I already do all of these tricks. Just thought I’d share them with the rest of you.
“Whether you’re working or wasting time, you spend a lot of time on the Web every day. You’ve already ditched Internet Explorer and switched to Firefox or Chrome; in fact, Net Applications’ browser marketshare stats show Chrome inched past Safari for the first time in December to take the No. 3 spot behind IE and Firefox. But are you using your browser’;s best features? Power Web surfers know the settings and shortcuts that make getting what you need online fast and efficiently. Here are five browser tricks that can streamline your surfing session, whether you’re on Facebook or the company intranet.”
“A growing contingent of new laptop users are experiencing extremely poor battery performance, and complaining about it loudly online. The thing is, the problem doesnt seem limited to be any one laptop manufacturer, or even any one battery manufacturer. Its starting to look like the only common denominator for the users experiencing problems is Windows 7.”
“We’ve just gotten the inside line on the next Droid update that’s making the rounds through Verizon’s testing department from one of our trusted sources, and overall, it looks like this should take users 95 percent of the way to curing pangs of Nexus One envy. Here’s what we’ve got:”
“This guide shows how to speed up downloads in the freeware bittorrent client, µTorrent. All bittorrent programs need to have their incoming and outgoing communications flow freely in order to achieve the highest download speeds and that is what this guide is about.”
“It can be hard to remember to routinely clean out your computer — whether that means running virus scans or organizing your files. That’s why having a day devoted to making sure that your computer is working well and that you can find anything you need on it is a good idea. The Institute for Business Technology originally sponsored a National Clean Out Your Computer Day several years ago, assigning it to the second Monday in February. It’s a holiday well worth adding to your calendar.”
“Soft Focus is a much sought out effect in photography. You can find it used commonly in glamour shots and to some extent in wedding photography as well. There are special lenses you can use to create the soft focus effect using your cameras. Some modern cameras come with a settings that let you create soft focus effects as well. In any case if any of the above options are unavailable you can easily mimic this effect inside Photoshop (or GIMP for that matter).”
“Once upon a time, a President thought that taking humans “to the Moon and the planets beyond” was not only good for the economy of the country, but also would push US technology decades beyond everybodys else. He was right.”
Astronaut Tweets Stunning Images of Earth From Orbit
The astronauts on the ISS sent their first tweet from space just a short time ago. Now they’ve upped their game, using Twitpic to send us breathtaking shots of significant locations all around the world.
A few months ago I bought an Apple TV. I thought between the size of the actual device and the ability to plug in to my already extensive iTunes music library that it would be a great purchase. I’ve been meaning to write this review for awhile, but in that time I actually sold the Apple TV on EBay. I’m very happy I did so and I even recouped most of the purchase price. It basically came down to one thing; the Apple TV is not powerful enough.
The Apple TV is an interesting device. Apple has even said themselves that it is a hobby for them. The box holds so much potential but it just lacks in too many ways. At least for me. Before I go and bash the device I’m going to let you know that there are some positives.
It’s a wonderfully designed piece of hardware. It’s small and nice to look at.
If you live in the iTunes world it’s also a great piece of hardware. It connects beautifully with iTunes and if you purchase all of your music and video from Apple, the device makes it easy to put it on your TV.
It makes a great remote speaker for playing music from your computer via a wireless network.
It can be hacked
The fact that the Apple TV can be hacked made me hold on to the device a little longer than I expected. I was able to install XBMC and Boxee and open the device up to my own video collection and to some great internet video via Boxee. The problem was with my own video collection. I’m starting to collect higher quality video and the Apple TV just cannot handle it. Now, I could re-encode my video collection so that it still looks good and the Apple TV can handle it but it is a huge pain in the ass (I actually started to do this and realized there had to be a better way). Also, the device wasn’t capable of handling some Internet video and the playback would be very choppy. Even moving around the menus was a laggy experience. So, I had enough and I sold it.
I know am the proud of owner of a custom built home theater PC. It has a quad-core processor with 4gb of RAM and a very nice onboard video and audio card. I even threw in a Blu Ray drive. It has HDMI out for easy connection to my TV (just as the Apple TV did). I could have put it in a small case but I chose a case that looks like a big audio receiver. It currently has 2.3 TB of storage and I plan on adding another 1.5TB very soon. This machine can play back any file type I throw at it with ease and is very quiet. I plan on making another write-up about the machine with pictures and a list of the products I chose to install in it. I’ll also talk about the software I’m using to power the system.
A few months ago I bought an Apple TV. I thought between the size of the actual device and the ability to plug in to my already extensive iTunes music library that it would be a great purchase. I’ve been meaning to write this review for awhile, but in that time I actually sold the Apple TV on EBay. I’m very happy I did so and I even recouped most of the purchase price. It basically came down to one thing; the Apple TV is not powerful enough.