It’s Free App Friday at Handango!

Free App Friday

 

Today is Free App Friday at Handango.   Today’s free App is Chess Pro II:

Ready to unleash your Chess skills? ZingMagic’s multi-award winning Chess application is renowned for its superb playability for players of all levels, from beginner to expert. Whatever level of Chess you play at, you can be sure that ZingMagic’s Chess Pro II will give you a stimulating and challenging game. Chess Pro II allows you to play against the computer or another human player. Do you have what it takes to be a Chess master? Download Chess Pro II for FREE using 100% off code FAF730.

Features include:

  • Award winning artificial intelligence engine
  • Multiple player and multiple game support options
  • Full undo and redo of moves
  • Find Hints
  • English, French, German, Spanish and Italian support

EFF Wins Legal Protections for Cell Phone Jailbreakers/Unlockers

Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won a critical exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anti-circumvention provisions on Monday July 26th.  This exemption provides new legal protections for consumers who modify their cell phones in order to make them more operable for their own personal use.   Previously, these actions could have been used as grounds to sue them for their non-infringing or fair use activities.

Read onward after the break to see the rest of the article!

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Seen a .menc file before?

If you’ve ever seen a .menc file before, you probably saw it on an external memory card that you pulled out of your Windows Phone device.  

Essentially, .menc (Mobile Encryption) files are just your personal data (the PIM.VOL file that contains all of your Contacts for example) that are encrypted.  The extension of .menc lets the Operating System (OS) know which files are encrypted, and whether or not they can be opened by the user.   To do so, the previously recorded key (user password) must match the key provided by the user when unlocking the device.  But you won’t see those .menc files, because they are typically hidden by the OS so as not to be visible to the end-user during casual browsing.   If you ever chose to encrypt the files you store on your external storage (external memory card, etc), then they may be visible if you took that card to another computer or device for viewing.

If you’re trying to recover those files, then you have to meet some rather special requirements in order to proceed.  Unfortunately, if you have Hard Reset the device, or have a different device than the one that the files were originally created on, then the encryption/decryption keys are now lost or no longer the same, then sadly your files are totally inaccessible. 

However, if you have access to the same device that the .menc files were originally created on, and you have NOT performed a Hard Reset on the device, then you can still salvage the files:

  1. Turn the storage card encryption off: Go to Start > Settings > System > Encryption (varies by your Operating System version) and uncheck the “Encrypt files when placed on a storage card” box. From this point forward, all NEW files created on that card will be unencrypted, but existing files will still be encrypted.
  2. Next, bring-up your favorite File Explorer, then browse to your Storage Card. Make a new folder on the storage card, and call it “OLDData”.  This folder will, of course, be unencrypted.
  3. Now, find whatever files you want to decrypt and copy them into this folder.  Those files will be decypted as they copy into the new folder.  You can now read these files on any other computer or phone.

Congratulations, you’ve just saved some data.   Hopefully it will turn out to be highly important data, which will make your victory taste just a little bit sweeter…

It’s Free-App-Friday at Handango

 Free App Friday

Head on over to Handango to grab your weekly FREE Application!   This weeks App is:

“NetworkAcc – Mobile Network Accelerator”

Accelerate all your mobile-network based activities using NetworkAcc, a 2009 Handango Champion Award Nominee! Speed up browsing, downloading, uploading, streaming, online gaming, sending and receiving email. Optimization technology is applied to fine-tune several key network parameters to prevent data fragmentation and to improve data throughput to make your device faster than you ever imagined. Don’t be limited by your device’s configuration again!! Download NetworkAcc Mobile Network Accelerator for FREE using 100% off code FAF723.

Features include:

  • Absolutely hardware free: 100% software solution, no additional hardware needed.
  • Easy-to-use: One click to speed up your mobile network performance without forcing you to understand a bunch of network jargon.
  • The ultimate in convenience: Runs in the background, automatically analyzes and optimizes your mobile network on-the-go.
  • Options: Multiple accelerator gears available to accelerate your mobile network on demand with advanced ‘Settings’ support.