Marco Melandri: "I Had The Same Problems As Valentino"

Great things were expected of Marco Melandri when he switched to Ducati's MotoGP team for the 2008 season. The Italian has been a rising star on the Gresini Honda, finishing 2nd to Valentino Rossi in 2005, and scoring three victories in 2006. In the first year of the 800s, 2007, Melandri had struggled along with the rest of the Honda riders, after HRC, like the other Japanese factories, realized they had got their 800cc bikes completely wrong when faced with the raw power of the Ducati. If Casey Stoner could win so convincingly on the bike, the reasoning went, then Melandri would surely clean up completely once he got on the bike.

Rarely has a manufacturer switch turned into such a disaster. Melandri's time at Ducati was a nightmare almost from day one, the low point coming after a series of crashes at Jerez. Melandri failed completely to get to grips with the Desmosedici, despite his teammate racking up 6 victories on the machine. The Italian ended the season in 17th, and terminated his contract a year early, leaving the Ducati seat to Nicky Hayden.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MotoGPMatters/~3/vEvgSbTss7U/marco_melandri_i_had_the_same_problems_a.html

danica patrick indie 500 dale earnhardt motorcross racing

First Day Of Moto2 Test At Jerez A Washout

The first day of testing for the Moto2 test at Jerez has not seem much action, with a wet track leaving the riders little to learn at the Andalucian track. Despite the conditions, several riders did venture out on track, including Pol Espargaro, Andrea Iannone, Julian Simon and Scott Redding. The remainder sat and waited for the weather to clear. With so few laps run and so few riders on the track, lap times were fairly irrelevant.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MotoGPMatters/~3/XVC1WYEYZNM/first_day_of_moto2_test_at_jerez_a_washo.html

nascar racing nascar danica patrick indie 500 dale earnhardt

Orbox B is a fast, tricky Time-Waster

Orbox B is a puzzle, but it's one with a very frenetic pace. Each level is composed of a "field" of blocks that are carefully arranged. You control a single block and the object is to get it to the exit. Here's the tricky part: once your block starts moving, it won't stop unless it hits something. And if it falls off the board, you lose. When you do hit another block, you stop -- and then it's time to figure out your next move. Which block should you hit now?

Short-term planning will only get you so far, though. As you progress, planning your moves carefully becomes more important. You must hit the other blocks in the exact sequence needed to eventually make your way to the end. The higher levels also introduce other block types that can disappear after you hit them, snap shut, or do all sorts of other tricks.

It's a minimalistic game, and it's very fast. There is no background music and restarting is instantaneous. Orbox B is also begging for an Android port - in fact, if you know of one, let me know in the comments.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

Orbox B is a fast, tricky Time-Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/11/15/orbox-b-is-a-fast-tricky-time-waster/

racing nascar racing nascar danica patrick indie 500

Infinity Blade to hit App Store on Dec 9th

Epic Games has announced that the long awaited iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad game, Infinity Blade, will be in the App Store on December 9. The game will be available for the iPad, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, as well as third- and fourth-generation iPod touch devices at a cost of $5.99. Infinity Blade will be the [...]

Infinity Blade to hit App Store on Dec 9th is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/_8xax1syIws/

nascar danica patrick indie 500 dale earnhardt motorcross

Free Partition Master from Easeus now works on 64-bit Windows, too!

Easeus Partition Master has always been a great little app. It's a powerful yet easy-to-use disk partitioning tool that makes managing your hard disks a breeze. Better still, it runs right in Windows -- handy for people like me who always miss the 'Press F11 for boot menu' prompt. There was one big downside to the free version, however: it didn't support 64-bit versions of Windows.

That's all changed, however. Easeus has decided that it's time for all versions to support Windows x64, including Partition Master Free. The new version also supports removable devices and Linux partitions. Partition Master is totally free, as long as you're running it on a home computer -- you'll still need the Pro version for your workplace or if you want to manage a Windows Server OS.

Download Easeus Partition Master

Filed under: Utilities

Free Partition Master from Easeus now works on 64-bit Windows, too! originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/11/18/free-partition-master-from-easeus-now-works-on-64-bit-windows-t/

nascar danica patrick indie 500 dale earnhardt motorcross

Scraper for Chrome lets you easily create spreadsheets from Web data

Scraping is a technique whereby a website or tool extracts select information from another website. For example, when you type a difficult word into Google and instantly see a definition for that word from some Web dictionary, that's because Google "scraped" that information from the dictionary. The term (and practice) has some negative connotations, because scrapers can be used to steal blog content and for other nefarious purposes. But as Google (and many others) show, it doesn't have to be used for evil.

Scraper is a Chrome add-on that somewhat simplifies the process of scraping information from a webpage. I say "somewhat" because you still have to know XPath or jQuery selector syntax, but that's pretty easy to master if you know a bit of HTML.

Once the extension is installed, you can right-click any page element and select "Scrape similar". You then get a window with a single table row, and the XPath expression leading to the exact element you've selected. It is now up to you to generalize that expression so as to get a broader match. As you can see in the screenshot, it was quite simple to write an expression that yields all of the post headlines and links on the DLS homepage.

Once you have the information you wanted, you can click Export to Google Docs and get a spreadsheet with all of your data in tabular form, ready for further processing.

Scraper is very much a work in progress; while jQuery selector syntax is supported, you only get the XPath expression filled in automatically (and it's too specific). Also, it does not support saving expressions as templates, so every time you want to use it, you have to re-build the XPath expression you need. I'm sure this will all get fixed in due time.

Filed under: Web services, Google

Scraper for Chrome lets you easily create spreadsheets from Web data originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/11/22/scraper-for-chrome-lets-you-easily-create-spreadsheets-from-web/

dale earnhardt motorcross racing nascar racing nascar

Internet Explorer 9 beta 2 leaks, looks ready for launch

The most recent build of IE9 -- beta 2 -- leaked onto the Web late last night. Judging by the version number and its performance, it looks like it features the same rendering and JavaScript engines found in Platform Preview 7.

As reported by WinRumors, there doesn't seem to be any significant change to the user interface. The download manager shows your current download speed without the need to mouse-over, but that's about it. It's now fairly safe to assume that Microsoft hasn't got any secret plans up its sleeve -- the UI you see now is almost certainly the real deal. If the final launch is in January, we can expect to see one more platform update in about 5 weeks, and then a final release towards the end of January.

I'm not going to give you a link to the IE9 beta 2 installer, but you can probably find it with a little searching on Twitter or Google. The installer is legit -- it's signed by Microsoft -- so you don't need to worry about malware of any variety.

Internet Explorer 9 beta 2 leaks, looks ready for launch originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 23 Nov 2010 07:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/11/23/internet-explorer-9-beta-2-leaks-looks-ready-for-launch/

racing nascar racing nascar danica patrick indie 500