Lately I’ve been diving deeper into Adobe Flex Builder 3 for developing Adobe AIR applications. It’s a great development environment especially if you have any experience with Eclipse (Flex Builder 3 runs as a plug-in for Eclipse). Despite my positive experience, I have encountered a few “oddities” with Flex Builder 3 such as how to preserve the aspect ratio when resizing images.

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Most of us have heard that heat can kill a computer. Just browse any online computer store and you’ll find countless computer cooling products. And while keeping components cool makes perfect sense, is there such a thing as “too cool?” Is is possible that my computer is similar to my car and needs a little time to “warm up?” Normally I’d said no to those questions but my current computer problem is starting to make me think otherwise.

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How to clone a SIM chip has been a hot topic here on TechTraction since early 2008. It all got started on January 28 when I posted an article detailing why cloning a SIM chip was impossible. Then, on October 1, 2008 I followed up with another article offering one possible cloning solution based on a reader’s comments. Both articles have generated a long list of comments and now I’m back with yet another follow up article based on another readers comments explaining why it is still IMPOSSIBLE to clone a SIM chip.

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In my previous article I broke the URL acronyms for the popular Craig’s List “cars & trucks” category. To take the idea a step further here’s a quick tutorial outlining the steps necessary to create a Windows desktop launch icon that will open your browser to your preferred sub-section of the cars & trucks category.

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Like searching Craig’s List “cars & trucks” category but hate seeing any listings “by Dealers?” If so, here’s a quick tip for “manually” narrowing your search to listings “by Owner” only.

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Back in January of this year I wrote an article addressing the question of whether it was possible to clone a SIM card from a GSM cell phone. The article explained why such action wasn’t possible with a SIM card reader and basic software. Since that article, the reader comments have been consistently flowing in and the article remains one of my most frequently read items. Despite my explanation, some readers have claimed that they have succeeded at what I said was impossible. Unfortunately, when pressed for details, responses where either nonexistent or lacking critical details. Fortunately, all that changed on 9/26/2008 when reader DonJuan posted a detailed response that might have solved a nagging cell phone problem.

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Have you looked in your Windows Control Panel recently and noticed an icon for Apple’s MobileMe application? If you installed or upgraded to Apple’s iTunes version 7.7, then whether you wanted it or not, MobileMe was also installed. If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, you might want to try this new “cloud computing” style service from Apple. Of course, if you don’t have either of those devices, and have no interest in MobileMe, then you’ll probably want to remove this application and here’s how.

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Do you use DVD43 and Handbrake to convert DVD content to a format suitable for viewing on your iPod? If so, you might encountered a Handbrake hang when you tried to convert an unencrypted DVD. Try as you might to kill the DVD43 and Handbrake process, both keep on running. And while you can still use your computer, Handbrake is stuck and the only way to “unstick it” is to power off your computer. Is it possible to avoid this problem?

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It all started with an article I wrote describing how to import an audio book from CD into iTunes. Part of the instructions used iTunes’ default Smart Playlist, “Recently Added,” as a way to quickly find an imported audio book. Unfortunately, one of TechTraction’s readers deleted the Smart Playlist and needed a work around for that part of the audio import instructions. Rather than create a different step, I simply described how to recreate the deleted Smart Playlist. Those instructions worked well but now the audio book appears in reverse order (last disk appears first, etc). While I’m not aware of all of the details of the readers particular problem, the following 4 suggestions might fix his, or even your, iTunes sorting problem.

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Back on June 9th of this year I wrote an article detailing the steps for importing an audio book from CD into iTunes and making it appear in the audio book section. In those instructions I describe how to use the “Recently Added” playlist as a quick way to find the imported audio files. A recent reader unfortunately removed that default playlist and now needs to know how to complete my instructions without that playlist. The easiest way is to simply recreate the missing playlist, and here is how.

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