HOW-TO: 2011

Thursday, 4 August 2011

A Definitive Guide to Longer Battery Life

Laptop batteries are like people--eventually and inevitably, they die. And like people, they don't obey Moore's Law--You can't expect next year's batteries to last twice as long as this year's. Battery technology may improve a bit over time (after all, there's plenty of financial incentive for better batteries), but, while interesting possibilities may pop up, don't expect major battery breakthroughs in the near future.

Although your battery will eventually die, proper care can put off the inevitable. Here's how to keep your laptop battery working for as long as possible. With luck, it could last until you need to replace that aging notebook (perhaps with a laptop having a longer battery life).

We've also included a few tips on keeping the battery going longer between charges, so you can work longer without AC power.

How to Recover Your Lost Gadgets

The best time to worry about cell phone security is now, before your phone disappears. By taking some sensible precautions, you can make your phone easy to recover, and even safeguard your data.

Losing a phone actually entails three separate losses: the hardware itself, the data on the device, and the security that you would normally enjoy by maintaining control over your data.
To minimize the collective impact that these losses can have on your life, you should address each of the three facets separately. First, take steps to make your phone recoverable, or at least easily replaceable, in the event that it goes AWOL. Second, keep an up-to-date backup copy of the data on the phone in a safe place. Third, make sure that nobody else can access that data if your phone gets lost or stolen.

Get More from Your BlackBerry Smartphone

For such a tiny little device, that BlackBerry smartphone of yours has an amazing amount of functionality packed in behind the scenes. But, unfortunately, realizing the true potential of a Research In Motion (RIM) device isn't always as simple as opening up a user guide or surfing on over to Google. In fact, your BlackBerry's literally packing hundreds of "hidden" tips and tricks.
That's where we come in. We bring you a comprehensive set of tips and tricks - for the novice, the seasoned expert and everyone in between. We' take through a comprehensive list of shortcuts, performance tips, our favorite BlackBerry software downloads, battery-life advice, memory optimization methods, getting more out of the built-in camera, better browsing techniques, innovative uses for your BlackBerry's Bluetooth, and much more.
After learning these techniques, you'll wonder how you ever got by without them. Each tip takes only a second or two to learn and put to use, and they'll save precious time, provide valuable information about your device and make your smartphone run faster and more smoothly.So sit back, whip out that BlackBerry and pay attention.

Become a Super Tech Support Guy

When the phone rings in my house, there's a 50/50 chance it's a call for help--tech help. Maybe it's my sister trying to figure out why her wireless mouse no longer works. Maybe it's Dad wanting to know why virus warnings keep popping up on his desktop. (Uh, oh.) Or it could be Aunt Judy looking for the file attachment she knows she saved--but doesn't know where.

Sound familiar? The curse of being even a little tech-savvy is that you automatically get elected Tech Support for friends, family members, and maybe even your coworkers.

Supercharge the Middle Button

Take a close look at your mouse. Chances are good it has at least three buttons: left, right, and middle. (Note: Your middle button might be your scroll wheel, which on most mice is clickable.) I thought I'd home in on the middle button.
Why would I want to do that? Well, I just took an informal poll of about ten people, and guess how many of them actually use that middle button? A grand total of one. One! People, people, people...

Phone as a Modem

Phone Web browsers and apps can handle many of your on-the-go Internet needs, but sometimes you have to use a laptop. What do you do if no Wi-Fi hotspot is in range? That's when tethering--sharing your smartphone's 3G Internet connection with your laptop via USB or Bluetooth--can be a lifeline to the Internet. However, not all wireless carriers officially support it, and, depending on your mobile plan, you could get slapped with some exorbitant data charges.

Automate Your PC's Media Library

Using your PC to store your photos, videos, and music might save you the trouble of having to dust off photo albums and alphabetize your CD collection, but it can still be a pain to keep your media converted, stored, tagged, and uploaded.
Here's how to automatically download, convert, and sync your video files, dump your photos to Flickr, and take the pain out of tagging your music library.

Enter the Close-Up World With Macro Mode

Macro photography lets you see the natural beauty of the tiny things all around us. You can get in close to your subject--flowers, bugs, coins, you name it--by activating your camera's macro mode (almost always indicated by a tulip icon), or get even closer by attaching a close-up filter to the front of your lens. Macro shooting opens a whole new world to you, but you'll need to pay attention to certain details such as lighting and aperture. Also check out another tutorial for shooting close-ups for some background, and read on for

Take Control of Your Android Phone

One of Android's biggest strengths is its flexibility. Unlike Apple and its iPhone, Google lets users and third-party developers tweak just about every aspect of the Android interface, and the customization options are nearly endless. If you find something that you don't like about your phone, odds are good that you can change it. From the desktop wallpaper to the notification sounds to the blinking LED indicator light, Android is easy to personalize. Here's how to give Android your own personal flair.

Install Windows 7 on Apple Mac OSX using Boot Camp

One of the biggest concern for people thinking of investing in an Apple MacBook is their fear of letting go of the tried-and-tested Windows operating system and embracing a new OS in the form of Apple's Mac OSX. Well, fear no more. Ever since Apple embraced Intel processors and chipsets in its Macbook and iMac line of computers, dual-booting with Microsoft's Windows operating system was possible with a tool Apple provided, Boot Camp. In this tutorial we will guide you through a step-by-step procedure of installing Windows 7 on your Macbook (or an Intel-chipset based iMac), and it isn't difficult at all.

How to set up a VPN

If you work on the go fairly often, you've probably hopped on a public wireless network at least once or twice. You should have also figured out how to keep your data safe when you're on such a network, by taking precautions such as using your company's virtual private network--if available--or an encrypted Web tunnel such as Hotspot Shield. If you don't have a company VPN and you don't want to deal with Hotspot Shield's banner ads, however, you can still secure your wireless traffic without breaking the bank by setting up your own VPN and gaining a private, encrypted Internet connection free from eavesdroppers.

Tunneling Your Traffic

Whether the public wireless network you use is password-protected or pay-per-minute, anyone who connects to the network could spy on your HTTP traffic--restaurant patrons, other people in your airport concourse, or other paying subscribers of a commercial hotspot provider. You can fix this problem by creating an encrypted tunnel through which you can send Web traffic that originates at your laptop and ends at a known location (the tunnel "endpoint"). From there, the tunnel routes your Web requests to the public Internet. Of course, once the traffic is outside the tunnel, it's subject to the usual potential scrutiny--from ISPs, law enforcement, or the like--but while your data is traveling through the public-access Wi-Fi hotspot, your Web surfing is secure.

Taking a Photo of Waterfalls and Moving Water

While I'm not a huge fan of camping or long, multi-day hiking trips, I do love visiting waterfalls. There's something about the rush of water that's both exciting and beautiful. It's one of my favorite photographic subjects. Taken with a slow shutter speed, water blurs into a deceptively tranquil image that effectively conveys the impression of motion in a still photograph--not entirely unlike shooting fireworks.

Let's take a look at how to capture some exciting and attractive photos of water in motion, so you're all set to go when the time comes to grab your camera and hiking shoes.

Keep Your Android Phone Safe

Google's Android Market mobile software shop was hit last week with its first major malware attack; a popular application called "DroidDream" proved to be infected with malicious code that could steal users' personal information, and Google was forced to use a built-in Android "kill-switch" to do away with the problematic app--but not until after it had already infiltrated thousands of Android smartphones.

The Google Android platform has never been more popular; in fact, Android now holds a commanding 31 percent of the U.S. smartphone market share, making it the most popular smartphone OS in the US, according to ComScore.
Android has also never before represented such a significant target for hackers and other baddies looking to profit off of the platform's popularity. In other words, now is the time to get smart about Google Android security. The following six tips and tricks will help do just that.

Solutions to 5 Common HDTV Questions

From the moment you decide to buy a new HDTV, you face a series of potential pitfalls that can set you back in your quest to choose a television and enjoy it. Problems can crop up throughout the process, whether you're just beginning to determine which television technology better suits your needs or you're dealing with unsatisfactory picture quality once you've set up your new TV in your living room.
Fortunately, many of the issues facing prospective or current HDTV owners are quite easy to address--you just have to do your homework before you break out your credit card. Here are five common HDTV problems, and how you can solve them in a matter of minutes.

Upgrading your graphics card

Choosing the best graphics card for upgrading your aging board is difficult. Ultimately, you want a balanced setup: Too much power, and the graphics processing unit just sits idle in a game, waiting for the CPU to finish whatever it's doing. Too little power, and the CPU waits for the GPU to wrap up its tasks. In either case your game won't look or play as you want it to.

The good news is that both AMD and Nvidia have rolled out their second-generation DirectX 11-compliant graphics cards in the past several months. These revised GPUs offer improved performance, as well as more-robust feature sets. In some instances the new midrange cards (which fall into the ~ Rs. 9000 -to- Rs. 13,500 price range) outperform older graphics boards that were priced at ~ Rs. 23,000 or more only a few years ago.

Updating your Video driver

For starters, what exactly does a driver do? Windows uses a driver to help the computer communicate with various gadgets, both internal and external, that are attached to it.

You will have to update the video driver when either the Operating System changes, or some new software causes a conflict with your video card driver.

Windows 7 has built-in drivers and will often automatically install a driver when a new device is detected, given that the driver is already in the Windows driver library on the machine. Occasionally, the system might not recognize a new device and so you will be asked to install a driver manually from DVD or from the Internet. To update a driver, you'll need to download its latest version from the video card manufacturer's Web site.

The Switch.

Even accomplished geeks shy away from motherboard upgrades on their main PCs. Years ago, I would often upgrade gaming and test systems in my own basement lab, but keep chugging along with a production machine using a two-year-old motherboard and CPU.
Then I learned how to swap in a new motherboard without having to deal with a clean install. It isn't that difficult, provided you do a little up-front prep. The hard part is not the hardware installation--modern motherboards are easier to set up and install than in years past--it's bringing up an existing Windows installation and all your applications.

In this article I'm going to focus on a single-generation upgrade. Examples might include moving from an Intel Core 2-generation board to a Core i5/i7 board, or from an AMD Athlon 64 X2 AM2 board to a Phenom X4-capable board. Even in this case, you may be looking at additional hardware--particularly memory, if you're moving from DDR2 RAM to DDR3.
Specifically, I won't look at trying to move from very old hardware (say, a motherboard with AGP) to brand-new hardware. If you're planning on moving from ancient gear to current gear, a clean install really is the best way to go.
Here I'll walk you through the process of upgrading the motherboard in an existing PC, including taking care of all the software issues. The goal is to keep and maintain your existing Windows installation even after a motherboard upgrade. I'll focus on the process with Windows 7, but I'll also offer tips and tricks for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
Performing a motherboard upgrade is fairly simple, and consists of three parts: pre-upgrade preparation, the physical swap, and post-upgrade polishing.

Securing your Mobile Devices

From coffee shops to planes, trains, and cruise ships, we've become accustomed to having ready access to the Internet just about anywhere. The problem is, it's easy to forget how vulnerable that makes us to security threats.
Consider the following threat scenario. Someone can log into your Facebook account via Firesheep, a Firefox extension that can intercept unencrypted cookies from certain Websites on any open Wi-Fi network, making it possible to steal login credentials for sites like Facebook and Twitter, or even access your e-mail.
Think it can't happen to you? Think again. Fortunately, a combination of plain old common sense and some technology can protect your devices--quickly and fairly easily.

Editing LAN settings

When you get a new Internet connection, you most probably will be required to change the Network fields in the 'TCP/IP properties' to the preferred values used by the ISP. We will show you how this is done in Windows 7.

Instructions:
1. Open the 'Control Panel' through the Windows Start menu.

Renewing IP Address in Windows 7

How often is it that, when we have problems accessing a page ('œPage Not found error'), we call the customer service folks to only have them tell us the 'steps' for rectifying the problem? The '˜help'™ advice from the service centre usually involves them telling you to disconnect and re-connect your modem. However you might as well save on the call to the service centre by taking matters into your own hands. You can do this by just renewing your IP address.
What exactly is the IP address? It is the unique numerical name which specifies the address of your system when it'Â™s connected to the internet/network. For example, an IP address would look something like this 185.161.30.74.

Here are the steps to follow when renewing your IP address.

Tweak Your System Speed

The Windows Registry is a database that holds your operating system's configurations and settings. This includes everything from how long your mouse must hover over a taskbar icon before the preview pops up (in Windows Vista and Windows 7) to performance settings.

Windows 7 (and Vista) have more eye-candy features built into the operating system, but a number of Registry hacks and tweaks can speed up--or, at least, appear to speed up--the performance of your computer. Before we start mucking around with your PC's guts, however, we're going to make sure that you have a reliable backup of your Registry in case something goes sour.

For the past couple weeks I've been stuck using my Web browser to access my Gmail accounts, rather than my preferred method: Outlook. (It's all because of the computer meltdown I mentioned in a few earlier posts.) It gets the job done, but there's one thing about it that drives me nuts: no preview pane. If I want to read an e-mail, I have to click it, then click again to go back to my inbox and find the next message I want to read. Wash, rinse, repeat. Come on, Google, it's 2011! How is it possible that there's no preview-pane option for Gmail?
(In case you're not familiar with the terminology, what I mean is dividing the inbox into two sections: one that shows the inbox, and one that displays the contents of whatever e-mail I click. No jumping back and forth between two full-screen options. It's how pretty much every other e-mail client on the planet works.)
If this bugs you as much as it does me, you'll be glad to know there's a stop-gap solution: Message Sneak Peek. By enabling this feature, which is one of the "experimental" ones found in Google Labs, you can read the contents of an e-mail without having to leave your inbox. Simply right-click the message and presto: a preview window appears. And it's even functional: You can archive, delete, or mark-as-read the selected message.
Sound good? To enable this, head to Gmail in your browser, click the little gear icon in the upper right corner, and then click Mail settings.

10 Ways to Boost Your Smartphone's Battery Life

For all of their power and versatility, smartphones--even the best of them--are cursed with abysmal battery life. Unless you use your phone very sparingly (and who does that?), you're lucky to make it home at the end of the day with enough juice left in the battery for one more call. But with the right apps and a little insight, you can double your smartphone's battery life--and work (and play) longer than ever before.
Though some phones live a little longer than others on a single charge, all smartphones suffer from the same basic problem: They do too much. Any 3.7-volt battery small enough to fit into your phone's tiny chassis stands no chance of lasting multiple days under a steady workload of running apps, browsing the Web, sending e-mail, and doing whatever else phones are expected to do. (Oh yeah, making calls.)

Eight Tips To Use Twitter Like A Pro

Is your business on Twitter? It should be. The microblogging site has tweeted its way, 140 characters at a time, to the top of the social media ladder. With more than 200 million members sending out an estimated 65 million tweets per day, your business should be engaged.

But hold on. If you haven't learned yet from using Facebook or other social networks, establishing relationships with customers via such platforms is not the same as just marketing to them. You need to understand both the unique aspects of Twitter and how to use it effectively to communicate with your customers in order to be successful.

Here are eight tips to get you started in the right direction.

Does your system seem sluggish?

Had we a nickel for every time a friend, loved one, or random stranger asked us, "What's slowing down my PC?" we could shutter PCWorld and retire to live comfortably on a small, secluded island. But since no such deluge of small coins seems likely, we'll instead outline some methods you can use to troubleshoot unexpected slowness on your PC, free of charge.
Of course, systems differ, software differs, and your specific system's history is unique, so we aren't in a position to pinpoint the source of your problem. Nevertheless, we can give you some generally helpful hints that you can use to dig out of the mess.
Know Your Hardware

Outdoor Computing Tips

Laptops, tablets, and smartphones are supposed to make us mobile: Freed of cumbersome desktop technology, we can work anywhere we want. Why, then, don't you see legions of people at parks, beaches, or even sidewalk cafes typing away on their laptops? Mainly because they simply can't see their screens.

It doesn't have to be this way. A little planning and know-how can get you ahead of the game when it comes to using your gadgetry outside. Whether you're reading ebooks on your iPhone or sneaking in a few work emails while the kids build a sand castle, here's how best to set yourself up to work alongside Mother Nature.

Why wont the PC boot?

There's no easy way to determine exactly why a PC won't boot (we're assuming that you tried booting from an optical drive or a bootable USB disk, and it failed), but the following steps will take you through the most common hardware reasons for a PC that won't load Windows.

1. Check all of the external cables, including the power cable. Confirm that your monitor is turned on.

A dirty HDTV screen won't give you much pleasure--or much information. Screens are delicate, however. Clean them the wrong way, and you ruin them for good.
The main tool you need is a microfiber cloth. You can get a very small one, perhaps even for free, at your optometrist's office. You can buy larger ones for a few dollars at camera stores, electronics stores, hardware stores, or online.

1. As a safety measure, unplug your TV.

2. Wipe the screen gently with the dry cloth. Don't press hard on it, but for particularly stubborn dirt you can apply some gentle pressure.

3. If a dry cloth doesn't do the job, you'll need to use a wet one--and that can be tricky. Distilled water is the safest and cheapest liquid for a screen. If that isn't strong enough, mix it half-and-half with white vinegar.

Syncing Google Calendar with Outlook

Google Calendar by itself is fine and dandy if you're comfortable living your life in your browser, but if you prefer to keep your data local and accessible when you're offline, you can take advantage of most of the great things Google Calendar has to offer without giving up your desktop calendar.

If you use Microsoft Outlook, just download Google Calendar Sync. Enter your Google Calendar username and password, and it will take care of syncing your calendar data back and forth between Google Calendar and Outlook.

The nice thing about syncing your calendar between Google Calendar and Outlook is that you get the best of both worlds.

Here's how to get your smartphone screen nice and clean:

1. As a safety measure, remove your phone's battery. If the battery cannot be removed, turning off the device will suffice.

2. Wipe the screen gently with the dry cloth. Don't press hard on it, but for particularly stubborn dirt you can apply some gentle pressure.

3. If a dry cloth doesn't do the job, you'll need to use a wet one--and that can be tricky. Distilled water is the safest and cheapest liquid for a screen. If that isn't strong enough, mix it half-and-half with white vinegar.

4. Put the liquid into a spray bottle, and spray it onto the microfiber cloth.

5. Wipe the display as described above, and then wait until the screen is completely dry before turning the device back on.

How to Master Web Browser Tricks

Your browser can do more than meets the eye. Plenty of great add-ons are available for customizing and controlling your Web browsing experience.

Firefox Fans Only
Make Gmail better: Grab Better Gmail 2 to improve the Gmail experience. Your mouse will highlight the e-mail message that you hover it over, the Unread count in the Gmail window will appear first (so that it won't get cut off if it's located in a tab), and attachments will show up from the list view, among other useful improvements. The first version of Better Gmail as a Chrome extension.

Never lose another forum post: Use the Lazarus Firefox add-on to save everything you type in a form, just in case your PC crashes at an inopportune moment.

Deep-six the links: Copy Plain Text strips all of the nasty, unpredictable formatting out of text that you copy and paste.