So you heard about Magnet Links and were terrified? What Are Magnet Links? How Are They Different From Torrents? How to Download files using Magnet Links. Are Magnet Links Safe?

In a world of peer-to-peer sharing, Torrents have come along a long way along. However, Torrents are being deemed as less safer these days because of people being able to easily track them. This has led several websites including "The Pirate Bay" from changing the way they allow users to download files.

Also Read: 6 Tools to Download Torrents Anonymously

The Pirate Bay recently switched from torrents to magnet links marking a big change in how it operates. In a nutshell, magnet links change how users download content. We’ll take a look at what has changed and what you will need to change in order to download files using Magnet links.

What are Magnet Links? What’s the Difference Between Magnet Links and Torrents?

Magnet Links change the fundamental way in which we download from peer-to-peer networks. Unlike Torrents, which needed a centralized server for tracking purposes, magnet links directly download content from other peers thus getting rid of the centralized server for tracking seeds and peers.

Also Read: What Are Web Seeds? 

Magnet links make use of DHT, which is a form of decentralized distribution which allows a group of users to share a file faster amongst themselves without having to rely on a server. There is not much difference between how a file is downloaded from a torrent vs how it is downloaded from a magnet link.

Do I Have to Change How I Download Using Magnet Links?

No. Magnet links are similar to torrent files and if you have a P2P torrent software installed, you will be able to download the content using magnet links without having to change anything. However, you might have to upgrade your P2P software to the latest versions so that the browsers are aware that they should handle those links.

How to Download Files Using Magnet Links?

There are couple of ways in which you can download content using magnet links. The first is pretty straightforward. Just click on the link that is provided and it will launch your default torrent software as shown below. You might want to check the checkbox next to "Remember my choice for all links of this type" or "Always use this software to open such links" so that it will automatically open magnet links in your favorite torrent client.

Clicking on the "Get This Torrent" link in Pirate Bay will automatically launch your Bittorrent application.

Once you open the magnet link, your torrent client will start downloading the content just like a regular torrent. Alternatively, you can also copy the magnet link and add it directly to your torrent client just like you used to do for regular torrents.

Are Magnet Links Safe?

Downloading through magnet links is as safe as downloading a torrent file. However, make sure to download legitimate content and you will be safe. There have been several cases of infected torrents so the files you download through magnet links could be unsafe as well.

A short while back, Microsoft released Windows 8 Consumer Preview, which features more than 100,000 changes. Go ahead and grab the download link and product key, if you haven’t already. Windows 8 is available as a simple installer, as well as an ISO image. The installer is simpler to use, and it automatically downloads the right version for your system. However, it also requires constant high speed internet connectivity on the system on which you wish to deploy Windows 8. If you want to use the ISO image, but don’t want to go through the hassle of burning it to a DVD, here’s a quick guide for installing Windows 8 from USB media. You will require an USB device with at least 4 GB free space and NTFS file system. Formatting it before proceeding with the creation of a bootable device is recommended, but is generally not necessary.

• Mount the image using a freeware like SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive or extract it using WinRAR (or other similar software).
• Open Command Prompt as Administrator. You can do this by typing cmd in the Run dialogue box (Win+R) and pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
• Type the following commands:
   
  diskpart
list volume
• From the list that is displayed, note the volume assigned to your usb device, and select it as shown in the screenshot.
   
  select volume 5
• Next, we need to mark it as the active volume.
   
  active

• Now the disk is ready, and we can proceed with the creation of the boot sector. Exit diskpart.
   
  exit
• Browse to the location where you extracted/mounted the ISO, and open the boot directory, as shown in the screenshot below.

• Execute the following command. In my example, D: is the drive letter of my USB device. Replace it with the appropriate value.

 
bootsect /nt60 d:

Finally, the USB device is ready to be used as a bootable media. All that remains to be done is to copy the contents of the Windows 8 setup directory into your usb device. Once this is completed, reboot the system and enter the BIOS. Change the boot priority to assign highest priority to Removable Device/USB Device. Save changes and restart again to proceed with Windows 8 installation. Don’t forget to reset boot priority settings after Windows 8 installation is completed.

If you are on Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9 allows you to pin a website to the Windows taskbar, and access the website pages directly without having to open Internet Explorer first. The unmatched visibility on users’ desktops results in increased traffic for a website. This also gives an app-like feel to the website or web app.

To pin a website, just grab the tab and drag it down to your taskbar. Apart from the one-click access, a pinned site also allows you to right-click on the icon to get a list that directs you to particular content on the site. Some pinned sites can also notify you that content has changed on the site. While pinned Facebook alerts you of the Facebook notifications for your account, pinned Hotmail notifies with a number corresponding to the new email in your inbox.

Microsoft has now launched a new service Pin My Website to encourage website owners to add the pinned site functionality to their websites. The site provides an online wizard to guide you to few steps that would give you a code snippet that you can use on your website to take advantage of this function. Microsoft claims that pinned sites gain traffic, and these steps take an average of only 36 seconds to complete!

In the first of a total of four steps, all you need to provide is your contact details and basic site information like site’s name and URL. You will also need to provide an icon for your main site.

Jump List items act as entry points into the website even when the browser is not running. The next step requires you to list the commonly used destinations and tasks that apply to the whole site.

A dynamic Jump List can contain items that will automatically change over time, to give access to periodically updated information like news updates. To use this feature, your site must expose an RSS feed with the items that you want to show on the Jump List.

The last optional step enables you to add a pinning notification bar on the  top of your webpages. This bar prompts IE9 users to pin your site.

Once you complete the four steps, you can generate the code to use on your site and allow IE9 users on Windows 7 to pin your site to their taskbar.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool. When used effectively, it can add visual appeal and support for a presentation. In this article, I would like to introduce you to a little used feature that PowerPoint provides called the Outline view. One common mistake that I see people make when designing a presentation, is that they often go straight to design mode rather than have their thoughts organized in a logical manner. This is like painting drywall before it is hung on the studs. Below you will see a partial view of the basic PowerPoint window. Along the left side of the window you will notice that a miniature version of the slide is viewable. As slides are added to the presentation, the miniatures will become viewable on this side of the window. If you look to the right of the tab that says Slides, you will see a tab labeled Outline. Let’s click on the outline view.

Once you have clicked on the Outline view, you will notice an even smaller slide icon. If you click to the right of that icon and begin typing, you will notice that the slide preview area on the right will fill in the Title area of the slide. I typed the title of my presentation and hit enter on the keyboard. By default, this will start a new slide. However, I wanted to add text to the subtitle area of the first slide. To achieve this, I clicked the Increase Indentbutton (blown up in the picture below) which moved the text under the title. Notice how PowerPoint recognized that. Since I started a new level in my outline, it should put that text in a new level on the slide. Now when I hit enter again, the text will be on that same level. In order for me to start a new slide I need to hit Decrease Indentbutton. This will move the text back a level and start a new slide. Now I can continue to outline my ideas and PowerPoint will generate slides and bullet points based on what I type.

Below you will see where I typed in a general heading of Get More Training. I then hit enter and clicked the Increase Indentbutton to create bullet points for my slide. If I hit Increase Indentagain you will notice it creates sub points.

I really believe this is a good way to work on a PowerPoint presentation, as it forces you to get your thoughts in order,   while creating the basic shell of your presentation. Once you have your outline all lined out, then you can start the task of adding colors and themes to your presentation.

==== About the Author ====

Darrin Jenkins is an IT manager for a large electrical contractor in Louisville Kentucky. Darrin posts his helpful advice at the SayGeek blog.

In my previous article, I explained about long exposure photography, the technique involved and the important features and materials you require while shooting photos in slow shutter.  In this article, I’ll show how you can take long exposed photos. In this simple tutorial, you’ll learn how to create the following effect – Writing your own name

Materials Required

Tripod
Flashlight or LED

You can use any kind of light source, but make sure that you can control the light. For best results, stick to a flashlight or an LED.

Setting Up Things

First things first. Get your camera and set it on your tripod or on a flat surface (make sure it does not shake). Set the focus of your camera using the auto-focus mode or AF mode. Once the camera is focused, switch it to manual mode and do the following changes:

ISO
Set your camera ISO to 100 or 200. Always use lower ISO when doing long exposure photography. It reduces the noise.

Shutter Speed
Since we’re writing a name, we require ample amount of time. Therefore, we need to keep the camera shutter open for a longer period. I took about 20 seconds to write my name. I suggest you to set the shutter speed to at least 30 seconds.

Aperture
Aperture completely depends on your lens/zoom, focal, exposure etc. I generally use f/11. Depending on the conditions, figure out what aperture suits best and set the aperture.

Once you’ve changed the above mentioned settings, you’re now ready to go.

Turn off the lights and press the shutter-release button. The camera shutter is now open. Without shaking the camera, slowly go and stand in front of it. Turn on the flashlight and start writing your name in mirror image (or you can draw/scribble something). The shutter will close after 30 seconds, so you need to be as quick as possible.

You may commit a few mistakes, but repeating the steps several times will definitely give you a result.

Now you can start experimenting with different colored flashlights to get some nicely exposed pictures. Use your art and make it look colorful! Here’s something you can try as well. Turn yourself into a ghost!

P.S. You need to remotely trigger the shutter-release button to do this, so you will need a wireless remote.

Within a day of its unveiling, and months before it will be launched, iOS 5 has already been jailbroken.

MuscleNerd, a member of the iPhone Dev Team announced on Twitter that he has already jailbroken iOS 5.

“iOS5 jailbroken on ipt4g: http://is.gd/7GxIcK http://is.gd/BwPvfh via limera1n + tethered boot..not too many surprises :)”

The jailbreak was done using Limera1n, but there is a catch. It is a tethered boot jailbreak, which means that you would need to connect your iPhone to a computer every time you reboot it.

Cydia works well on the jailbroken device running iOS 5, and he was also able to install iSSH successfully.

Since Apple won’t be launching iOS 5 until Fall 2011, this exploit isn’t very useful now, but MuscleNerd says that it can be used to jailbreak the final version of iOS 5 as well, when it launches. It would be quite realistic to expect a much more usable and convenient version of the jailbreak within a day or two of iOS 5′s launch.

Here are some images of iOS 5, jailbroken, with Cydia installed.

Check out our detailed coverage of iOS 5 – iOS5 Everything You Need To Know About It

If you have been following the news keenly, you might know that the IBM-built Watson artificial intelligence supercomputer trounced two of game show Jeopardy!‘s most famous contestants recently. Developed under researcher David Ferrucci, the Watson supercomputer trounced Brad Rutter (winner of the biggest all-time money on the show) and Ken Jennings (record holder for the longest championship streak) in a two-game combined point match. All this is known to you, reader of Techie Buzz. But have you felt the urge to actually make your own supercomputer in your basement, provided you have enough money for the enterprise?

If you did, then you have come to the right place. Tony Pearson, Master Inventor and Senior Managing Consultant for the IBM System Storage product line at the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson Arizona, has written up an easy-to-follow article on how to build your own supercomputer, called the “Watson Jr.. The system incorporates 3 host servers (as opposed to the senior Watson’s 90 servers) and will approximately have 1 terabyte of storage in total. The supercomputer might not be as fancy as the Jeopardy! winning artificial intelligence but it does promise to be a fun summer project if you have enough time and money to invest in (and, of course, a large-enough space to house the computer in).

The basic needs of this computer are as follows:-

• Three x86 hosts, with the following:
  • 64-bit quad-core processor, either Intel-VT or AMD-V capable,
  • 8GB of DRAM, or larger
  • 300GB of hard disk, or larger
  • CD or DVD Read/Write drive
  • 1GbE Ethernet
• Computer Monitor, mouse and keyboard
• Ethernet 1GbE 4-port hub, and appropriate RJ45 cables
• Surge protector and Power strip
• Local Console Monitor (LCM) 4-port switch (formerly known as a KVM switch)

I can see your hands itching to get to the meat of it, so do check out the tutorial on IBM’s website before going shopping!

WordPress is fantastic. Take out word for it. Even Techie Buzz runs on WordPress! One of the reasons why this blogging platform is so famous is due to its vast and vibrant community that creates, shares and modifies plugins.

Plugins are tiny (or large) pieces of code that extend your site to do a lot of things. According to WordPress itself, Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine, from sending your new posts to Twitter automat[t]ically to having HTML5 MP3 players with a minimal interface.

Now, Jay Harley, the founder of Heaven Interactive and an avid web programmer has put up a very short primer on making your own WordPress plugin in PHP within ten minutes. This Graphical User Interface (GUI) plugin works off your WordPress Admin Dashboard.

The tutorial assumes that you have a solid grasp of PHP and some experience with WordPress. It also builds up on concepts introduced by a few WordPress plugin-authoring books such as WordPress Plugin Development (Beginner’s Guide)

While the tutorial is not as fleshed out as a real introductory class on plugin development, it sets the stage for further development by you, the developer. If you have always wanted to write your own WordPress plugin, this is that ignition that you have always wanted!

Start making your own PHP WordPress plugin in ten minutes.

I’d like to share something interesting that I learned some days back. I was going through an article on Learning jQuery and my eyes struck on the date of the post. I was quite impressed the way it was designed and presented. At first, I thought it was an image, but when I viewed the source, I realized that it was done with CSS. I was very eager to learn how it was done and I Googled for this particular trick and found Snook’s article, Text Rotation With CSS. It wasn’t that hard to learn and implement as I had thought of it. I experimented on this trick and learned quite a bit of it. I altered the coding to insert Techie-Buzz logo and here’s the end result:

Demo | Download Source

The Magical Code:

HTML Code:

<div class="logo_box">
     <span class="techie_sample">Techie</span>
     <span class="tblogo_sample"><img src="tb.png" /></span>
     <span class="buzz_sample">Buzz</span>
</div>

CSS Code:

/* Techie-Buzz.com - Text rotation exmaple */
.logo_box
{
float: left;
background-color: #fff;
border: 1px solid #000000;
color: #ffffff;
position: relative;
margin: 0 0 0 20px;
}

.logo_box .techie_sample
{
display: block;
text-align: center;
font-size: 30px;
line-height: 30px;
padding: 2px 0;
background-color: #000;
}

.logo_box .tblogo_sample
{
display: block;
padding: 2px 24px 2px 0;
}

.logo_box .buzz_sample
{
display: block;
color:#000;
writing-mode: tb-rl;
-webkit-transform: rotate(90deg);
-moz-transform: rotate(90deg);
position: absolute;
right: 0;
bottom: 9px;
font-size: 24px;
}
*:first-child+html .logo_box .buzz_sample { right: -28px; } /* IE7 positions element differently to IE6 & 8 */

.logo_box span:nth-child(3)
{
right: -16px;
bottom: 24px;
}

Pretty simple, isn’t it? Download the source code.

P.S. Though this trick is a little old, I thought it would be great sharing it with you. Hope you liked it.

Have you ever heard of DVDShrink? It’s a freeware program that allows you to make backup copies of your movie DVDs. The shrinkpart of the name of this software is the real power behind it. Movies are usually distributed on dual layer DVDs, while most blank DVDs are only single layer. The DVDShrink program can allow you to shrink a dual layer movie onto a single layer blank disk. However, there are a few tricks you need to know if you want to do it the right way and get the best possible copy.

I’ve used DVDShrink for years, but I never did know the finer points to using it. I always used it to create backup ISO files that I stored on my hard drives. Fortunately, I know someone who does know a good many tricks for using this freeware. Jim Hillier has posted a complete how toon one of my favorite newsletters Dave’s Computer Tips.

Here’s that post: How to use DVDShrink… The Right Way!

Wait! Before you head over there, here are a few things you might want to know.

• Where is the download for DVDShrink? The home site of DVDShrink is at dvdshrink.org, however, you won’t find a link to download it there. I always go to the DVDShrink page at Afterdawn to get the latest version.

• If you have any questions about DVDShrink, just post a comment below and I’ll ask Jim to lend a hand.

• If you’d like to read a good monthly newsletter, be sure to sign up for Dave’s Computer Tips.