not being able to steer well?

Aftermarket rims come in all sizes starting from 13 inches to a whooping 26 inches all suited for compacts, muscle, Asian Utility, and Sports Utility Vehicles. Now for all serious racers or budding racers to be, it is a must to know that to the bigger the rim diameter the heavier it becomes which translates to a loss in precious horsepower. But for those who opt for form over function the bigger the rims the lower the car looks. When the rims are bigger in diameter the tire size becomes thinner and the wheel becomes heavier. The thinner the rubber the more expensive it can get.

Is Having a Custom Rim Worth All That?

Having a custom ride starts with the rims and this could turn your ride into a chick magnet. But would this be all worth it? Installing custom rims could alter your ride's handling and gauge readings.

The car's speedometer can be affected if you change the diameter of the rims and the tires especially if it is bigger or smaller than what it had on from the factory. Having larger wheels can trick the car's gauges to think that the car is going slower since there is lesser wheel revolution per kilometer or mile covered. With this set-up the driver might get speeding tickets and a wrong reading on the odometer.

Bigger rims can make the driver cause an under steer in order that the tires and the fenders don't come in contact with each other. This as well prevents damaging the paint. Another thing to be extra careful about if you are driving a vehicle with wheels having large diameter rims are potholes, street gutters and street furniture. A wheel that has thin rubber tires means that the rims are closer to the ground and may come in contact with street furniture and potholes that could damage your rims permanently.

What Internet Sites Will Do Custom Car Stereo Installations?

There are many different types of car stereo systems that you can install in your car. Some of these car stereos will be in the very expensive price range. There will be others still that you can easily afford without too much of a problem. One way of getting a great car stereo that works to the specifications that you want is to see about having a custom car stereo system installed in your car.

You can explore the various options that are available for custom car stereo parts and decide which ones are more suited for you and your budget. With this information you will need to visit various internet sites that can help you to select the different car stereo suppliers and see if they are willing to do custom car stereo installations. This type of information is very relevant as you will need to decide on the best route to take.

Now instead of settling for one particular company you might want to see what the various other custom car stereo installers can offer you. These companies may also have other items that you will find of use, in your hunt to build the best sound system that you can afford. This round of pre-shopping can save you the future hassle of tying to find good quality stereos that have low prices.

After you have finished your research in custom car stereo systems you can decide which store you want to buy your new car stereo from. You will need to see the various other custom car audio systems that are in stock before you come to a final decision. Well before you even think of buying the custom car stereo you have to see the various specifications and verify if that system will work in your car.

Once you have found whether this type of custom car stereo will be good you should investigate the amount of money that will be required. Now if all of the facts about the custom car stereo are satisfactory for you, the next step is to buy the car stereo. After your car stereo is purchased you should see about installing this stereo in your car. A final testing will reveal if your new custom car stereo is working to your satisfaction.

Now that you know all of the various items that are needed to give the perfect custom car stereo you should have these notes including that of the various parts that you have used kept in a safe place. These will come in handy the next time that you have to buy or make another custom car stereo or if you wish to upgrade the various parts.

What Internet Sites Will Do Custom Car Stereo Installations?

There are many different types of car stereo systems that you can install in your car. Some of these car stereos will be in the very expensive price range. There will be others still that you can easily afford without too much of a problem. One way of getting a great car stereo that works to the specifications that you want is to see about having a custom car stereo system installed in your car.

You can explore the various options that are available for custom car stereo parts and decide which ones are more suited for you and your budget. With this information you will need to visit various internet sites that can help you to select the different car stereo suppliers and see if they are willing to do custom car stereo installations. This type of information is very relevant as you will need to decide on the best route to take.

Now instead of settling for one particular company you might want to see what the various other custom car stereo installers can offer you. These companies may also have other items that you will find of use, in your hunt to build the best sound system that you can afford. This round of pre-shopping can save you the future hassle of tying to find good quality stereos that have low prices.

After you have finished your research in custom car stereo systems you can decide which store you want to buy your new car stereo from. You will need to see the various other custom car audio systems that are in stock before you come to a final decision. Well before you even think of buying the custom car stereo you have to see the various specifications and verify if that system will work in your car.

Once you have found whether this type of custom car stereo will be good you should investigate the amount of money that will be required. Now if all of the facts about the custom car stereo are satisfactory for you, the next step is to buy the car stereo. After your car stereo is purchased you should see about installing this stereo in your car. A final testing will reveal if your new custom car stereo is working to your satisfaction.

Now that you know all of the various items that are needed to give the perfect custom car stereo you should have these notes including that of the various parts that you have used kept in a safe place. These will come in handy the next time that you have to buy or make another custom car stereo or if you wish to upgrade the various parts.

The Next Generation of Performance Exhaust - Diesel Exhaust Systems

I have to admit I am a fan of everything that allows my car to get faster and louder. For ten years I have tried to pimp my car to be the boss of the highway. I am 26 and have been living in San Diego for 20 years now. I think my love of fast cars developed when my father took me with him to see his friend's Lamborghini. This is the greatest car I have ever seen. To be honest, it was the only one I had seen at the age of 10, but I loved it instantly; the sound, the speed, the coolness automatically transfers to the driver when he enters the car. 17 Years later I am still looking for the ultimate adrenaline rush from my car. And I think now I got it: The new Dieses Exhaust system is responsible for my next step to become the king of the road. The combination of speed and sound reminds me all the time of my experience with the Lamborghini.

So I bought the new JBA Headers yesterday. These headers replace restrictive stock manifolds with precision built exhaust headers that maximize exhaust flow for major increases in horsepower, torque and throttle response. And they include premium mounting hardware for bolt-on installation. That sounds good, doesn’t it? And the description is not the only one that sounds good; my car does as well. I am not sure, if I have mentioned what kind of car I have, so I will do so now: A PT cruiser, which now has 20 more horses under the hood than 2 days before. And seriously I love being the loudest, being the fastest, being the hottest on the road.

Now, I think my dream is coming true; the dream I had in the age of ten. My dream includes a hot blond wife who takes care of me when I need to get a good treatment, two children who I can teachto play baseball and football, and a hot, fast car. Ok honestly, I don't have a wife. The only woman I sometimes see is my cleaning lady Maria and she is a bit too much woman for just one person, if you know what I mean. So I have no family, but at least my car is still louder and faster than the one of my dream. So I can really say that my dream came true.

Motorcycle Storage: Tips from the Pros

You love your motorcycle so much you would skip riding your friends new SUV because you just enjoy the cool brush of the breeze though your hair as you cruise through the road. But now it is winter and you cannot dare put it on the road because that will almost be suicidal. So, what motorcycle storage techniques should you use to make sure that it stays in perfect condition and will be ready for riding next spring?

Here we will look at how you can maintain your motorcycle while you anxiously wait for spring to come knocking. Here are a few tips that I use and that may also help you, too.

Charge Your Battery: You know that your motor bike discharges totally after about two weeks. The implication is that if you leave it like that for three months, you will have to buy a new battery at the beginning of next season before you can hop on that bike again. A way out is to buy a battery charger that you can permanently attach to the battery thereby allowing it to charge automatically. It shuts off when the battery is full and recharges it when it becomes too low.

Maintain the Fuel System: Overtime the fuel will become stale, become gummy and build up varnish. This could result in hard time for you starting the motorcycle next season. To prevent this, you could use any of the fuel additive products out there to help stop the unpleasant effects of aging gas and stabilize the fuel system.

Maintain Good Temperature: If you keep your motorcycle in a place of humid temperature or very hot temperature you may damage it and even cause it to crack. A possible solution is to store your motorcycle in a heated garage. But if you dont have that you can buy a good motorcycle cover and keep it wrapped in that. You will then have to take out every few days to get some sunlight. This will ensure it neither gets too heated to cause it to crack nor suffer from moisture that may damage the tires among other parts.

If you follow these motorcycle storage tips you would in addition to saving yourself a lot of money buying new motorcycle parts, also be saving yourself a lot of headache.

But one more thing before you hop on that motorbike when spring comes around make sure you do a thorough safety check on your motorcycle. See to it that your riding gear, safety equipment, switches and lights are fully operational. And dont forget to have your motorcycle insurance policy current.

Just remember, when spring is here again ride safe.

Acura Performance Chip: the Best Solution for Increased Performance

For an Acura to really stand out, it must first perform at its best. To achieve this, engine power must be increased -- a task done electronically by the Acura performance chip. Also known as a power programmer or a performance programmer, the performance chip optimizes a vehicle's fuel and ignition system to extract the maximum amount of horsepower and torque possible. It replaces the car's standard engine control unit (ECU) chip, which is responsible for managing the internal combustion engine's operations.

An Acura performance chip consists of lookup tables that contain fuel rate values. These values are increased according to a particular driving condition, resulting to a maximized engine performance. Normally, an Acura performance chip is situated inside a car body's interior, where it is heavily protected from the different elements. Most performance chips, however, can be accessed through the passenger’s side glove compartment. Others are at the passenger’s side front door.

An Acura performance chip works by integrating the functions of the old-time tuners onto a single computer chip, virtually re-programming an engine system to offer increased power and higher torque. It is designed to improve the fuel/air ratio and spark map in engines to deliver the exact the demands of vehicle owner. Other benefits include greater fuel mileage,and impressively clean emissions, alongwith an engine operating at its full potential. Acura performance chips can also raise fuel injection' efficiency, eliminate speed limiters, increase torque, calibrate the speedometer, adjust ignition timing, reset shift points, tweak shift firmness, and check diagnostic codes.

Installation of an Acura performance chip is not assiduous since all the needed tools and information are available both online and in the market. Getting an Acura performance chip is indeed, an easy and excellent way to boost automotive operation and performance.

How to Solve Pc Problems and Improve Performance With Windows Registry Cleaners

Just like with a car your pc needs software maintenance to keep it running smoothly like the first time you booted your pc. A common cause of Windows crashes, error messages and performance problems are the result of registry inconsistencies. Windows registry cleaners can fix these problems for you and make your pc running smoothly again. There is another solution to resolve these problems: a complete reinstall o the operating system and all the programs you installed! This drastic solution will take you more time and effort, because you have to backup your data of each program and also save all the settings you made. I recommend using Windows registry cleaners to solve the problems instead of doing a complete reinstall.

What is the registry? The Windows registry is basically a database with all the information about your pc. Windows maintains this database and stores settings and information about your hardware and software. All the changes which are made to the pc are stored as keys in the registry. From the moment you start the Windows operating system it will read and add registry settings about your hardware and software. Each time software is installed or uninstalled entries are changed or removed.

Unfortunately these entries in the registry are not removed properly causing problems in performance or failures like system errors. Due to the adding and removing of hardware and/or software to the system the registry increases in size and it takes more time for Windows to read the registry. With registry cleaning software you can successfully purge these entries from the registry getting better performance and a smooth running pc.

Most Windows registry cleaners offer the option to backup your registry and to perform a scheduled scan. It is advisable to make this backup so that you can restore the registry in case you encounter any problems after the cleanup. The scheduling feature lets you schedule an automatic scan of your pc at a predefined date or time interval. If you are not using this option I would recommend that you run the software each time when you have uninstalled several programs or at least once a month. Another recommended option that most programs offer is to defragment of compress the registry. This will make the file smaller and thus it will be faster for Windows to read the registry for values it's looking for.

Data Cleansing

So much database types as well as system weared. Where the system have to support execution of work but in other matter will very complicate in the case of reporting system, because possibly one of the problem of datas amount which so much, disagree with used systems. It is of course become dilemma in making of reliable report and data integration which earn to be trusted.

Challenging from qualified management data is a[n critical component concerning business guarantee. In this time many technologies supporting from various aspect of " extract, transform, load and ( ETL) process, is but designed especially for the examination of, authentication, and sweeping for the things assuring qualified data. Technology like that have to can access and refine / tapping data of any source, including former data and data system of non-relational. That have to provide a[n step make an audit of when testing data to ascertain the integrity of and identify all and anomalies of inconsistencies. That Thing have to convert, cleaning, readjusting, and strengthening data is such as needed. Also have to can unite and clean ( data cleansing) in final repository, providing analysis and give report detailedly and summary. Finally, can walk very efficient, timely, costeffective in processing data.

Trust of data which do not consistence, complete ketidak or mistake of data can become " Risk Business" unacceptable. Data quality is a[n vital component as guarantee of[is continuity of company business. Quality of bad data can endanger attainment of efficiency and target of operational system. That Thing also can erod value of business information system, above of him entrust to make decision. based on decision is bad data, can cause monetary loss directly, destroy network, and destroy company credibility. Some companies recognize data as strategic asset, leader of business hold responsibility to ascertain correctness, quality of, and reliability of information.

In a Data Base figuring in more than 20 million data archives, prima facie strength [is] efesiensi shortened process time, delivery of data ( Extract), Transfer of into other form ( Transform) and Inclusion / Import ( Load) - ( ETL Process). The same as sweeping of effective data, conversion, and authentication is important for the success of than equipment of Data Base.

Data of Cleansing is covering some processes as follow:
1. Data Definition
Intake process ( Extract) Data of Database and or from other system, from various format type and data base type like Oracle, AS400, Dbase, Foxpro, SQL, Excel, Text, and others). Data Extract can be conducted by 2 methods:
• Direct Method
Data taken by connect is direct the than Database, with snapshot technique - only read henceforth to process.
• Indirect Method
Data taken indirectly from Database conducted process degradation of Data beforehand to format . txt henceforth to process.

2. Verification and Data Integration
Process Verification Data is process inspection of data per record pursuant to the data type and field of like format of date, ascii, numeric. etc
Target of process the data verification is to ascertain entire/all data to be processed have as according to format of Source got Data of Text / Database..

3. Data Cleansing
Process Data of Cleansing, in this case that is doing standardization in entire/all database to be content than the data base as a whole according to the format form or standard of [is] same, like determination :
• Writing of Block letters / Lower Case
• Writing of title
• Uniforming of Abbreviation word
• Tanda baca (Ex : - _ . , ; and etc)
• Conversion Letter of Romawi (ex: V = 5)
• etc

4. Data Identification
Process identify can be done by using some conditions pursuant to fringe which have been determined. As for obtained result from identifying data earn like.:
• Active Customer number
• Customer Non Active (based on criteria)
• Data Duplication
• Single Data

5. Data Matching
Adjustment process or adaptation of data ( " Match" or " Note of Match") pursuant to some alternatives like :Nama Customer dan Alamat Customer
• Customer Number
• etc

Oscommerce Customization

OSCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution. It is one of the most versatile shopping cart solution and offers vast range of customization options to online store owners depending on their need at an affordable price. OS Commerce combines open source solutions to provide a free and open e-commerce platform, which includes the powerful PHP, web scripting language, the stable Apache web server and fast MySQL database server. OS Commerce is a complete online store solution that contains both a catalog front end and an administration tool backend.

Some of the features include:
• Supports unlimited products and categories
o Products-to-categories structure
o Categories-to-categories structure
• Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews
• Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products
• Administration area secured with a username and password defined during installation
• Contact customers directly via email or newsletters
• Easily backup and restore the database
• Print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen
• Statistics for products and customers
• Multilingual support
• Multi currency support
• Select what to display, and in what order, in the product listing page
• Support for static and dynamic banners with full statistics
Customer / Front end Functionality
• All orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval
• Customers can view their order history and order statuses
• Customers can maintain their accounts
o Address book for multiple shipping and billing addresses
• Temporary shopping cart for guests and permanent shopping cart for customers
• Fast and friendly quick search and advanced search features
• Product reviews for an interactive shopping experience
• For seen checkout procedure
• Secure transactions with SSL
• Number of products in each category can be shown or hidden
• Global and per-category bestseller lists
• Display what other customers have ordered with the current product shown
• Breadcrumb trail for easy site navigation
Intellinet System team has customized and successfully deployed several osCommerce applications and in the process, has understood the underlying architecture osCommerce engine to further customize it to the client specific needs.

Dimension India also offers following open source customization services:
• Open Source Community portals - PHP-Nuke / Post-Nuke
• Open Source Search Engines - ASPSeek
• Open Source Software Issue Trackers - Bugzilla / PHPbt
• Open source content management systems - OpenCms

Computer Speakers Guide

Adding speakers to your computer can increase its functionality and enriches the experience of using it. Computer speakers are functional devices that are attached to the computer and are very much useful for recreation as well as other activities. Computer speakers not only produce the most exciting sound but also are capable of bringing music, movies or games to life. In today’s scenario where we can find all sorts of multimedia applications, games and MP3 music, it is very hard to imagine a computer without speakers. The speakers have become essential for any computer so that it can be used for all the applications. With time the computer speakers have seen man changes and are getting better and better with each passing day. We can find computer speakers for all applications and budgets.

The most popular type of computer speakers available today are standard speakers, multi-channel surround sound speakers, and USB speakers. Lets learn more about them.

Standard Speakers
Most popular kind of speakers that can be easily found in the most of the households. The standard speakers are normal 2.1 channel or 2 channel speakers which include a subwoofer in the 2.1 channel version. These speakers produce enough sound required by a home or corporate user. On the price band, the standard speakers are considered cheap and easily installable with lesser wiring compared to the multi channel speakers.

Multi-channel Speakers
More advanced are the multi-channel speakers that can deliver a surround sound effect. In the multi-channel speakers the channels refer to the output of the speaker. For instance The 5.1 channel surround sound system means a 5 speaker and one subwoofer included in the system which delivers superior sound quality and can bring any PC game or movie to life. These new generation speakers are exceptional on sound quality but comparatively costly than the standard speakers.

USB speakers
Considering the portability issues you will also find USB speakers that are powered from the 5 volts at a few milliamps provided by the USB port, per the standard. In such speakers, the USB powered amplifier draws the power through a USB cable/plug. For the USB speakers no batteries or AC power source is required.

Considering your application need and budget you can decide on the type of speaker you want to buy. Pro’s can opt for multi-channel speakers that allow sound/video editing or gaming in real time delivering the best sound output. For budget conscious the standard speakers are the best options as they deliver a handsome sound quality and saves you money on the device as well as on its installation. If budget is not a constraint a 5.1 channel surround sound system is the best buy but also has some drawbacks like wiring and high cost. A 2.1 system with 2 speakers and a subwoofer is a decent alternative if compared to the above. Even the 2 speakers would be a great idea for limited sound quality and budget.

Pilih VGA yang paling tepat untuk anda. Yang termahal bukanlah yang terbaik bagi anda.

Prolog

Di pasaran terdapat banyak sekali VGA yang beredar. Dari yang berharga 50 USD hingga 600 USD lebih. Sebagai gamer PC, tentu kita harus memiliki VGA sebaik mungkin agar kita mendapatkan performa yang memuaskan. Memainkan game dengan lag, atau mode slide-show bukanlah impian para gamer. Melainkan memainkan tiap game dengan mulus pada setting tertinggi adalah hal yang diimpikan tiap gamer.

Di jaman sekarang, peran VGA cukup vital untuk aplikasi game. Walau PC anda dilengkapi dengan prosesor secepat kilat, namun tanpa didukung oleh VGA yang baik juga akan percuma. Chip VGA sendiri makin hari kian canggih dan memiliki processing power yang lebih canggih daripada prosesor.

Jika kita berbicara VGA, praktis ada 2 merk yang sudah populer di telinga kita, yaitu Nvidia dan ATI. Kedua produsen tersebut adalah penguasa pasar chip VGA untuk game. Masing-masing produsen merilis banyak sekali varian chip, yang terkadang menyebabkan kebingungan dari konsumen.

Nah, kali ini, pada artikel VGA Chart part 1, akan diulas beberapa chip keluaran ATI untuk platform AGP. Chip-chip lain mungkin akan diulas di artikel serupa berikutnya. Semoga chart ini bisa membantu anda memilih VGA yang paling tepat sesuai dengan kebutuhan dan dompet anda.

Kontestan

Radeon 9250 series

Radeon 9250 SE ini adalah tipe terendah dari jajaran card ATI. Radeon 9250 versi SE ini hanya memiliki bus 64-bit. Cardnya sendiri umumnya berukuran lo-profile dengan pendingin pasif. Clock core dan memorinya hanya 200 MHz / 166 MHz. Dengan spesifikasi yang seperti itu, card ini jelas bukan diperuntukkan untuk penggila grafis. Hal tersebut makin didukung dengan tidak ada support untuk Directx 9 secara penuh. Rata-rata game harus disetting low-quality atau medium-quality untuk bisa berjalan di card ini. Nilai plusnya adalah HSF yang pasif tersebut menyebabkan PC tidak bising.

Radeon 9250 biasa memiliki lebar bus 128-bit dan juga clock core/mem lebih tinggi dari versi SE. Clock core / memnya adalah 240 MHz / 200 MHz. Radeon 9250 dan juga versi SE-nya tidak mendukung Directx 9 secara penuh. Pixel dan vertex shader yang disupport hanya sampai versi 1.4 saja. Untuk operasi shader, card ini memiliki 4 pixel pipeline dan 2 vertex pipeline. Yang menarik dari Radeon 9250 ialah kemampuan overclocknya yang lumayan, dengan menggunakan HSF standar, Radeon 9250 dapat ditarik hingga hampir menyamai Radeon 9550.

Radeon 9550 series

Radeon 9550 adalah card ATI paling value yang mendukung penuh DirectX 9. Clock core dan memnya juga tergolong rendah, hanya 250 MHz / 200 MHz. Versi standarnya memiliki lebar bus 128-bit, sedangkan versi SE hanya memiliki bus 64-bit.

Meski Radeon 9550 ini sudah mendukung DirectX 9, namun performanya dalam menjalankan aplikasi DirectX 9 tidak terlalu tinggi, game-game yang full DX9 seperti Far Cry dan kawan-kawan dipastikan akan mendapat bonus lag.

Sebenarnya, Radeon 9550 dan 9600 ini merupakan varian yang sama, karena menggunakan chipset yang sama yaitu RV350. Hanya saja Radeon 9600 dijual dengan clock yang lebih tinggi (dan harga yang lebih tinggi) daripada Radeon 9550.

Namun karena adanya kesamaan chipset tersebut, banyak produsen yang menjual Radeon 9550 versi Extreme yang memiliki performa setara Radeon 9600, bahkan ada yang dapat dioverclock hingga mendekati Radeon 9600XT yang harganya terpaut cukup jauh.

Radeon 9500 Pro

Radeon 9500 Pro ini sudah punah di pasaran. menemukan Radeon 9500 Pro baru di toko-toko komputer merupakan hal yang hampir mustahil.

Radeon 9500 series sendiri berumur pendek karena dinilai merugikan ATI. Versi awal-awalnya, Radeon 9500 ini bisa disoftmod dengan mudah menjadi Radoen 9700 Pro yang harganya lebih dari 1x lipat lebih mahal. Kemudian munculah Radeon 9500 versi baru, dimana layout memorinya berbentuk I, tidak lagi L. Namun tetap saja, Radeon 9500 tersebut masih bisa disoftmod menjadi Radeon 9500 Pro dan dioverclock hingga setara Radeon 9700 dengan mudah.

Oleh sebab itulah, ATI segera menghentikan produksi Radeon 9500 series dan menggantikannya dengan Radeon 9600 yang jauh lebih lamban dibandingkan Radeon 9500 series.

Radeon 9500 Pro memiliki 8 pixel pipeline, dengan lebar bus 128-bit. Clock core/memnya adalah 275 MHz / 270 MHz.

Radeon 9600 Series

Radeon 9600 Series adalah pengganti dari 9500 series. Ada beberapa versi 9600, yaitu SE, Nonpro, Pro, dan XT. Radeon 9600 menggunakan chipset RV350, kecuali Radeon 9600XT yang menggunakan chipset RV360.

Semua versi 9600 memiliki 4 pixel pipeline. Versi SE memiliki lebar bus 64-bit, sedangkan selain versi SE memiliki lebar bus 128-bit. Hal yang membedakan antar versi tersebut adalah clock core dan memorynya.

Disini wakil dari 9600 yang masuk ke dalam chart adalah Radeon 9600 Nonpro dan Radeon 9600XT. Radeon 9600 XT memiliki clock core / mem sebesar 500 MHz / 300 MHz, sedangkan versi nonpro memiliki clock core / mem sebesar 325 MHz / 200 MHz.

Radeon 9800 Pro

Sama seperti halnya Radoen 9500, Radeon 9700 yang muncul diawal-awal juga cepat digusur oleh ATI. Radeon 9800 ini adalah pengganti dari Radeon 9700. Dari sisi teknologi, Radeon 9800 dan 9700 ini tidak jauh berbeda. Perbedaan hanya terlihat pada clock core dan memorynya. Radeon 9800 Pro ini memiliki clock core/mem sebesar 380 MHz / 340 MHz. Bandingkan dengan Radeon 9700 Pro yang hanya 325 MHz / 310 MHz. Radeon 9800 memiliki 8 pixel pipeline untuk melancarkan operasi shader.

Radeon X800

Seri X dari ATI ini merupakan seri tertinggi ATI saat ini. Varian terbarunya adalah X850. Dalam chart ini, wakil dari X800 yang hadir adalah X800 Pro dan X800 XT Platinum Edition. X800 Pro sudah memiliki 12 pixel pipeline, dengan clock core/mem sebesar 475 MHz / 475 MHz. Sedangkan X800XT PE memiliki 16 pixel pipeline, dengan clock/mem sebesar 520 MHz / 560 MHz.

X800 Pro dan X800 XT PE ini sudah menggunakan memory GDDR3, dengan lebar bus 256-bit. Memory VGA nya sendiri berjumlah 256 MB. Dengan spesifikasi seperti ini, seharusnya game-game saat ini bisa berjalan dengan mulus.

Pilih VGA yang paling tepat untuk anda. Yang termahal bukanlah yang terbaik bagi anda.

Prolog

Di pasaran terdapat banyak sekali VGA yang beredar. Dari yang berharga 50 USD hingga 600 USD lebih. Sebagai gamer PC, tentu kita harus memiliki VGA sebaik mungkin agar kita mendapatkan performa yang memuaskan. Memainkan game dengan lag, atau mode slide-show bukanlah impian para gamer. Melainkan memainkan tiap game dengan mulus pada setting tertinggi adalah hal yang diimpikan tiap gamer.

Di jaman sekarang, peran VGA cukup vital untuk aplikasi game. Walau PC anda dilengkapi dengan prosesor secepat kilat, namun tanpa didukung oleh VGA yang baik juga akan percuma. Chip VGA sendiri makin hari kian canggih dan memiliki processing power yang lebih canggih daripada prosesor.

Jika kita berbicara VGA, praktis ada 2 merk yang sudah populer di telinga kita, yaitu Nvidia dan ATI. Kedua produsen tersebut adalah penguasa pasar chip VGA untuk game. Masing-masing produsen merilis banyak sekali varian chip, yang terkadang menyebabkan kebingungan dari konsumen.

Nah, kali ini, pada artikel VGA Chart part 1, akan diulas beberapa chip keluaran ATI untuk platform AGP. Chip-chip lain mungkin akan diulas di artikel serupa berikutnya. Semoga chart ini bisa membantu anda memilih VGA yang paling tepat sesuai dengan kebutuhan dan dompet anda.

Kontestan

Radeon 9250 series

Radeon 9250 SE ini adalah tipe terendah dari jajaran card ATI. Radeon 9250 versi SE ini hanya memiliki bus 64-bit. Cardnya sendiri umumnya berukuran lo-profile dengan pendingin pasif. Clock core dan memorinya hanya 200 MHz / 166 MHz. Dengan spesifikasi yang seperti itu, card ini jelas bukan diperuntukkan untuk penggila grafis. Hal tersebut makin didukung dengan tidak ada support untuk Directx 9 secara penuh. Rata-rata game harus disetting low-quality atau medium-quality untuk bisa berjalan di card ini. Nilai plusnya adalah HSF yang pasif tersebut menyebabkan PC tidak bising.

Radeon 9250 biasa memiliki lebar bus 128-bit dan juga clock core/mem lebih tinggi dari versi SE. Clock core / memnya adalah 240 MHz / 200 MHz. Radeon 9250 dan juga versi SE-nya tidak mendukung Directx 9 secara penuh. Pixel dan vertex shader yang disupport hanya sampai versi 1.4 saja. Untuk operasi shader, card ini memiliki 4 pixel pipeline dan 2 vertex pipeline. Yang menarik dari Radeon 9250 ialah kemampuan overclocknya yang lumayan, dengan menggunakan HSF standar, Radeon 9250 dapat ditarik hingga hampir menyamai Radeon 9550.

Radeon 9550 series

Radeon 9550 adalah card ATI paling value yang mendukung penuh DirectX 9. Clock core dan memnya juga tergolong rendah, hanya 250 MHz / 200 MHz. Versi standarnya memiliki lebar bus 128-bit, sedangkan versi SE hanya memiliki bus 64-bit.

Meski Radeon 9550 ini sudah mendukung DirectX 9, namun performanya dalam menjalankan aplikasi DirectX 9 tidak terlalu tinggi, game-game yang full DX9 seperti Far Cry dan kawan-kawan dipastikan akan mendapat bonus lag.

Sebenarnya, Radeon 9550 dan 9600 ini merupakan varian yang sama, karena menggunakan chipset yang sama yaitu RV350. Hanya saja Radeon 9600 dijual dengan clock yang lebih tinggi (dan harga yang lebih tinggi) daripada Radeon 9550.

Namun karena adanya kesamaan chipset tersebut, banyak produsen yang menjual Radeon 9550 versi Extreme yang memiliki performa setara Radeon 9600, bahkan ada yang dapat dioverclock hingga mendekati Radeon 9600XT yang harganya terpaut cukup jauh.

Radeon 9500 Pro

Radeon 9500 Pro ini sudah punah di pasaran. menemukan Radeon 9500 Pro baru di toko-toko komputer merupakan hal yang hampir mustahil.

Radeon 9500 series sendiri berumur pendek karena dinilai merugikan ATI. Versi awal-awalnya, Radeon 9500 ini bisa disoftmod dengan mudah menjadi Radoen 9700 Pro yang harganya lebih dari 1x lipat lebih mahal. Kemudian munculah Radeon 9500 versi baru, dimana layout memorinya berbentuk I, tidak lagi L. Namun tetap saja, Radeon 9500 tersebut masih bisa disoftmod menjadi Radeon 9500 Pro dan dioverclock hingga setara Radeon 9700 dengan mudah.

Oleh sebab itulah, ATI segera menghentikan produksi Radeon 9500 series dan menggantikannya dengan Radeon 9600 yang jauh lebih lamban dibandingkan Radeon 9500 series.

Radeon 9500 Pro memiliki 8 pixel pipeline, dengan lebar bus 128-bit. Clock core/memnya adalah 275 MHz / 270 MHz.

Radeon 9600 Series

Radeon 9600 Series adalah pengganti dari 9500 series. Ada beberapa versi 9600, yaitu SE, Nonpro, Pro, dan XT. Radeon 9600 menggunakan chipset RV350, kecuali Radeon 9600XT yang menggunakan chipset RV360.

Semua versi 9600 memiliki 4 pixel pipeline. Versi SE memiliki lebar bus 64-bit, sedangkan selain versi SE memiliki lebar bus 128-bit. Hal yang membedakan antar versi tersebut adalah clock core dan memorynya.

Disini wakil dari 9600 yang masuk ke dalam chart adalah Radeon 9600 Nonpro dan Radeon 9600XT. Radeon 9600 XT memiliki clock core / mem sebesar 500 MHz / 300 MHz, sedangkan versi nonpro memiliki clock core / mem sebesar 325 MHz / 200 MHz.

Radeon 9800 Pro

Sama seperti halnya Radoen 9500, Radeon 9700 yang muncul diawal-awal juga cepat digusur oleh ATI. Radeon 9800 ini adalah pengganti dari Radeon 9700. Dari sisi teknologi, Radeon 9800 dan 9700 ini tidak jauh berbeda. Perbedaan hanya terlihat pada clock core dan memorynya. Radeon 9800 Pro ini memiliki clock core/mem sebesar 380 MHz / 340 MHz. Bandingkan dengan Radeon 9700 Pro yang hanya 325 MHz / 310 MHz. Radeon 9800 memiliki 8 pixel pipeline untuk melancarkan operasi shader.

Radeon X800

Seri X dari ATI ini merupakan seri tertinggi ATI saat ini. Varian terbarunya adalah X850. Dalam chart ini, wakil dari X800 yang hadir adalah X800 Pro dan X800 XT Platinum Edition. X800 Pro sudah memiliki 12 pixel pipeline, dengan clock core/mem sebesar 475 MHz / 475 MHz. Sedangkan X800XT PE memiliki 16 pixel pipeline, dengan clock/mem sebesar 520 MHz / 560 MHz.

X800 Pro dan X800 XT PE ini sudah menggunakan memory GDDR3, dengan lebar bus 256-bit. Memory VGA nya sendiri berjumlah 256 MB. Dengan spesifikasi seperti ini, seharusnya game-game saat ini bisa berjalan dengan mulus.

Nokia N Series: Fully Featured Multimedia Phones

Setting itself apart from the standard mobile phones, the latest mobile phone Nokia N90 combines rich functionality into a compact all-in-one device. The handset comes loaded with features like a 2-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, integrated flash, an amazingly high-resolution screen, Bluetooth and USB connectivity. The handset offers video capture in higher resolutions than other camera phones. Do video calling and instant messaging, access the internet, email with this feature rich mobile phone. Providing a lot of printing options, the Nokia Xpress print solution lets you do wireless printing over Bluetooth wireless technology. You can easily store pictures and video clips taken with the Nokia N90. As far as memory is concerned, it has a mere 31 MB with an included 64MB for additional storage. Get a full set of advanced digital camera features and get high value mobile photography.

Packed with the latest multimedia and smartphone technologies, the Nokia N91 includes email support, a full web browser, video sharing and a 2 megapixel camera. The multitude of connectivity options allow you to enjoy music whenever you want. The music payer consists of enhanced music features like 5-band equalizer, loudness, and mixer. The integrated Bluetooth wireless technology allows you to send and receive images, video clips and graphics. For downloading music content, multimedia messages, ringing tones, images, video clips, and applications, there is 4 GB of memory which is enough for downloading your entertainment stuff. An additional 30MB is there for storing your contacts, calendar notes and events, text messages. The Nokia N91 is designed to be a superb music playing device together with the basic phone features.

Both these multimedia devices can found easily with the online mobile phone shops offering amazing contract mobile phone deals. You can even get them free as a part of a deal having offers like free mobile phones.

Nokia N90: Refined Digital Affair

The sudden surge of highly efficient mobile phones created ripples across the mobile arena. Actually, it's not about those smart features, which can make a whole lot of difference in your mobile life, but the stupendous flux of such phones has added more fire in the competition. And, it is not for the manufactures only, things are also getting difficult for a common user, who finds innumerable options, which do create some sort of confusion and apprehension. No matter how hard the competition could be, but the best phones would always draw the attention of users. Undoubtedly, Nokia's world wide renowned N-series has it all to counter any sort of stiff competition, as it is adorned with superb gadgets, which are duly updated to live up to the growing expectations of mobile phone users.

The Nokia N90 is one such incredible performer, which really stands out of the clutter. This device has earned a dedicated following across the globe for its camera features. So, first of all, let's investigate the potential of its camera features. It is equipped with a 2.0 mega-pixel camera, which is also supported by autofocus, and 20x digital zoom – effortless photography with precision. To make things further easier for you, this phone also comes with a multi-hinge design, which allows you to twist this phone as per your requirements. Sporting dual screen, you can instantly shift between picture mode to video mode. Moreover, its dedicated camera key and an intuitive display also offers a good platform to view all those pictures, videos and features.

After capturing all those pictures, you can easily share them with your friends via MMS and Bluetooth. If you like to showcase your creative work to the world, then you can easily to that by putting all that stuff to your favourite blog site. This phone also supports XpressPrint printing solutions, hence you can easily take the printouts of all those pictures. As such, the phone is endowed with a 31MB of inbuilt memory with 64MB in-box RS-MMC. There are some other high end features in the Nokia N90 with a multimedia music player, WLAN, 3G, and Wi-Fi among others. With all that stuff, you would really find it great to have a Nokia N90.

How To Put Movies On Your PSP?

Now that you have purchased you new PSP you will want to use it to its full capabilities. Watching movies on your portable play station is not difficult; but there are a few hardware considerations that must be in place before you can actually watch your favorite flick on the fly.

The first requirement is a device that will contain your MP4 (movie) files called a Pro Duo Stick. 512 MB is the norm and quite sufficient for this purpose.

Of course, you will want to have a DVD player installed on your system along with a DVD ripper as this will allow you to download the movie from a particular DVD onto your computer.

And, you will need to have a USB cable so you can connect the PSP to your computer.

The last, and some would say, the most important part is a conversion software program that will allow conversion of movie and video files to MP4 format so you can watch them on your PSP. However, technology has advanced to the stage that some DVD software includes the converter files as part of their bundled software package.

Once you have all the necessary components and software applications on hand, preparing your PSP to play movies can be accomplished with a few simple steps.

1. If you do not have the movie you want already installed on your computer, place the selected movie in your DVD player and activate your DVD maker. Click on extract (or rip, depending on your manufacturers specs). Provide location of where you would like to have the file saved. And save it.

2. If you are trying to load a movie already on the hard drive of your computer to your PSP, you only have to click on add on your DVD ripper, then designate where you would like the file to be saved to.

3. Once the file is saved to your hard drive, click on extract and/or encode located in the PSP video converter and then save that file. (If your DVD ripper/PSP video converter software contains the combined application as stated above, steps a,b and c can be combined.)

The Files are on my Computer, Now what do I do?

The correct format (MP4) for PSP movie viewing should now be listed on your computer. So now you have to complete the last steps.

4. All you have to do is connect your PSP to your computer via the USB cable, create a new folder on the Memory Stick (name it MP_Root), then make a sub-folder (100MNV01) inside the Root folder. This is where you will copy your selected MP4 files.

5. Launch the memory stick on your PSP and enjoy your flick.

Enjoy your movie!

How To Download Music To Your PSP

So, you have purchased a brand new Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) and are a little confused as to how to listen to your favorite tunes. With the latest audio technology, your PSP can read and play all familiar music files such as MP3, MP4 and others. All you need to do is make sure the file format you use is compatible with the PSP.

This article will give you a step-by-step process to get you going and to allow you to enjoy your music wherever you go.

Downloading music to your PSP is a relatively simple matter. The following steps will make your task a little easier.

How to download music files from your PC to a PSP:

1. Ensure that your PSP has a Memory Stick Duo. Format by going to Home/ Settings/System Settings/Select option (X button)/format memory stick/select. This is a one-time only procedure.
2. Attach USB cable into PSP on top middle edge and in available slot on PC.
3. On Settings menu, select USB Connect. This allows your PC to recognize the PSP as a removable drive.
4. Reboot system after drivers have loaded.
5. After reboot, PSP will show up as Removable disk.
6. Double click on this drive; highlight folder called PSP, double click and you will see four individual folders already set up: Game, Music, Photos & Save Data.
7. Drag your MP3 files into MUSIC folder.

What if I Need to Convert my music files?

1. If conversion is necessary, you may need to use an audio conversion program. Check out the internet for an abundant supply of various programs designed for this regardless of whether you operate in a MAC or a WINDOWS environment.
2. When you begin the Switch Program, it will take you to a blank window.
3. Click Add Folder, search My documents and then My Music, select your music files.
4. Select the output format you want.
5. Now you can copy all the files you want to the relative folders.
6. When finished,scroll list to Devices with removable storage, click on PSP removable disk and select Eject.
7. If you get an error message from windows regarding ejection failure, you can just ignore it. Once you unplug the PSP, the message will go away and everything will work fine.

How Do I Listen to my Music?
Listening to your downloaded songs is as simple as going to your Music folder, search until you see the list of MP3 files, click and enjoy.

Guitar Hero – the Origins of Video Game Rock

Guitar Hero was originally released on the PS2 on one glorious day in November of 2005. This much anticipated video game was special in that instead of the usual control pad used to play, the game was designed for use with a life-like guitar shaped device.

This unique controller was modelled after a real guitar called a Gibson SG. Using the guitar controller was very similar to using a real guitar, albeit with a few minor adjustments for simplicity’s sake. Instead of containing several frets and six strings, the guitar hero controller had 5 fret buttons of differing colors, and a strum bar for strumming.

Originally developed by a video game company named Harmonix, it went on to receive numerous awards for its ingenuity and for the core of the game, its musical soundtrack. With 47 rock tracks by various big name artists, from the modern day to the 60s.

Due to the success of the first game, a second was released for the Playstation 2 in 2006, this time with an astonishing 64 musical tracks. Additional features included were the ability to multi-play against friends and non-friends alike. It went on to become the fifth highest grossing game of 2006 for the PS2. And due to unprecedented demand, a Guitar Hero II version was released for the Xbox 360. This version came with a special guitar and more songs.

The third in the series, aptly named Guitar Hero 3, will be released in October of 2007. The company behind it this time is Activision, who have taken over development of the game from Harmonix. But fear not, as Activision is a major power-house in the gaming industry, having churned out such classics as the Tony Hawk Series and the Call of Duty series.

The much anticipated Guitar Hero 3, has been confirmed to contain at least 46 songs, with new characters and an all new Battle Mode. Characters from the previous games to be featured in the new Guitar Hero 3 are Casey Lynch, Axel Steel, Judy Nails, Izzy Sparks, Johnny Napalm, Xavier Stone and Lars Umlaut. A brand new playable character will be Midori. Unfortunately Clive and Pandora were removed from the game. For the boss battles, there will be three. One of them being Slash, who is also rumoured to be a playable character.

Guitar Hero III, also known as Legends of Rock, will be available on the PS2, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Activision are also actively looking to bring the game to the Nintendo DS.

Playstation 2 is Sony's Second Video Game

The PlayStation 2 is Sony's second video game console, the successor to the PlayStation and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3. Its development was announced in March 1999, and it was first released in Japan on March 4, 2000, in North America on October 26, 2000 and in Europe on November 24, 2000.

The PS2 is part of the sixth generation era, and has become the fastest selling and arguably the most dominant home console of video game history, with over 115 million units shipped worldwide by December 2006.

Only a few million people had obtained consoles by the end of 2000 due to manufacturing delays. The PlayStation 2 was so popular after its release that it was difficult to find units on retailer shelves. Another popular option was purchasing the console online through auction websites.

Many analysts predicted a close 3-way matchup between the PS2 and competitors Microsoft's Xbox and the Nintendo GameCube (which was the cheapest of the three consoles and had an open market of games). However, the release of several blockbuster games during the 2001 holiday season pushed the PS2 in order to maintain momentum and hold off its rivals.

Games
The brand strength has led to strong third-party support for the system. Although the launch titles for the Playstation2 were unimpressive in 2000, the Christmas season of 2001 saw the release of several best-selling and critically acclaimed games. These games helped the PS2 maintain and extend its lead in the video game console market, despite increased competition from the launches of the Microsoft Xbox and GameCube. In several cases, Sony made exclusivity deals with publishers in order to pre-empt its competitors.

All You Need To Know About The Cheats Of Video And Pc Games Part 2.

Walkthrough/solve:

These are usually text files (.rts, txt or .doc) that give a detailed description of how to play a game from the beginning to the end. If you read through these too early in the game, you will lose some of the fun of playing with the game.

Puzzle solutions:

These are keys to puzzles that are necessary for you if you want to get ahead in the game. They can be keys to doors, quiz questions, safe combinations, the use of certain objects that the player has to find out relying on the information gathered during the game. These are not considered cheats, either. But if you read them in advance, you will lose some fun of the game.

Strategy guides/game guides:

We can make a distinction between official and non-official game guides. Official guides are printed, illustrated books that are published by game developing companies and you can buy them online or in bookshops. Non-official game guides or FAQ's are detailed descriptions made by game fans about particular games, which are usually free and available electronically in txt. or doc. format on the Internet. You can also find game guides in magazines dealing with video games. These detailed descriptions do not only contain the goals of the game, the game control commands, characters, the objects, the rule system, but you can also find extensive information about the strategies concerning end plays and the different situations in a particular game. They used to be made for more complex games such as simulators or strategic games but nowadays they come with almost every video game.

Trainers:

These software are not developed by game developers, they are designed for the manipulation of certain memory values. They usually consist of an 'exe. file' that can be downloaded from the Internet in zipped or compressed format. Trainers allow you to alter certain values and features that are originally not built in the game. For instance, money trainers will give unlimited money, or with the touch of a bottom you can switch on the invulnerability mode. Enthusiastic players and coding people make them for PC games.

In order to use these trainers you have to start the game and with the combination of the ALT+TAB keys you have to switch back to your operating system. Some games do not permit the switch with the combination of the ALT+TAB keys if there is not a parallel program running in the background so it is worth the trouble to open an operating screen before the start of the game. Another simple way of switching back is to use the WIN button on your keyboard.

Before you run the trainer it is important to check it for viruses to make sure that your trainer is free from viruses. In this way you can avoid many unpleasant surprises. Run the program and select the desired option in the trainer. In some cases, if you press certain keys or the combination of certain keys during the game it will result in the desired modifications. You can get information about these modifications and their consequences when you start the trainer as this kind of info is written on the screen right after you start running the program.

Return to your PC game while you are running the trainer, in other words, it is important to run the trainer in the background while your are playing with your game.

Why does the trainer not work with your game?

The most common problem is that the trainer is not compatible with the particular game you play as a result it does not function because it was made for a game with a version number, which is different from the game you use. Most trainers are released with info (.nfo) and readme txt files. In these files you will find all the necessary information about their proper use and the version numbers of the games they are compatible with. In some cases you have to start the trainer before running the game. It is recommended to try out both methods.

Saved game files:

These files have all the different game positions of other players saved for a particular game. They are created when the player has successfully completed a level or has defeated a main enemy or when the hero of the game has been upgraded with super qualities. If you would like to use these files all you have to do is to copy them into the saved game directory of the game and to load them when you start the game. It is highly recommended to make a backup copy of your game positions just in case the new ones would not work.

Editors:

The editors are small programs that enable the player to modify some files of the video game. These can be saved game files or 'ini' files that contain game specific information or files concerning the different characters of the game. Similarly to trainers these are also created by game enthusiasts or programmers. The most common type is the character editor that can alter the characters' features, such as hitpoint, dexterity, or stamina in the different RPG games. They can also alter the objects' characteristics in the different games. They are very much likely to operate with only those games that have exactly the same version number. The editors should be run in the installation directory that corresponds with the location of those files that we would like to modify, in other cases these files have to be loaded into the editor.

Uhs:

This abbreviation stands for Universal Hint System. These files have so-called 'uhs' extensions and in order to take a look at them you need a UHS viewer software. It provides you either with hints on how to accomplish certain tasks or with direct keys to certain tasks in a given game. You can freely download from their website.

Hex cheats:

They belong to the most difficult types of cheats and you are required to possess at least intermediate or advanced computer skills to implement them. This type of cheat usually contains a "hex address" and a certain value that should be replaced.

E.g. endless energy: with the help of the Hex Editor you are to replace:

08 3E F0 03 00 74 03 with 08 3E F0 03 00 90 90.

In order to implement this modification you need a Hex Editor. The most well-known ones are the following: WinHex, Hex Workshop, Hex Edit, Advanced Hex Editor, Cygnus Hex Editor. In all cases it is highly recommended to make a backup copy of the file you intend to modify.

Gameshark/Action replay/ Other patch codes:

To apply these cheats you need to buy certain hardware accessories. These are hardware, special devices that you can connect to your game systems and enable you to modify certain features in your games that are originally not permitted. They provide you with advantages such as eternal life, infinite ammunition, objects or money. They function similarly to trainers and they are based on the manipulation of memory values. These cheats are available in shops that sell video games. The most common ones are Game Genie, Pro Action Replay, GameShark, and Codebreaker. The cheats that are used with the games are purchased together with these devices or available in codebooks or via the Internet on certain web pages.

It seems clear now that there is a great deal of different cheats whose applications vary from games to games, ranging from typing in a keyword to complex programming. Only one question remains: Where can you find cheats or help for your favourite game on the Internet?

I can highly recommend the Abby-cheat.com for a start.

It's Time To End The Reign Of The Football Cheats

It's Germany 2006, another World Cup and another outrageous exhibition of diving, gamesmanship and just downright cheating.

The time has come to call a halt on this scandalous behavior and restore the image of the beautiful game.

Sepp Blatter ordered referees to come down hard and keep the lid on unruly players. The problem is the cheats have seen this as an opportunity to take advantage of the hard-line approach.

By diving and conning the referee they know they can get even more of their opponents booked or sent off and banned for forthcoming games.

It seems a ridiculous situation where millions of fans around the world can view replays and know the truth within seconds, yet the only man in the dark is the man in charge and entrusted with keeping the integrity of the match.

With the referees now wired for sound and in constant communication with each other, surely the time has come for an official sat in front of a television replay who can inform the referee of what really happened.

Indeed, cheating has now sunk to such depths that even one of football's finest professionals has succumbed.

Thierry Henry is a player adored both sides of the English Channel and has always showed the greatest sincerity on a football pitch.

Yet this was the same Henry who went down clutching his face as if he had been elbowed, yet suffered nothing more than a firm shoulder to his chest.

The resulting free kick led to effectively what was the winning goal for France against Spain in the second round of the World Cup.

Now I've nothing but the greatest admiration for Thierry Henry as both a man and a professional footballer, but what chance has the game got when one of its greatest ambassadors sinks to such levels.

Come on FIFA, its time cheating was removed from the beautiful game.

Hitman: Blood Money Cheats for Xbox 360

One of the hottest games currently out for the Xbox 360 is the game Hitman: Blood Money. This is a gruesome first person shooter where you are tasked with taking out individuals. You earn money along the way and pick-up goods as you go forward. This game is quickly becoming a classic in the Genre.

Playing first person shooters is either your style or not. This shooter pits you as a Hitman roaming the city completing the task of taking out your marks. To play this game without cheats can be a total blast literally.

However adding a few cheats to your arsenal will make the speed with which you can complete this game extraordinary. You can wow your friends with the Hitman:Blood Money rate of completion or the leveling that you can achieve.

The first cheat that is extremely popular with this game is fairly straightforward. As with any game of this genre money is key to your game playing enjoyment. Gaining money is even more important. So follow the brief outline below to achieve this cheat:

First complete any level as poorly as you can collecting as little money along the way as possible. The goal is to complete the level but not achieve an effective high score.

Save the game at the completion of this level. Now go back and play the level a 2nd time. This time do all that you can to collect as much gold along the way as possible. Immediately before escaping the level create a save point.

Now the fun begins your new account balance will be shown. Which is your previous account balance plus the difference in your earnings for the second game play.

At the mission review screen press the B button and return to the first of the mission review shots. Next press the Y button. You will be prompted that your progress will be lost. This is the glitch in the game that you have been searching for in reality your money level will not be affected. So replay the level again collecting money as much as possible.

Play all the way through to the mission review screen and repeat the B to Y button presses until you are satisfied that your bank account is sufficient to carry on. This is effectively an infinite source of money for your account as you can continue to repeat the level and earn money.

Finally a cheat to get past that pesky limited saves. If you have ever become frustrated because the Hitman: Blood Money game doesn't have unlimited saves look no further.

The game actually does have an unlimited save feature, it just isn't listed as such to the normal user. When you are saving during a mission simply press the Start button prior to the save completing. This will not harm your save but your saves will not increment so that you now have the ability to complete the levels in normal and expert mode without the fear of running out of saves.

These are just a few of the cheats that I have used in playing Hitman: Blood Money. This is an absolutely fabulous game that can keep you entertained for hours. Enjoy the cheats and the game.

World of Warcraft Guide: an Introduction for Beginners

It is a fact that the Warcraft game series is one of the best selling, most popular, vastly accepted series of computer games in the history of mankind. Especially the multiplayer version of the game titled "World of Warcraft" has been and it still is the top role playing/action game as we speak. Here are a few tips if you are just entering the magical world of warcraft.

If you are an honest individual/internet user you will legally purchase the game instead of downloading a pirate copy or a hacked version through the various download/sharing networks. Then you will discover that there are four discs, a comprehensive manual and a few other stuff like maps and logos. Regardless of where you found the game, you must install it to your personal computer in order to play it. The installation is pretty straight forward and it will guide you through the creation of your first world of warcraft account. This will be your game account.

In order to start entering the action of the world of warcraft you have to join one of the various game servers around the world. That's when the real magic of the game begins. There are a series of world of warcraft servers with different attributes, rules and action types spread around the world. These servers are called realms. Not all servers are good for beginners. It is wise to start experimenting with the game play in a server for beginners and then move on to a server for advanced players. In order to join the servers you usually have to pay a typical monthly subscription but there are servers for beginners where you can join for free.

A few words about the world of Azeroth now, which is the actual place/land where the game is taking place. This is a fictional world which is vast and beautiful, surrounded by myths and legends of warriors, spirits, magicians and monsters. It is a world where hunger for gold, fame and knowledge prevails. This world could be a resemblance of our real earth world at medieval times. There are three big continents in Azeroth with cities, villages, castles and dungeons, forests, rivers and all sorts of structures.

There are also a lot of entities in the world of warcraft. Each of the three continents is inhabited by different races. For example in the eastern continent lies the kingdom of the Alliance of the humans the gnomes and the dwarves. Kalidmor on the other hand, which is one more of the continents, is the home of the evil orcs and trolls. The orcs and the trolls along with another race called the taurens, form the Horde. The Alliance and the Horde are in constant war.

When you start the game you have to choose sides. You will either join the forces of the Alliance or the forces of the Horde. Then you will have to create your own special character by choosing one of the nine classes of characters that exist in the world of warcraft. Each class possess different skills, attributes and talents inside the game. For example a hunter or a warrior is not the same as a druid or a mage. This part of the game is the most important. Choosing the right class the fits your own personality or skills will help you while you move on.

As you begin your quest in the of world of warcraft, your goal should be to gather as much gold as possible and to start gaining battle experience by defeating lesser monsters and other creatures. As you progress you will encounter different creatures and greater monsters. In order to defeat those you will need the help of other individuals. That is the secret to succeed in the game. You must form a strong team of characters/people that will fight together and will stay united at all costs. If you can't form a team of your own it might be a good idea to join an existing team of characters controlled by different people around the world.

If you have played similar action/role playing games then you will find the controls of the game are pretty easy to follow. You must know how to use your keyboard and your mouse to take advantage of the three dimensional environment that world of warcraft offers. Even if you've never played such a game before you will see that the game play is straight forward and not difficult at all to understand and learn. This is one of the reasons world of warcraft became so popular after all.

Protecting your S E Rankings

Your website's ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately, the Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out search engines.

The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for "spam" pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine's index.

The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the "spam" net and tossed from a search engine's index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do - and things you should be sure NOT to do - which will prevent this kind of misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links "bad neighborhoods."

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check, and double-check, all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven't linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar at toolbar.google.com. You will then see that most pages are given a "Pagerank" which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale.
These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye - but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page's link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text - splat! the page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit noverzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background color of your page is gray, and you have placed gray text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the gray text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page - ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called "keyword stuffing." It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called "Keyphrase Density" to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering - unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is "renters insurance," be sure you don't use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as "cloaking." To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you?cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is "cloaked" because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site's search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page's ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as "pagejacking." This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of "off page" elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.

Google Reveals Advertising Strategy for Youtube

You Tube, which has been bought by the Big G (a.k.a Google) in November 2006, has revealed its new online marketing strategy - small half transparent adverts are incorporated in a selection of video clips.

* How does it work?

The advert will be shown for 15 seconds after a user has started to watch the video. It will appear for 10 seconds on only 20% of the bottom screen without much disturbing the viewer. The user will have the choice during these 10 seconds to close the ad or even let it run throughout the video clip.

* Who would apply for this new marketing channel?

For the moment more than 1000 partners such as BMW or Warner Bros. have the possibility to broadcast their message through YouTube.

* Will the ads show on all YouTube videos?

This new advertising system will only appear on selected partner videos and not on the personal movies.

* How can the target group be selected?

Companies will have the possibility to target their ad through different criteria like demographic, geography or even day part.

According to Google “Less than 10% of viewers actively move to close the overlay when it appears and that there is a 5 to 10 times “click-to-play rate” compared with standard advertising format”.

This means it could be a good opportunity to diversify the way to broadcast an advert and try to get other people or new target groups never reached before. With this new way of presentation, community and sharing websites like YouTube will capture the interest of more people and as a result generate more revenues for Google and its partner companies.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the search industry.

SEO for Google

SEO for keywords and content is relatively easy. Choose your keyword. Write content around that keyword. Use an SEO optimizer program to make sure you have done it right.

Long gone are the days of writing unrelated content, and then typing "Britney Spears" 100 times at the end of the article. Today's search engine spiders can spot the "Black Hat" SEO techniques a mile away, and your site can be banned for life.

Here are a few tips for SEO optimization:

Be focussed in your meta keywords - 1 to 3 SEO optimized keywords is enough
Put your keyword at the beginning of you page title tag.
Make sure you title tag is the first tag in the head section
Make sure your keyword appears in the alt tag for images and in link text, but no more than 3 times
Put your keyword in bold
Put your keyword in the H1 section of your page, and H2 if you can
Have a keyword weigh in your article between 3-6% (higher is "keyword spamming")
SEO for domain names
Going back to the Nike.com example from my "SEO for Google" article. Since the keyword weight is 0%, how does nike.com get to billing when you search for them? Easy, Google gives a rank weight to domain names.

Make sure your primary domain name reflects the main purpose of your site (domain SEO). This site, for example, is all about my desire to "retire with millions". The site is subdivided in to many SEO optimized sub-domains each with a URL that denotes the sections. For example, all my SEO articles are in a sub-directory called ../seo.

Many articles have been written about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Google. Google is the largest search engine (for now) and getting your SEO right for the Googlebot can make your site top ten site getting millions of hits a day. On the other hand, poor SEO and your site may never be ranked and your campaigns for Adsence will never net you any real money. Even worse, bad SEO might mean that your cutting edge product is un-finable by your customers.

Google page rank is determined by a number of factors:

SEO keywords
SEO content
SEO domain name
Originality of content
Number of links from external sites
SEO keywords and SEO content will be dealt with in another article, lets focus on the other 2 for now.

Original Content
Having original content on your site is a no-brainer. It is the "why" that escapes many SEO web content developers. We have all seen the ads promising "150000 Adsense and SEO optimized pages". If it were this easy, all of us would be multi-millionaires by now. The reality is, Googlebot applies a penalty for non-original content, no mater how SEO you might think the page is. Think about it - why does "Nike.com" come up number 1 when you type Nike into Google? You or I could probably write a better SEO page about Nike than Nike.com. In fact, Nike.com keyword density for "Nike" is 0%!!!

Links from External Sites
Google take into account the number of links you have from external sites. Each link is like a "vote" for your site. Before you go and sign up for a link exchange program, consider this, some links do not count, in fact, being a "link spammer" can kill your ranking, no matter how good your SEO.

There are ways to generate quality back links:

Create a blog on blogspot.com (a Google Site) and write about your web page - include properly formatted links
Join blogs on respected sites and comment on articles, putting your URL in your signature
Write "press releases" when you update your site and post them on the free press release sites around the web
Take out classified ads in respected on-line newspapers
Make small donations to charity sites that keep a "Thank You" page and include your web site with your name
These are just some tips to compliment your SEO work to get a good Google ranking.

Google Page Rank Is It Relevant To Your Websites Placement?

What is Google Page Rank and how does it affect me you ask. Google Page Rank is a website score that represents how important a websites relevance is in the category of business they represent. Google gets this score from measuring the amount of quality links pointing to your site from other websites with the same relevance. If you have a link to your website from another website with a Google Page Rank of 5 and is relevant to the subject matter your company represents, then Google sees that as a quality link. If you can get your link on a homepage of a high ranking website that is relevant to yours, then you will get a higher score than putting it on a sub page of the site which will usually get a lower Page Rank.

Google usually makes a major Page Rank update every three to four months. Its servers around the globe have to compare there information and the Page Rank is not complete until all of Googles servers have been updated with the new Page Rank scores.

The Page Rank is measured from 1 to ten one being the lowest score and ten being the highest you can have. New sites and sites that have not had any search engine optimization applied to them will have a score of 0. If you use Mozilla Firefox for browsing you can install a new add called SEO Quake. This tool will allow you to see how many links you have in Google and Yahoo. It will show you the sites page rank and when the site was registered. You can do a search in Google for new music for example. The free results will show up with all the link info and page rank score below the text listing. You can compare all the sites for yourself and can make a partial determination that the Google Page Rank is still a large factor is determining your placement for targeted keywords in the free listings.

I currently manage the SEO campaigns for 27 successful websites and have noticed my Google placement on all staying consistent in their positions as Yahoo and MSN positions continue to rise. Google has made several updates on my back link quality and count on each site but I see little movement in the sites placement since April when the last PR update was performed. The page rank is more than just a number and if it is that irrelevant than Google has not made many other major updates on its server since April either.

Just remember, optimize your site for your customers first and for the search engines second. You can get plenty of traffic using the wrong keywords but visitors will see your site is not what they were looking for when they get there. A few quality back links are more relevant than a bunch of non relevant back links. Use common sense and consider what your customers are looking for and what they expect to see when they get to your website.

Search Engine Optimization For WordPress Users

For bloggers using WordPress, optimizing for search engines can be an interesting undertaking. There really are two parts to the process, and that fact tends to complicate the issue somewhat. Learning both elements can be a very crucial step in the development of a successful WordPress blogger.

Writing With SEO In Mind

A successful WordPress blogger needs to first learn how to write with search engine optimization in mind. The title of each post is crucial for achieving good rankings. Adding keywords to the title can make the post rank a lot better for those keywords, and making the title catchy can help it to get linked to a lot more. Creating a good title can be the difference between being successful with search engine rankings and not getting ranked at all.

Once a catchy title that include keywords has been written, the blogger will move on to the post itself. Headings should be used within the post, and variations of the desired keyword should be used in the headings. The section beneath the heading should accurately describe what the heading is about. This serves a few purposes. First, the description will likely contain additional words that will be searched for, and also people will be more likely to link to the post if it is helpful.

In order to achieve good rankings, the post must be long enough to be helpful. A 50 word post may be difficult to get ranked, while a 500 word post will rank in a much better location. Whether the post is long or short, it will get ranked in a better position if there are enough inbound links pointing to it.

Optimizing Your Theme

The second main aspect of search engine optimization for WordPress is optimizing the theme itself. WordPress blogs tend to have a few critical errors that hurt their search engine rankings. Most of the time, the heading tags are used in the wrong places. Make sure that there aren't any heading tags being used in the sidebar of your theme. Headings should only by used within your posts to describe a specific section. Using excess headings all over will dilute the effectiveness of your real headings.

You should also make sure that the 'heading 1' tag is being used around your most important keyword, and that your most important keyword appears in your HTML title. This will help you to rank better for that keyword. Many bloggers keep the default settings, and this will surely hurt your traffic in the long run. Using these techniques, you should really be able to increase your search engine rankings.

How Can I Upgrade My PC For Gaming?

Technology moves so fast these days. By the time you've bought a pc it's guaranteed that most of the parts will be out of date within a few months. This can also depend on where you buy your pc from as well. A lot of companies sell pc packages that can seem like good value for money at the time. They bundle a printer, scanner and other add-ons with your pc, but then you find out that you're spending tons of cash on ink, your pc is too generic and not good enough for what you want to use it for, gaming!

If you drop by your local "best buy" or "pc world" to look for a new pc to play the latest games then you're going to run in to problems. A lot of gamers these days make or at least customize their own pc's from scratch. Why? Because they know what's needed to run these games.

90% of pc's today that are sold through those types of stores in packages are aimed at the average "I want a pc so I can surf the net, play music and watch dvd's" consumer. These pc's are acceptable for those needs but if you want to play the latest games then you haven't got a chance of getting them to run to their necessary requirements.

Too many time's I've seen people go out and buy a brand new pc, try to go online and play a new game such as "Battlefield 2" or "Quake 4" and find out that the game runs bad even on the lowest settings. They then end up spending twice as much on a pc by having to buy a new one from scratch or upgrade a lot of the parts because they've made the mistake of buying an "e-Machine" in the first place.

So you have an old pc you want to upgrade so you can play the latest games. The main components you will need to look at for upgrading are :

Motherboard
Power supply (PSU)
Processor (CPU)
Memory (RAM)
Graphics card
Sound card

I put them in this order for the below reasons although some people may disagree with me.

The motherboard is the main component in your pc as it ties all the other components together. You can buy the best CPU and graphics card and sound card, but if your motherboard stinks then they aren't going to be able to work to the best of their abilities.

The power supply is extremely important. If you can't get enough power to the rest of the parts in your pc then nothing will work properly and in some case, they won't even work at all. You can pick up a cheap power supply for about $20 but normally with technology these days, you get what you pay for. If you intend to have a top notch graphics card and powerful CPU in your pc then you need a good quality power supply that is stable and capable of powering all your pc's parts effectively.

The CPU (central processing unit) is the heart of your pc. If you have a slow CPU but the best graphics card and motherboard then your CPU will hold back the other components in your pc.

Your computer's memory is just as important as the CPU. This will be used to store and transfer the data on your pc fast and if you have bad, slow or not enough memory then it's going to slow the rest of your pc down.

The graphics card is extremely important in today's games. If you can't render the graphics fast enough then you'll experience lag and slow down in your games no matter how good the rest of your pc is. Most "bundled" graphics cards are built on to the motherboards in packaged pc's and share the actual system memory. This is BAD for gaming!

The sound card isn't as important as the rest of the components but it can help your pc perform better. If you have a stand alone sound card, it takes some of the workload off of your cpu and motherboard and a lot of today's best sound cards even have their own special sound system that is used by a lot of new games.

Obviously if you want to be able to play the best games on the market and if you play competitively online then you want to be able to play to the best of your abilities and not have to worry about your pc not being able to handle the needs of today's games.

It can be expensive but there are easy ways for you to upgrade on a budget. Maybe if you're thinking of upgrading now then you should go ahead but even starting to look for the best parts to upgrade your pc can be a daunting task.

Personally when I'm upgrading I never go for the very top of the range. You don't have to buy the best (as you know it's going to be going down in price dramatically in the next few months) but you can still get some great pc hardware for good prices that will run those games without any slowdown and still make them look and feel great to play.

One bad link in the chain will hinder your computer's performance. When you want to upgrade or even buy a new pc you must ensure that each part is as good as the others to get the best performance and stability for any type of computer tasks.

How to Evaluate a Used Ferrari for Purchase

For car lovers, the ultimate in sports car pleasure is to slip behind the wheel of a Ferrari. If it is your deepest desire to own a Ferrari, you will want to make sure to evaluate the Ferrari carefully before you make a purchase. In this way you can ensure that you are getting a quality vehicle that will be a good investment.

Once you have narrowed down which particular Ferrari you would like to have as your own, you will need to get an idea of how much that vehicle is worth. There are some good sources for Ferrari valuation. Although ordinarily a wealth of information about several different makes of cars, the Kelley Blue Book lists no pricing information for used Ferraris. Instead, try the N.A.D.A. Official Used Car Guide. Select the "Consumer" guide, and then enter the make and model as well as the year, and you will get back pricing information.

You can search online for the investment car dealer nearest you, although you will certainly have a larger selection to choose from if your search is not limited by geography. When you have a particular car that you are considering, you will want to take a close look at the car's history. One way to do that is to request a history report of the Ferrari for sale. There are several available online, including Experian Automotive and Carfax, which offers a guaranteed used car report for the history of the car.

In addition, you will want to inquire as to how the vehicle was maintained by previous owners. Poor maintenance can make for a car that is a poor investment, so checking on this critical area can be an important criterion for your Ferrari car evaluation. You will also need to find out if the vehicle has ever been in any accidents, or survived floods, both of which can potentially reduce the value of the car. It pays to have a qualified mechanic from a Ferrari dealer perform a pre-purchase inspection of the vehicle.

Since this is an investment, you will want to be sure to look at how well the vehicle in question will retain its initial value. Since they do not make anymore vintage Ferraris from the 1950s, for example, if you have one that is in great condition, the value will increase simply due to the scarcity involved. Value can also be based in part on its popularity, as well as the way people think about its value.

You can learn a lot about Ferraris for sale by joining a Ferrari club. Members can give advice on maintaining a new Ferrari or a vintage Ferrari. Here you will likely be able to gather information to help you find a great Ferrari.

Ferrari Racing

F1 car from ferrari F2004 is made for F1 championships and it is its 50s car created for that prestigious competition. That projects, which was known by the code 655 is a new evolution for ferrari concepts, as seen in F2003-GA. Engineers have completly recreated and redesigned the car. Their goal was to acheive the best possible performence received out of the new engine 053 and of the tyres provided by Bridgestone. They also had to change aerodynamics of the car due to recent technical regulations and rules changes and also get the best posiible efficiency of the whole package. Also its weight distribution is improved and the chassis is completely new. Compared to previous model F2003-GA the weight has been reduced and the car´s structure is improved. Also other parts like exhausts, bodyworks and the rear part have been changed and redesigned. The improvem,ent of handling needed rework of front and rear suspension. There are many new materials being used on the new ferrari car. Their purpose is to reduce weight and size. After F1 regulations and modifications, the 053 engine had to be redesigned to meet those new criteria and acheive its optimal reliability and its life have to be twice as long as in the past but with improvede performance. Some of technical specifications of the engine: Displacement: 2,997 cm3, V10, aluminium cylinder block, 40 valves, pneumatic distribution, Magneti Marelli injection, 7 gears plus reverse, lenght is 4545 mm, width is 1796 mm, height is 959 mm, wheelbase is 3050mm, front track is 1,47m, weight is 605kg.

Racing Series for Ferrari Owners

If you bought a Ferrari, you likely made that purchase for investment reasons, you tell yourself. And that is likely true, but what is also true is that you bought it because you love to drive a sports car fast, it cannot be denied. If this describes your relationship to your Ferrari, and if you have had some race training and experience, then you might be ready to participate in the North American Ferrari Challenge Series for non-professional racers who are Ferrari owners competing in racing Ferrari cars against each other.

Ferrari selects a different model vehicle to feature each year of the Ferrari series. For this year, F430 Challenge with a booming 479 hp is the car of choice. The rules stipulate that the drivers compete for fun and in a sense of "fair play." It is not a jumping-off point for the aspiring race car driver; instead, it is an end unto itself. The Ferrari Challenge Series is sanctioned by the Grand American Road Racing Association.

The series will also be host to the Ferrari Shell Historic Challenge. Vintage Ferrari racing is the hook that draws avid fans to the track to see these lovely vehicles. These races are open to unmodified Ferraris as well as race Maseratis built before the 1980s. They are also open to vintage Alfa Romeos that team Scuderia Ferrari raced during the pre-World War II years.

Several of the races in the series will also showcase Formula One vehicles under private ownership and the FXX, a special 800 horsepower prototype. On the same weekends of the Challenge series, Ferrari owners can participate in Ferrari Driving Clinics. Expert instruction is available to help you get the most out of your sports car, and you will spend time in workshops along with time behind the wheel of your Ferrari, with instructors providing tips to help improve your skills and get the most out of your vehicle.

These Challenge races for Ferrari owners are held all over North America. Florida, Virginia, California, and Montreal will provide race tracks that will host the events. They included the Homestead-Miami Speedway, the Infineon Raceway, the Virginia International Raceway, and Le Circuit earlier this season. Upcoming races will be held at the California Speedway and Laguna Seca in August. The Challenge series culminates in a World Finals, to be held in Italy in October. The best owners from Italy, Europe and North America bring their Ferraris together to compete for the glory of becoming the overall champion of all the series.

The North American Ferrari Challenge Series is open to the public, and they are allowed to visit the paddock area to look at all of the assembled Ferraris and take pictures.

How to Protect your Ferrari From Theft

As a Ferrari owner, you know that after you have added this prized vehicle to your investment portfolio, it pays to take care of it properly. Routine Ferrari maintenance, appropriate insurance, careful driving and care all play a part in how well your Ferrari drives into the future. However, one important aspect of Ferrari care that you will not want to forget is protecting your automotive treasure from theft.

Much will depend on how you use the Ferrari. If it is a show piece that stays indoors, then protection is much simplified. If you drive the vehicle outdoors, then some steps are in order to ensure that your vehicle remains safe from harm.

Simple precautions can help prevent big crimes, such as auto theft. When you leave the vehicle, always secure it, and make sure to park in well-lit areas where there are a lot of people walking around. When you park the vehicle, turn the wheels sharply toward the curb, to make it harder for car thieves to tow away the car. Ferrari Dealers will tell you, don't leave Ferrari accessories in open view inside the vehicle. Also do not leave the registration or title inside the car.

Other steps that can help prevent theft include adding visible and audible anti-theft devices to the car. Brake locks can help. Steering wheel locks that keep the wheels stationary make your car more theft-proof. Tire locks and deflators can deter a thief, because they take too much time to deal with, thus making your car less attractive to a would-be thief. VIN etching, when the VIN number is etched onto the glass of the windshield and windows can be one option you might consider in protecting your vehicle. Loud alarms also let a thief know your car is safeguarded against theft.

Computer chips can help deter a thief from stealing your Ferrari. Some ignition keys come equipped with chips that do not let someone bypass the vehicle's ignition. Preventive devices such as cut offs to the fuse; kill switches; disablers that deactivate the fuel pump, ignition and starter; and wireless ignition authentication all help to prevent theft. Tracking devices are very useful in assisting police in finding stolen vehicles. Some of these combine wireless capabilities with GPS systems, so that if the car is moved, it can be tracked on the computer. Many Ferraris also come equipped with peripheral interior monitoring anti-lift anti-theft protection, which is a camera system that is used within the car to detect movement inside the vehicle. Even when you are not with your new Ferrari, your vehicle's computer system is working round the clock to protect your car. Employing several or all of these ideas can keep your car safe.