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Oct 19

WrapUp: XM Sirius Merger, Upgrading Compiz Fusion, and More

This article was written on July 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Sirius & XM Merger has Completed
All systems are a go when it comes to the Sirius & XM merger. In fact the two companies have already renamed themselves to Sirius XM Radio, Inc.

Facebook Hires Mozilla’s Mike Schroepfer
Mozilla has lost their Vice President of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, who has gone to work at Facebook. While at Facebook he will be the director of engineering, and I have to say that I’m sad to see him go.

DivShare Decreases Download Limit for Free Users
As of August 1st all free accounts will be given 10GB of monthly downloads, which is 1/5th the 50GB that it is right now. Looks like DivShare is still having troubles keeping up with scalability? They say that the change will only affect 0.2% of the nearly 650,000 users they have.

Yahoo Shutting Down DRM Servers
On September 30th Yahoo will be shutting down their DRM servers that are needed to reauthorize any music downloads that were purchased from their Unlimited Music Store. It’s recommended that the music purchased from the store be burned to CD, and recopied to the computer so that you won’t have any troubles in the future.

iPhone Firmware 2.1 Bringing New GPS Features
The next firmware for the iPhone will apparently be able to calculate the speed and direction you’re heading using the GPS. Sounds like Apple is gearing up for companies to provide turn-by-turn navigation software?

Sprint Sells Off $670 Million Worth of Towers
Sprint has sold off over 3,300 cell towers to TowerCo for around $670 million in cash. They will then lease these towers back from TowerCo, and Sprint says the money will give them greater flexibility for managing the company.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Sync Any Desktop Calendar with Google Calendar
This is a great guide that talks about using various methods of synchronizing desktop applications with Google Calendar.

Encrypt Files with a Few Clicks
Ever want a fast way to encrypt a few files? This free solution will put you just a few clicks away from having your precious documents and files securely encrypted.

Windows Explorer Add-ons
If you’ve been wanting to spruce up Windows Explorer you’ll want to checkout what this guide has to say. We’ve covered a lot of these apps on our site before, but this is a nice comprehensive guide.

Upgrade Compiz Fusion
This tutorial takes you through the steps needed to upgrade the version of Compiz Fusion running on your Linux machine. That way you’ll get all of the latest and greatest features.

Disable iPhone Backups
Whenever you connect your iPhone to iTunes it always wants to perform a rather lengthy backup. These steps will force iTunes to bypass the backup process when synchronizing the device, but that leaves you with nothing should you ever want to restore it back to a previous state.