White Rabbit Online is Pakistan’s premier Facebook game development company with a focus on original IP. Based in Islamabad and building some seriously fun games for the Facebook platform. We have 2 positions open at this time, and we’d like them to be filled in by competitive and talented people.

Digital Designer / Flash Pro

It was a while ago that I wanted to buy some stuff from Amazon, though I avoid Amazon mostly and prefer to buy from Newegg. However, this one time, I found Super Street Fighter IV for Playstation 3 to be available on Amazon for a lower price than Newegg. The price was $34.99.

So, I decided I’ll buy it later in the night. To my surprise, when I checked back at night, the same item was priced at $39.99. This was the price that was offered by all other merchants and I thought that it must have been an offer, which expired. So, I just made the buy.

I checked later the next day and the price had changed back to $34.99. This was really amazing and I knew I was not mistaken. I searched about the matter on the internet and it was indeed true. An article written by Mr. R. Preston McAfee shows research into the matter. According to his research, this practice is only carried out by the Amazon USA website and the UK website does not follow it. Link here.

I’m keeping an eye on the prices of various items and will update this post. Meanwhile, did anyone else experience this?

I’ve been struggling with an issue with Windows 7 since the Beta was released. At first, I thought it was because of the Realtek drivers or the Beta status of Windows release. But that was not it. So what’s the issue:

My Mic shows fine in the Sound Device Manager and I can hear it fine but it wont record. In other words, the mic works, I can hear it, but it won’t record. What else was annoying that any application that I tried to use the mouse with told me that Mic wasn’t available or working. I know most of the issues related to Mics are because people do not have proper drivers installed or their Mic is not properly configured but this one’s a kind of its own.

The reason behind the problem:

I believe it is because of Applications taking exclusive control of a device. When windows starts up, the device goes into a state where the exclusive control of the device is not released and it becomes unavailable to other services or programs. This is the reason why you can see the Mic in the control panels and windows reports it as working but you won’t see any activity.

How to solve it:

Yeah, to the solution already. Let’s go through this step by step. I will always refer to the Windows’ own Sound Control Panel. So if you have Realtek or IDT or VIA or any other chipset, we’re not concerned and I won’t refer to it.

- Close any sound related applications that you may have running.
- Make sure that you have one Mic active in your Windows Sound Control Panel. Disable all others.
- Open your Mic’s Properties.

- Go to the “Levels” tab. Take the sliders all the way to the right. Don’t worry, this is to test and we’ll take them back afterward. For a note, I’m referring to the “Volume” and “Boost” Properties. Here’s a screen shot for reference.

- Go to the Enhancements tab and check “Disable All Sound Effects”. This should disable everything on that tab and especially the “Immediate Mode”. Another reference screencap:

- Lastly, go the the Advanced tab and uncheck everything under the “Exclusive Mode” Section.

Alright, we’re done. Now apply all the settings and click “OK”. Always click “OK” as “apply” doesn’t persist the changes. Close the Sound Control Panel completely by clicking “OK” on every screen. You can restart your windows if you want but that is not necessary. Re open the Sound Device control Panel. Try talking into your Mic, it should show activity.

There you have it. Let me know if this works for you. It worked for me. The catch is “exclusive” application control of the Mic and Sound Effects. So remember to disable them. Moreover, if your Mic works now, you can adjust the sensitivity, which we leveled up before.

I can post a video of this if there’s demand.