Q: Windows is not seeing my DVD drive when I plug it in. I run Vista 32-bit on a notebook. How can I get it to detect this drive?

A: When Windows isn’t detecting a drive, it’s possible that the drive requires some drivers from the manufacturer in order to function. Have you tried another spare DVD drive to see if Windows detects that one? Try opening your device manager (Start -> Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Device Manager) and finding the drive within it. If you don’t find it, there’s something wrong with the connection. It should show up even if Windows didn’t find drivers for it.

If you see the drive, right-click it and click “Scan for hardware changes,” like so:

If this doesn’t work, try uninstalling the current driver and attempt to scan for changes again. You know it worked when you see a message on the right-hand side of your taskbar saying “Device driver software installed successfully.”

Q: What Can I Use to Restore My System to a Previous State?

A: If you haven’t made any image of your system to restore to, you won’t be able to restore your system to a previous state using any software offered on the market. All system restoration software requires that you create a restoration image using their software. Some of them use similar restore images.

I highly suggest, for future reference, that you use Microsoft System Restore, offered in Windows XP and later. You can find this utility by accessing your Start menu, clicking “All Programs,” clicking “Accessories,” clicking “System Tools,” and clicking “System Restore.” Within this program, you can create system restore points and recover from them. Create a restore point every time you install a new application so that you can restore to any point prior to the application installation. These are best practices for system restoration in any version of Windows from XP and beyond. Have a look:

Q: How can I install Windows XP through a flash drive?

A: First of all, you need a flash drive large enough to hold all the installation files. You also need a flash drive that is bootable. It’s safe to assume you’re trying to install XP on a netbook. You will need a desktop PC or laptop with CD/DVD drive to create the bootable flash drive. Here are some simple steps for bootable USB Nirvana:

• Download and install “A Bootable USB” from this link.
• Click “Check USB” and “Format USB” while the USB drive is connected to your computer.
• Insert the Windows XP installation CD into the computer’s CD/DVD drive. Click “Check DVD” and “Start DVD.” This will begin the process of writing the DVD onto the USB drive and making the flash drive bootable.

All your problems will be solved by this little utility:

Q: My pictures are showing up as icons instead of showing me thumbnails. How can I fix this? I’m running Windows 7 64-bit.

A: Someone must have switched your folder options to show the icons representing the file type instead of preview thumbnails. To fix this, click “Organize” on the upper left-hand corner of the folder’s container, like this:

Once you see the menu, select “Folder and Search Options.” Click the “View” tab and then clear the checkbox next to “Always show icons, never thumbnails.” This should solve your problem fair and square.

Q: I installed Windows XP on my computer that already had Windows 7 in it. Now, the computer only starts with Windows XP, although I’m certain that both operating systems are intact. How can I create a boot menu for both these systems?

A: If you’re not familiar with using MSConfig and other utilities to properly detect both operating systems and fix the boot loader manually, you can always use EasyBCD, a program that lets you completely modify the boot loader as you wish without having to go through all the painful steps you normally would go through. You can download EasyBCD from here. Take note that you must scroll down to the bottom of the page and choose the non-commercial license (unless, of course, you’re downloading it for corporate use). This way, the license will be free. Don’t get scared by the “Buy Now” button near the top of the page.

Q: I get an error saying: The Windows Installer service is unavailable. Another application may be running setup. Finish and installations in progress, or restart your computer, and then re-run setup. How do I stop this?

A: Attempt to stop the Windows Installer service and start it again. Click the “Start” menu and type “services.msc” on the bottom, then press “Enter.” This will take you to the “Services” window. Just scroll down to “Windows Installer,” right-click it, and stop the service. Start the service using the same method. Once the service is started, it should no longer give you trouble.

If you continue having problems, your computer might be attempting to install updates on your computer. Install the updates, shut down, and try installing an application again. This often is the case.

Q: I run Windows on a multiple monitor setup. Whenever I press “Print Screen” on my keyboard, I want to get an image only of the currently selected monitor. How can I do this without having to edit the second monitor out of paint?

A: Try “Alt+LShift+PrtSc/Print Screen.” This combination gets the display input from the currently active monitor. If that key somehow isn’t working here, come back and we’ll talk in the comments section.

Got Your Own Question?

As we’ve mentioned above, you can submit your own query to us using the “Ask Our Experts Now” button at the right sidebar of any page of this site. If you would like to discuss a question already mentioned here, please use the comments section instead of making another inquiry. Have a Win-tastic day!

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Crusper lets a user perform the following actions on screen corners:

• Open a program
• Open a file or folder
• Go to Desktop
• Type a phrase
• Open a website
• Restart computer
• Shutdown computer
• Log-off
• Disable computer restart/shutdown/log-off

When Crusper is started for the first time, it will ask you for calibration. This calibration process determines the four corners of the screen. You will need to move your mouse cursor to each corner of the screen and and click there so that Crusper saves that exact position for taking actions in the future. After the calibration process, you will be taken to the main software window.

The next step is to create a new shortcut. Creating a new shortcut means assigning a specific task to each corner of the screen. Clicking on “Create a new shortcut” will take you to the options window that I have already explained above. Just pick a task and the respective action will take place automatically. For example, if I selected “Open a Program”, the Windows browser will automatically open from where you can select your desired program. Press OK when done.

The next window will ask you about which corner you want to assign the task to. You can select any corner or combination of corners but make sure that the actual shortcut does not overlap another shortcut.

You can see and delete all the shortcuts you have created in Crusper by clicking on “Edit current shortcuts” button. Unfortunately you can not edit the current shortcuts. You have to delete them and create again in order to change the shortcut combination. You can also check the “Automatic click” checkbox in order to perform the task by just moving the mouse without clicking. You will need to use your middle button of the mouse to complete the task.

These shortcuts only work when Crusper is running in Windows. You can enable Crusper to automatically load with Windows startup under settings. You can also change the shortcut combination renew delay which is 2 seconds by default. This means that you will need to work out your shortcut combination before 2 seconds in order to successfully do the task which has been assigned to that particular combination.

Although this program has not been updated for a while but it does its task very well and works in almost all versions of Windows including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Download Crusper

For what tasks will you be using this software? Please share your thoughts in comments below.

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Installation

To install sysstat on a RedHat based variant using yum:

yum -y install sysstat

To install on a Debian based variant using apt:

apt-get install sysstat

If you are using a Ubuntu-based distro, you should be able to find sysstat in the software manager.

After the installation, you will need to edit the configuration file to run the daemon.

In the terminal:

gksu gedit /etc/default/sysstat

and set the “sadc” variable to true by changing the line to ENABLED="true".

Save and close the file. Finally, start the daemon:

/etc/init.d/sysstat start

Common usage of Sysstat

The sysstat suite is obviously a collection of very extensive and detailed application. Here are some basic ways to use the tools in order to gain a feel for its troubleshooting guidance.

Check CPU usage

To check CPU usage stats for the current day (by default sar tracks the data every 10 minutes):

sar -u

To display real-time CPU usage for a given amount of time, you can specify the intervals in seconds followed by how many entries you want to report. For example: the following will report total CPU usage every 2 seconds for a total of 10 times:

sar -u 2 10

Most PCs have multiple cores nowadays. To view the activity of each specific core use the “-P ALL” flag. The following shows a real-time snapshot of the 4 cores in my PC (same intervals and output parameters apply, below is 1 second 1 time):

sar -P ALL 1 1

Want to see how much memory is currently being used? Use sar -r as follows to show real-time memory usage every 2 seconds for 10 times:

sar -r 2 10

Display device report

To display a device report showing transfers per second (tps) and data read and write stats, showing data in real-time every 2 seconds, for 10 reports, type:

iostat -d 2 10

Note:

• tps = transfers per second
• Blk_read/s = amount of data read in blocks per second
• Blk_wrtn/s = amount of data written in blocks per second
• Blk_read = total blocks read
• Blk_wrtn = total blocks written

For extended I/O stats:

iostat -x 2 5

Get information regarding running process

Use pidstat to report information regarding running process. The -d flag will list all processes on the machine:

pidstat -d

To see real-time results of running processes, you can use the following, where like the above examples, the first number is the second interval and the second number is how many times to report:

pidstat - d 2 5

Another useful command is to use pidstat with the -r flag to analyze memory usage with particular processes:

pidstat -r 2 5

Conclusion

Sysstat is a very powerful monitoring tool for Linux and it is particularly useful in a server environment where there is no GUI available. The above mentioned only touch the surface of what sysstat is capable. If you have used sysstat in your PC/server, feel free to share with us the various ways you use it to monitor your system performance.

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1. Use the “Save-as” tool in your office suite

I am not sure about all the office suite, but for Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice and LibreOffice, they allow you to save your document as a HTML file. And yes, all your data will be converted to HTML format too.

To do this, you just have to go to “File -> Save as” and select HTML web document from the list. The naming convention might vary for different office suite.

Once you have exported it, you can edit the HTML document or open with a browser to view it.

2. Google Docs

What if you don’t have office suite on your PC and you don’t have permission to install software on your system? Here’s a simple walk-around: use Google Docs (or Google Drive)

1. Upload your spreadsheet document to Google Docs.

2. Go to “File -> Download As” and select “HTML”. It will probably open your current spreadsheet in a new tab, in webpage format. All you have to do is to right click your mouse and select “View Source”. Copy all the source code.

3. Paste the HTML source code to a text editor and save it with a .html extension.

3. Using a web service – Tableizer

If you prefer a more manual method, you can make use of a web service to convert your spreadsheet to HTML document.

1. Go to Tableizer.

2. Copy the data in your spreadsheet document and paste it in the input field. Click “Tableize it”.

That’s it. It will generate the HTML table code as well as a preview of how it looks like on the Web. You can simply copy and paste the HTML code to your Web document.

I have tested Tableizer with several documents and it works well with most of them. For some instances, it has difficulties interpreting a carriage return within cells. Your result may vary.

Note: If you have used Macros or formula in your spreadsheet, they might not translate well in the HTML format.

What other ways do you use to convert your spreadsheet to HTML?

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Know Your Audience

You can’t effectively market your business without knowing who your target audience is. In your Facebook Timeline dashboard, you can use your Insights data to help you identify your audience and from there, begin to break your advertising down by the demographics. Then use the Facebook Targeting Tools to help you deliver the ads according to those demographics. If you have a physical location, you will want to use the Geo Targeting option to target the people in your local area for in store promotions. Demographic Targeting by Job Title, Age or Gender as well as Likes and Interests Targeting can help you create target specific ads for a better ROI.

If you want to use the targeting feature by Job Title or Interest, you would enter it into the “Precise Interest field”. When you begin typing your keywords, Facebook auto-populates a list of related keywords with that audience’s population so you know how many people that particular ad will reach.

Engage customers

Now that you know how to target your audience with an Ad, the next task is to decide where to display it. You have several options for this and it’s best to mix it up putting some in your news feeds, as a custom tab or in a message. You can even place them on a new fan’s page as a thank you response when they Like your page. Their friends now see it in their feed as well so it has a far reaching effect.

Nobody likes to be brow-beat by a sales pitch day in and day out, so don’t use your Facebook Page solely for that purpose. Keep your fans and customers engaged by posting informative articles about your product or how your product helped solve a problem. Display photos, videos and polls that keep the fans engaged with you and other fans of the page. Social Fresh is a good example of this method with varied posts of polls, articles and images. All are brightly colored and customers are always engaging in conversations and debates with each other and the brand here.

 Create An Ad

We have walked through all of the technical aspects of using the Facebook Targeting Tools to get the most ROI with your Ads so now we’ll put all of that together to actually create the Ad.

1. Design Your Ad

Navigate to the Facebook Ads Page and click “Create Ad”.  Decide on which Timeline it will go, where you want it displayed, then choose the image and text to be displayed. Make sure you use bold colors that will stand out from the blue and white background of Facebook.

2. Target Your Audience

Using any of the desired targeting tools, enter the demographics you want to target with this ad. Facebook will generate an Estimated Reach of your ad based on the information you selected so you’ll be able to see the demographic reach at a glance.

Set A Budget

It’s now time to set your budget for the ad but first you need to decide if you are optimizing for “Likes” or “Clicks”. The option to optimize by Likes isn’t available to everyone just yet so you may not have this option right away. Your budget can be set as lifetime of the ad or by the day. You set how long you want the ad to run by selecting the dates in the “Campaign Schedule” and Facebook will auto-populate the CPC based on your targeting and budget allotment.

Review Your Ad

The last step is to review your ad for accuracy. You will see a summary of your target audience, your CPC and the total budget along with the duration of the ad. If you need to make any changes to the ad, now is the time to do so by clicking “Edit” otherwise click “Place Order”.

Manage And Refresh Your Ads

You’ll want to monitor your ads to determine the effectiveness of them. Within the Ad Manager, you’ll be able to see which ones have the highest click through rates, lowest cost per click, etc. The Advertising Performance Report and Demographic Response Report can be accessed in your Ad Manager by going to the Reports tab. Tracking and adjusting your ad content and target may be necessary as you first start out and these reports can help you determine what’s working and what’s not. It’s also recommended to refresh your ads weekly to prevent your click through rate from dropping. That can be anything from changing text or simply changing the image of the ad.

Now it’s your turn to go create an ad for your business! Come back and share your experience of creating and using Facebook Ads with us! We’d love to hear how it has impacted your business and marketing strategy.

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1. Tired of Typing In Your Password? Have Windows Do It Automatically!

For those of you living alone, or those of you who share a computer with people who you wouldn’t mind poking around, you don’t necessarily have to keep typing your password at Windows’ logon screen. Versions of Windows as early as XP have been supporting automatic logins for quite some time although not many actually know about this.

Access the Start menu, type “netplwiz” and press “Enter.” If this isn’t functioning, type “control userpasswords2“. This will take you to the same place. Once in the user accounts window, clear the checkbox labeled “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer.” You should find it here:

Click “OK” when finished and you’ll never have to type in a password again.

2. Lock/Shutdown/Hibernate/Sleep/Standby on a Simple Shortcut

If you prefer using a shortcut to turn off the computer, there are some neat tricks you can use to create a shortcut for any of the “shutdown menu” options that you normally find on your Start menu. This is especially useful if you’re the kind of person that switches to the desktop before turning off the computer, making it easier to shut it down without having to waste time fumbling after the options in your Start menu.

Right-click any area on your desktop and go to “New -> Shortcut.” Type “shutdown.exe -s -t 00” in the field provided and click “Next.” Name your shortcut and continue the wizard until you feel happy with what you’ve done.

Use these shortcut locations to perform other actions:

• Restart = shutdown.exe -r -t 00
• Lock computer = Rundll32.exe User32.dll,LockWorkStation
• Hibernate = rundll32.exe PowrProf.dll,SetSuspendState
• Sleep = rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0

Once you’ve set your shortcuts, you can double-click them from the desktop or move them to a more appropriate location. One neat trick is to pin these to the taskbar for easier access, even when you’re not at your desktop.

3. Browse Your Computer From The Taskbar

Wouldn’t it be cool to browse your computer the same way you go through your programs list in the Start menu? Personally, I wouldn’t like the clutter, but some people really like the hierarchical menus. This fix will put the “Computer” directory that you normally access by clicking “Computer” on your Start menu in the taskbar instead of Windows Explorer. Let’s walk through the process.

Right-click your taskbar and hover the mouse over “Toolbars.” Select “New Toolbar.” Select your desktop and click “Computer” once. Don’t double-click it. Click the “Select folder” button at the bottom of the browsing window and you’ll see “Computer” appear at your taskbar near the icons on the right-hand side, like this:

Once you click the arrows to the right of “Computer,” you’ll see a repository of all directories in your drives.

4. Take Ownership of Files & Folders

Files in Windows 7 have a certain level of hierarchy that could annoy most people attempting to make modifications to any part of the file system. For this, you can easily add a “Take Ownership” option to the context menu that pops up when you right-click a file or folder on your computer. Instead of going through the tons of steps required to add this context menu, we found a file that does this for you! This is what “.reg” files are good for. Download this registry hack and run it. To uninstall the context menu, there’s another “.reg” file placed within the archive for you.

5. Add “Copy to Folder” or “Move to Folder” to Your Context Menu

Until now, the only two ways you can move or copy your files to another folder were:

1. Opening both folders and dragging the file from the source to the destination, or
2. Opening both folders and pressing “Ctrl+C” on the source and pressing “Ctrl+V” on the destination, using “Ctrl+X” in place of “Ctrl+C” to move a file.

This can get quite annoying if you have to copy something quickly. Adding “Copy to” or “Move to” to your context menu when right-clicking a file will help you eliminate the need to open both of the folders. You’ll only need to open the source folder. Download this registry hack to make it happen.

6. Get Rid of The Caps Lock Key

We all know that key that helps some people shout in comments sections on YouTube and post awkward questions on forums. If you’re not the type that often uses the Caps Lock key, you’d probably be more annoyed by its existence than its absence.

Let’s get rid of it with this downloadable registry hack. The files contained in the archive modify your registry to perform different functions. You can tell which one you want by reading the title of each file. Have fun!

7. Disable Automatic Update Installation on Shutdown

Oh, this one’s a huge pet peeve among my colleagues, and I’m sure that some of you hate having to stay awake during the night because you shut down your computer only to realize you need to turn it back on. Instead of waiting 10 seconds for the computer to shut down, you have to wait what seems like the entire night for the computer to finish installing updates before you can power up again. Your computer, in light terms, is in “update limbo.” So, how do we take it out of this zombie-like state?

Open up your registry editor by typing “regedit” in the search bar within your Start menu and pressing “Enter.” Once in, navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

If any of these keys don’t exist, just create new ones with the names shown here.

Add “NoAUAsDefaultShutdownOption” to the right-hand side of the window as a “DWORD” value. If the value exists, you don’t have to do this. Modify the value to “1″ and restart your computer. The computer will no longer hold you down while shutting down.

Questions? Thoughts?

Let us know what you think about these awesome tweaks in the comments section below! We’d also like to hear you if you’re stuck somewhere. You’ll get an answer very quickly.

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Sun JDK vs OpenJDK

In the past, Sun JDK was the default java package in Ubuntu. After Sun Microsystem was acquired by Oracle in 2010, Ubuntu (and various distros) switched the java package to the fully open-source OpenJDK as the SUN JDK no longer contain codes that are fully open-sourced.

OpenJDK is community-built and is (almost) 100% similar to the SUN JDK. You can easily install OpenJDK in Ubuntu via the Ubuntu Software Center, by clicking here or running the command:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre

Personally, other than some minor font rendering issue with OpenJDK, I have not experience any major problem with OpenJDK. That could also because I don’t use many java-based apps in the first place. However, if you have a specific java-based app that don’t run well in OpenJDK, you can switch to the SUN JDK instead. Here is how you do it:

The hard way

This method requires you to install SUN JDK 7 manually. It is a good way for you to learn the trick.

1. Download the SUN JDK 7 here to your home folder.

2. Extract the tar file.

3. Move the extracted file to the “/usr/lib/jvm/” folder:

sudo mv jdk1.7.0_04 /usr/lib/jvm/

4. Install SUN JDK 7 in your system:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/javac javac /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0_04/bin/javac 1
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0_04/bin/java 1

5. Set the environment variables:

sudo update-alternatives --config javac
sudo update-alternatives --config java

You will see an option like the screenshot below:

Enter the option that corresponds to the SUN JDK package. Press Enter.

That’s it.

To test your java:

java -version

You should see something like this:

The easy way

If you don’t want to manually install the SUN JDK, you can do it via a PPA. Since there is no official PPA for SUN JDK, you will have to grab a custom PPA that comes with the java package. Note that custom PPAs might add extra software sources to the repository, and cause your system to be bloated or even have conflicts with other apps. So bear in mind the risk involved.

There are several PPAs out there that come with SUN JDK, one that you can use is “webupd8team/java”

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer

This should install SUN JDK 7 in your system.

Run Java applet in Browsers (Firefox, Chrome etc)

Even after you have installed the java package, you will find that the java applet in your browser won’t run. Here is another package that you need to install:

sudo apt-get install icedtea-7-plugin

Once install, restart your browser. The java applet should run now.

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Mostly everyone that uses an iPad knows all the basic tricks, like using the multitasking bar at the bottom, grouping apps into folders, taking a screencap, etc. But there are still some new tricks I’ve learned that make using an iPad even easier than it already is.

1. Status Bar – tap to go to top

This first tip I can’t believe I never knew until recently. There’s a shortcut to move back to the top of a page or list, no matter what app you’re using. If you click on the black status bar at the top, the one that has the WiFi signal, time, battery left, etc., it will automatically scroll back to the top. If you’re using an app like Pages or Safari, it will carry you back to the top of the page. If you’re using an app like Mail, clicking on the side above the listing of emails will take you to the top of your list, and if you click on the side above the text of the email, it will take you to the top of the text.

2. Add more apps to dock

I’ve known about this trick for some time as I use it on my iPhone as well as my iPad. A friend who also had an iPhone showed me this one a long time ago. You don’t have to keep the same apps in your dock that Apple sets there. Additionally, you can add even more apps into the dock than just the four it comes shipped with. You can have up to six. I’ve added and re-organized to use the apps that I want that easy access to.

3. Force quit an app

Everyone knows how to do a force quit on their desktop or laptop computer, but it was unclear for quite awhile how to do that on an iPad. When an app freezes up, the only action that was known to do was to do a complete restart on the iPad by holding down the Restart and Home Buttons. But there’s a way to quit just the offending app without doing that complete restart. Hold down just the restart button until you see the slider asking you to shut off your iPad. Let up on the buttons and press the Home button alone this time. This takes you back to the Home screen and quits the app that was frozen, allowing you to restart to try to get back to where you were.

4. Search on page

On a desktop browser, you can search for blocks of text on a page. On the iPad, when you click on the Google search in the top of Safari, it actually opens a smaller box on the bottom to “Find on Page.” You don’t have to retype it here though. There’s also an option in the list it opens up. Searching for my name, it came up with a list of Lauras I could be searching for on Google, as well as “On This Page,” where it is already showing me two places my name is mentioned.

5. Not so simple passcode

The iPad presents with an option to use a four-digit passcode, but you can also change it to use a longer passcode of your choosing that would be much harder for strangers or sneaky children to guess. If you open the “Settings -> General -> Passcode Lock”, you can choose to turn off “Simple Passcode.” This allows you to create your own longer passcode using both letters and numbers.

6. Attaching photos in emails

This tip might seem simple, but it’s involved enough to where it’s just not something you think of as an option. Emailing photos is easy – you simply find the photo you want and hit the Sharing button. What about attaching a photo on a composed email? There is no “Attach” option like there is on a computer. Here is what you need to do: go to the Photos app and select the photos that you want to attach. Tap the “Copy” button, then go back to your Reply Email and paste in the pictures.

I bet that there are still plenty of tips/tricks that I have not discovered in the iPad. I will definitely share them when I found them. Meanwhile, what is your little “unknown” tips/tricks with your iPad?

Image credit: By Pedro Eugenio Antunes

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Skype

Skype is probably the most common application to chat with someone on your Android or computer. You have 3 free choices with Skype chats: text chat, audio chat and video chat. To use the video chat option, you will need to have a front facing camera. The other 2 options will work on pretty much any Android device.

Many business and web workers have adopted Skype for its cost effective calling to any phone number as well as the awesome video chatting.

Google Talk

Google Talk is Google’s own instant message service. If you are on your computer, you can chat with people through text or audio/video conversations. On your PC you will need the stand alone Google Talk application with an extension.

When you are on your Android device, again you will need a front facing camera to use the video chat. Many of the newer phones and tablets are coming with some sort of front camera now. There is not an option to chat with audio only, it is either video with audio or text.

Google+ Hangout

Google+ lets you connect to a small group of people and all chat with each other. Google calls this a Hangout. From your Android, you need to start a normal text conversation. You can then click the video camera icon to change to a video chat.

A Google Hangout is similar to the chatting with someone on Google Talk, however you can converse with more than one person at a time. You can also stream conversations so others can see or join.

Tango

Tango is an Android application we previously mentioned here on MTE. Tango lets you make free audio and video calls anyone else using Tango on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and PCs. There are little add-ons for Tango video chats. These add-ons are like emoticons for video chat. It’s something a little different to add to your video chat.

ooVoo

ooVoo is an application similar to Tango in the way you can audio and video chat for free with other ooVoo users. You can group up to 6 people in a conversation making ooVoo great for small collaboration meetings. You have the option of text chats too.

Conclusion

As you can see there are several video chat applications for Android that will also work on other platforms. Having the flexibility to talk on your PC to someone while they are mobile is great. Not to mention, you won’t need to talk your friends or people at your company into changing from iPhones to Android just so you can video chat.

Image credit: image

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	Free Storage Space	Pricing per month (US$)	Desktop client	Mobile Support	File Sharing	Unique Selling Point
Dropbox	2GB, free referrals upgrade up to 18GB	$9.99 for 50GB $19.99 for 100GB	Windows Mac Linux	Android iOS Blackberry	Yes	Support almost every platforms, sync seamlessly
Skydrive	7GB. Existing users can have free upgrade to 25GB for a limited time	$13/year for $20GB $32/year for 65GB $65/year for 100GB	Windows Mac	WP 7 iOS	Yes	A generous amount of storage space to start with and great integration with Windows OS and devices
Google Drive	5GB	$2.49 for 25GB $4.99 for 100GB $7.99 for 16TB	Windows Mac Linux (coming soon)	Android iOS (coming soon)	Yes	Great integration between Google Docs, Gmail, and Picasa. Cheap and affordable storage space upgrade
Ubuntu One	5GB	$2.99 for every 20GB	Linux Windows	Android iOS	Yes	The native sync client for Ubuntu and supports music and contact sync
iCloud	5GB	$20/year for 10GB $40/year for 20GB $100/year for 50GB	Requires iTunes, for Windows and Mac only	iOS	No	Integrate seamlessly with iOS device and Mac.
Amazon Cloud Drive	5GB	$20/year for 20GB $50/year for 50GB $100/year for 100GB $200/year for 200GB $500/year for 500GB $1000/year for 1TB	Windows Mac (only a upload/download client, not a sync client)	No sync client for mobile (yet). Mp3 saved in the Cloud drive can be played with the Amazon MP3 Android app	No	Music purchased from Amazon will be saved to the cloud drive for free, without affecting the storage status
SpiderOak	2GB	$10/month per 100GB increment	Windows Mac Linux	Android iOS	Yes	Encrypted online backup
SugarSync	5GB	$4.99 for 30GB $9.99 for 60GB $14.99 for 100GB	Windows Mac	Android iOS Blackberry Symbian	Yes	Able to sync any folders on your computer
Box	5GB. Android users and Apps email holder can upgrade to 50GB	$9.99 for 25GB $19.99 for 50GB	Windows & Mac version only for business and enterprise user	Android iOS Blackberry	Yes	Good focus on business side
Wuala	5GB	$39/year for 20GB $79/year for 50GB $129/year for 100GB	Windows Mac Linux	Android iOS	Yes	Wuala encrypts the data on your computer before it is uploaded. During the upload, your data is split up into many different pieces and stored in multiple places to make certain that you never lose a single file.
iDriveSync	5GB	$4.95 for unlimited sync storage	Windows Mac	Android iOS	Yes	Data are encrypted at the data center

The Analysis

If you are looking for a cross-platform compatible storage service, Dropbox is the one to go. It is the easiest to use and supports the most number of OS and platforms.

If you need plenty of storage space and are looking for a cheap and affordable storage provider, you can consider either SkyDrive or Google Drive. For up to 65GB, SkyDrive has the lowest price per GB. When the storage space go up to and above 100GB, Google Drive is the cheapest. However, on the mobile side, you don’t expect Microsoft to come up with an Android app for SkyDrive and Google might not be so keen to create a WP7 app for its GDrive too. If you need to have mobile access, this is something you need to consider as well.

iCloud is the obvious choice for iOS users since it is deeply integrated into the OS. It may not be the cheapest choice though, but with all Apple stuff, it just works.

Amazon Cloud Drive is really useful if you are a regular Amazon customer, particularly if you buy MP3 and eBooks often. I have a feeling that Google will merge its Drive and Music services together in the future, but as of now, Amazon has really done a good job linking your digital download and the cloud storage together.

Being a Ubuntu user, I really like the way that Ubuntu One is integrated into the system. The syncing and restoration is seamless that I can reformat my PC and still have my settings and configuration intact the next time I boot up my PC.

Wuala and SpiderOak are good if you are paranoid about the confidentiality of your files in the cloud. Both services are cross-platform compatible and encrypt your data by default. Wuala offers more storage space for free (5GB) but if you need more than 100GB of space, SpiderOak is slightly more affordable.

Which storage provider is your favorite?

Image credit: By wwarby

Related Posts:

• How to Map SkyDrive As Your Network Drive in Windows 7
• InSync + Google Docs = Cheaper And Better Dropbox?
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How To Use Present.me

1. Create a free account (you can use Facebook or Google to sign up). Once you are in, you can upload the content by going to the Create menu (at top).

2. Choose from the types of content you wish to upload and proceed to the next step.

3. You can choose files from your Google Drive (Docs) or upload presentation, PDF etc. I uploaded a PDF document.

4. Once the document is uploaded, you will get a choice to record a video by letting the service access to your computer’s camera. You can also upload a recorded video, but that will require you to upgrade to a paid account.

5. Now you can record the video and use the slides from the presentation the same way you would present it to someone in front of you. Once finished, publish the new presentation for the viewers to enjoy. The new kind of presentation can also be embedded into a webpage.

Pricing

The service has a free account that allows you to upload 3 presentations (each not exceeding 15 mins) per month. The paid plans offer you more choices and an ad-free interface. The free plan is worth a try considering the usability and engagement it offers to any presenter.

After you get all the facts right, curate it in a way that’s consumable, what, according to you, is the best way(s) to present the information? So far you used to have three choices. You can create a presentation, a Youtube video or an infographic. Each one has a specific purpose. An infographic is best for representing a survey or study over a large margin in concise form. Whereas a video or presentation is good for demonstrating and present a report. Now that you have a richer medium to present data or explain something, do you think it will be a better choice for you? We are eager to hear your opinion.

Present.me

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1. Enable AHCI

The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a paramount feature for ensuring that Windows will support all of the features that come with running an SSD on your computer, especially the TRIM feature, which allows Windows to help the SSD perform its routine garbage collection. The term “garbage collection” is used to describe the phenomenon that occurs when a drive gets rid of information that is no longer considered to be in use.

To enable AHCI, you’ll have to enter the BIOS of your computer and enable it somewhere within its settings. I can’t tell you exactly where the setting is, as each BIOS functions differently. You’ll have to do a bit of hunting. Chances are that newer computers will have this enabled by default. It’s most recommended that you enable this feature before installing the operating system, although you might be able to get away with enabling it after Windows has already been installed.

2. Enable TRIM

We’ve talked about TRIM enough in the previous section. You could see how such a feature would benefit your computer’s speed greatly, so let’s get to enabling it!

Open up your command prompt and enter the following: 

fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0

That’s all you have to do! Onto the next step!

3. Disable System Restore

This isn’t an obligation. But, just so you know, your drive doesn’t exactly have infinite space. System restore undermines both the speed and space of your SSD. Why don’t you just get rid of it?

Click your Start menu, right-click “Computer,” and click “Properties.” Click “System Protection” on the upper left-hand corner:

Once in the window, click “Configure,” like so:

Once in the configuration dialog, click “Turn off system protection.” Click “OK” and you’re all set!

4. Disable Indexing

A good part of your SSD speed is consumed in indexing files for Windows search. This could be useful if you store everything you have on your SSD, but you might be annoyed by it if you experience slow-downs due to the periodic indexing process that occurs every time you add new data to the drive. You’re better off without it in an SSD, because the speed boost from the indexing process is superfluous in such environments.

Click your Start menu and click “Computer.” Right-click your SSD and click “Properties.” De-select the box labeled “Allow files to have contents indexed in addition to file properties” and click “OK.” Once you do this, the operating system will apply this to all the files and folders on the drive. If you see a dialog telling you that it couldn’t remove a file from the index, click “Ignore All.” That will streamline the process and ignore any errors.

5. Disable Scheduled Defragmentation

Because the SSD is a solid media with no moving parts, you often don’t see a performance drop due to file fragmentation. Therefore, there’s no need to actually defragment the drive as frequently as you would defragment an HDD, per se. That’s why we’re about to disable this!

Access your Start menu, click “Accessories,” click “System Tools,” and then click “Disk Defragmenter.” Click “Configure schedule,” like so:

Once in the schedule configuration window, uncheck the box labeled “Run on a schedule.” Click “OK,” and you won’t have to worry about scheduled defragmentations again.

6. Remove The Page File

The page file in Windows refers to a file on a disk reserved for the storage of application components that would otherwise fit into physical memory. It’s like a form of RAM on your hard drive. Disabling the page file on a solid state drive would greatly increase the focus it would have on running system processes. Don’t do this if you run your computer solely on one SSD. If you paired an SSD with an HDD, then you can easily configure the HDD to handle the page file. The most ideal setup, though, is one SSD to run the page file, another SSD to run Windows, and an HDD for storage.

The process of configuring the page file differs based on your setup, so we’re only going to teach you how to reach the configuration window.

Right-click “Computer” in the Start menu and click “Properties.” Click “Advanced system settings” on the top left-hand side of the window and access the “Advanced” tab. Click “Settings” under “Performance.” You should now be at a window like this:

Click the “Advanced” tab and click “Change.” The rest of the configuration process should be easy enough!

7. Disable Hibernation

Windows occupies at least 2 GB for the hibernation state image. If you want to keep it, that’s fine by me, but you’re not getting all the juice you can out of your drive. Type “powercfg -h off” in your command line to disable it. You’ll be thankful for those two extra gigabytes when you have an intense game to install on it!

8. Disable Prefetch and Superfetch

Windows sometimes places information in your physical memory and virtual memory belonging to programs that you don’t currently use, but use very often. This is known as “Prefetch” and “Superfetch.” If you are stuck with having to cope with virtual memory on your SSD, you’re better off just doing away with these two features. You can find them on your registry editor under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

as two values: EnablePrefetcher and EnableSuperfetch. Set both values to zero and be done with it!

9. Configure Write Caching

On many SSDs, user level write caching can have a detrimental effect on the drive. To figure this out, you’ll have to disable the option in Windows and see how the drive performs afterwards. If your drive performs worse, enable it again.

To reach the configuration window, right-click “Computer” on the Start menu and click “Properties.” Click “Device manager,” expand “Disk Drives,” right-click your SSD, and click “Properties.” Select the “Policies” tab. In this tab, you’ll see an option labeled “Enable write caching on the device.”

Benchmark your SSD with and without the option and compare results.

10. Disable Services for Windows Search and Superfetch

Even with the above-mentioned registry tweak and index removal, your computer might continue slowing your hard drive with their respective services. Press “Win+R” on your keyboard, type “services.msc,” and press “Enter.” Find both services mentioned in the title of this section and disable them.

11. Disable ClearPageFileAtShutdown and LargeSystemCache

Windows is quick to implement things that are no longer necessary. An SSD operates on flash memory, making it possible to easily overwrite things on the disk. Therefore, the page file doesn’t need to be erased while the computer’s shutting down. This will make the Windows shutdown process much faster. LargeSystemCache, on the other hand, exists primarily in Server versions of Windows, and tells the computer whether to use a large cache for pages on the drive.

Both these options are found in your registry editor under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management

Set them to 0.

12. Set the “High Performance” Power Option

This should be a no-brainer. When your SSD powers on and off all the time, you’ll notice a slight lag whenever you use your computer after you’ve been idle for a while.

To switch your power options, access your control panel, click “System and Security,” and then click “Power Options.” Select “High Performance” from the list. You might need to click “Show additional plans” to find it.

The Finale

And that’s how you reach SSD Nirvana! If you have any questions, shoot them at us in the comments section, and we’ll get to you as soon as we can!

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The Q&A

NOTE: Some of the questions will be rephrased and will not appear exactly as they were written in MTE’s inbox, for the sake of simplifying the question and giving as much space as possible to the answer. If you believe your answer was not adequately answered, go ahead and leave a comment at the bottom. We’ll get to you ASAP.

Q:Why do I get force close errors?

A:There are a couple of typical reasons you will get a Force Close Error on and Android. The first is the application is not compatible with your device or OS. While it may download and start, there may be something about your Android device the application doesn’t like.

The other option might be you have too many things running on your Android. If your phone needs the resources, it will close applications hogging memory. Many apps take a good chunk of computing power to open. A lot of new phones have a built in task manager which you could use to close down some running applications and see if the problem persists.

Q:When my screen blacks out, my Wi-Fi shuts off. How can I keep the Wi-Fi connected?

A:Some devices have what is known as a Wi-Fi sleep policy. I ran into this myself on the Motorola I use now. The setting is buried in the settings. Try to follow this path and see if yours has a similar setting: Menu -> Settings -> Wireless and networks -> Wi-Fi settings -> Menu -> Advanced -> Wi-Fi sleep policy. Change this setting to Never and that should cure your problem.

Q:How do I mass-convert all of my contacts to “phone-only”?

A:There really isn’t an easy way. If perhaps you are trying out a lot of different ROMs and don’t want to get your contacts intermingled with other apps, you could use a generic Gmail account to initially log in when you change the ROM. Then you can turn off the syncing right away when you add your normal Gmail address later.

Q:How do I make a video call through Skype?

A:The first thing you will need is a device with a front facing camera. Beyond that, there is an option to turn on the video chat option in the settings. The check box is near the bottom of the settings page. When you check or uncheck the box, you may need to restart Skype to have the change take effect.

Why Wasn’t My Question Answered?

If you asked a question and it wasn’t answered here, it could be one of three reasons:

• Relevance: Your question needs to be totally relevant to the Android operating system.
• Detail: Try to include as much detail as you can, such as the Android device and version of the Android OS you’re using.
• Other Reasons: For some unfortunate reason, we couldn’t include your question in this edition. We’ll try our best effort to include the question in the next edition.

What’s your Android question?

If you have questions you think might fit well with MTE’s next edition of “Ask an Android Expert,” send us an email at android-help [at] maketecheasier.com. Leave comments only to discuss the questions presented here. If you want to ask a question, use the aforementioned email address.

Related Posts:

• Android Q&As: Auto-sync Emails, Add ICE Contact, Removed Preinstalled Apps, And Many More… (Week 6)
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App security

Did you know that even if you think you’re careful of what you view or allow, it’s not only what apps and websites you allow to access your Facebook account, it’s also what your friends allow on theirs that attach to your account and impact what information is shared about you. Malware is a piece of software that is automatically installed on your computer without your knowledge. Apps are a common place for Malware to hide and can be easily added to your computer when you visit sites while logged into your Facebook account. Managing and cleaning up this section of your account requires more vigilance than simply checking a security setting box. When you open this section, you may be surprised at how may apps are actually attached to your Facebook account.

To check your profile for a list of Facebook Applications, click on the “Edit Settings” in the Application Settings.

When you click on the “Edit Settings” link for one of the applications, you’ll see what the app has access to and you can edit those settings. If you no longer want that app on your Facebook account, click the “X” to delete the app. It will be deleted temporarily but you’ll eventually see it back in your list. The best way to avoid apps attaching Malware to your computer is to log out of Facebook before surfing the Internet.

You may not realize it, but the apps your friends use on Facebook can also access information about you, like your photos, hometown and current city. If that’s a concern for you, there are two ways to manage how your information is shared. The first and most extreme is to disable all platform apps to completely prohibit any third party Facebook apps from accessing your account. You can do this by clicking “Turn Off All Apps” in this section.

The second option is to deselect the boxes of information that you don’t want shared with the world. You can do this in the “This App Can” section of each app. As seen above, I allowed Pinterest to post on my behalf but I deleted the rest of the default sharing options.

Blocking People

If someone is contacting you or posting negative comments on your wall, you can block them from being able to access your account. Go to that person’s Timeline and hover over the “Friends” tab. You’ll see a drop down menu of options to choose from. You can simply click “Restrict” to block them from accessing your Facebook page or you can “Unfriend” them altogether.

Custom Privacy

In addition to each category setting above, you can customize your Facebook account further so that only specific people can see certain updates and the same can be done if you want to hide updates from certain people. Just change your “Privacy Setting” to “Custom” and the window will open where you can select who will see that information. Making lists of family, coworkers, or whoever you will send bulk email to will make this step much quicker.

Post Security

Facebook is a place where you share all of the big things and small things with your family and friends. Though we should always keep security in mind, it shouldn’t keep you from sharing pictures of your family or a vacation for fear of it being seen by the wrong people. When you write a status update, you can select who sees that update by clicking on the padlock icon next to the “Post” button. Then only those people you select will be able to see the post and comment on it.

If you follow all of the security steps in part 1 and part 2 of Putting Your Facebook On Lockdown, you shouldn’t have any trouble with a hacked or compromised account. I will be making some changes to my account and cleaning up some things that don’t need to be there. Will you join me in making Facebook more secure for you and your family?

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Although there are several free software available which can securely wipe out the hard drive, xShredder is one open source app we will be using.

If you are running xShredder on Windows Vista or Windows 7, you will need to run it with administrative privileges. Otherwise it will give an error.

To run xShredder with administrative privileges, just right click on xShredder shortcut on Desktop and select “Run as administrator”.

The first thing you will notice while running xShredder for the first time is that it is in Dutch language by default. You can change the language by going to “Options -> Language (Optionen -> Language, Sprache)”.

There are four tabs on the main interface of xShredder.

1. Saved erase jobs
2. Filemanager
3. Disk Shredder
4. Tools

Saved erase jobs contains all the jobs that you have created. You can run xShredder wizard in order to create a new job or just press “Ctrl + N” to create a new job directly. The steps to securely erase a file using xShredder are a little complex and confusing. So I am giving a step by step process of erasing one file securely. You can apply the same method to securely delete multiple files, folders or even drives.

1. Download xShredder, install it and run with administrative privileges.
2. Create a new erase job by pressing “Ctrl + N” in the Saved erase jobs tab.



3. A new window will appear with two tabs – Filemanager and Deletion request. First go to “Shredder -> Options” in the menu and select the deletion method. There are several deletion methods supported by xShredder including simple method which overwrites data only one time to Peter Gutmann method which overwrites data 35 times (obviously taking more time).



4. Under Filemanager, select the file or folder you want to securely delete. Right click the file and select Paste in deletion request -> Paste selected object (s). If you want to select all the files, select “Insert all files and folders”. Please note that if you want to browse different drives, just press F5 and you will a list of all your drives in the computer.



5. Choose all the files that you want to securely delete and keep repeating step no. 3.
6. After you have selected all the files, open the second tab “Deletion request” and press “Ctrl + S” to save the deletion request that you have just created.
7. Now close the deletion request window and go to the main xShredder window. You will see that the newly created deletion request has been added to Saved erase jobs tab. You can start the erase job by right clicking and selecting “Start erase job” or simply pressing “Ctrl + E”. After confirmation, the erase job will start and will take some time depending upon the deletion method and the size of files to be deleted.

Although xShredder is a complex program but once you start using it, you’ll start loving it. The greatest feature of xShredder is the number of deletion methods that it supports. What are your thoughts about this free software?

You may also consider reading how to delete files securely in Ubuntu Linux and deleting files on a Mac.

Image credit: Businessman by Big Stock Photo.

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Q: My Hotmail account has been blocked. How can I solve this problem?

A: Locks often happen to accounts that have been detected as taking part in activity involving spam or fraud. If you have done neither, it’s likely that your account has been compromised and the person using your account has sent out emails to spam others. In rare cases, some email that you have sent has been interpreted or reported as spam. Under any circumstance, Microsoft allows you to remove this block by obtaining a code that will authenticate your cellphone.

To get such a code, click “Add a Phone” in your Hotmail interface when you log in.

Once you enter your phone number, the interface will send you an SMS with a code. You will have 15 minutes to type in the code and authenticate your phone. If those 15 minutes pass, request a new code and Hotmail will send one right away.

Another reason your account could be blocked might involve an issue on Microsoft’s end. If that happens, you just have to wait until they resolve it. Wait about two or three days. If you’re in a hurry, you can contact them about this.

Q: I tried booting Puppy Linux from a USB drive on a computer that already has Windows. How come this doesn’t work? I have the ISO file on the USB drive.

A: The way the question is phrased is how we interpreted what you sent to our inbox. In order to enjoy the benefits of booting from a USB drive, the drive has to be bootable in the first place. The second problem is that you can’t just stick an ISO file on a drive and expect it to boot. You must extract the contents to the drive, as those are important.

Windows allows you to format a drive with a boot sector so that it can be picked up by your computer before attempting to boot from the hard disk. Format your USB drive and, under the formatting options, select “ISO Image” under “Create a bootable disk using.”

Select the ISO image you’d like to copy to the USB drive and let it do the rest of the work. Once formatted with an operating system, you can use it as a bootable drive! If you continue to have problems, come back around and we’ll answer any other questions you have.

Q: My computer is running an x86 version of Windows 7, and it shows only 2.99 GB of usable RAM. How can I get it to recognize all 6 GB?

A: Because of the limitations with x86 logical registries on the processor, the computer cannot recognize any value above 4,294,967,296. That’s exactly 4 GB of addressing space on your RAM. You must run an x64 version of Windows to solve this problem. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to use more than 3-4 GB of RAM.

Q: My computer is hanging on “Starting Windows.” How do I get past this?

A: There are two major reasons this could happen: Either your hard drive has a couple of bad sectors in a system-allocated space, or your RAM isn’t functioning like it should. It’s more likely a case of the former than the latter.

To fix this problem, you should turn your computer off by holding down the power button (also known as a “cold boot”) and turning it on again after about 5 seconds. Windows will know that its bootup process was interrupted for some reason or another, but it still doesn’t know that there was a problem. Once you cold boot your computer a few times, it might get a whiff of something wrong going on, which is when it will start running a utility called “chkdsk.” This checks your system disk for errors and attempts to fix them. Once everything is solved, get yourself a new hard drive.

For the second, and rather unlikely, problem, just replace your RAM with some spare cards and check to see whether your computer boots up normally using the new spares. If it still hangs on “Starting Windows,” assume that the hard disk is still the problem.

There’s yet another rare chance that one of the system files that Windows depends on has been over-written, modified, or infected in some way. This requires a reinstallation or repair of Windows using the installation DVD.

Q: I run Windows 7 N Edition. How can I install Windows Media Player on it? I can’t find it anywhere.

A: Windows 7 N Edition was meant for the European market, which legally requires Microsoft to allow for fair competition, letting users choose whether they want to use Internet Explorer or another browser. Likewise, this version also comes without Windows Media Player, allowing for other media players to take a bit more market share. If you’d like to install WMP on your computer, download the Media Pack for Windows 7 N and KN here.

Q: A friend of mine bought a new computer with Windows 7 installed, but it no longer supports Outlook Express 6. How can I export the emails into a readable format on the new computer?

A: Outlook Express 6 has been superseded by Windows Live Mail. You can download Windows Live Mail as part of the Windows Live Essentials package here. Once you have installed it, click “File -> Import -> Messages -> From Microsoft Outlook Express 6.” This will allow you to get all of your friend’s email into that platform, in a readable form. Hope this helps!

Got Your Own Question?

Please submit all inquiries using the “Ask Our Experts Now!” button in the right-hand sidebar on any page of this website. If you have something to discuss regarding the questions asked in this segment of the “Ask a Windows Expert” series, please use the comments section below. That’s all, folks!

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1. Lockscreen Calendar

One of the reasons Androids and other devices with large touch screens have poor battery life is the screen is on a lot. Sometimes it is just to check to see if you have a new email, or in this case, what is your next appointment.

Lockscreen Calendar displays your next several appointments on your lockscreen so you don’t need to unlock your phone, click on the all and look at the date. Being able to see your next appointment from the lock screen will make you more productive and save battery.

2. Touch Calendar

Touch acts almost like a web page. You can zoom in and out on it with the pinch to zoom feature. As you tap on the day or event, you will see a pretty standard view of the event. The default view is the month view and didn’t look like you could change it. If you like the month view, this is a great simple calendar to use. The upgrade to the paid version will give you access to the widgets and other handy features.

3. Deadline Calendar

Having a calendar for your deadlines is a great idea. Normally you would need to add in all day appointments or tasks into your normal calendar making it look really really full. Having a calendar with a field for completion time is very handy for the person who has a lot of projects to manage. The paid version allows syncing with Google Calendar.

4. Fliq Calendar

Fliq Calendar is a free stand-alone calendar (does not sync with Google Calendar) that competes well with some popular paid calendars like Business Calendar and Calengoo for looks and ease of use. Fliq Calendar is made by Mark/Space, the people who bring you the apps to sync just about any phone to any computer. Because of this, if you have the need to sync with Outlook or iCal, Fliq Calendar is an Android calendar you may want to take a look at.

5. Quick Calendar

Quick Calendar is an add-on allowing you to see current or future appointments in your notification bar. Having your future appointment right in your notification bar will save you the space on the screen you’d normally use for a calendar widget.

Conclusion

Calendars are super useful when you keep them tamed. When you are using a calendar fitting for your needs as well as easy to use, you are more likely to use your calendar regularly.

intro image

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1. sl

Thanks to Asdasd, I discovered “sl”. An incredibly useless but very necessary program that just shows a train in ASCII art going through your terminal. Maybe one of the most appealing commands of this top ten.

2. pi

Credit goes to cameronhorsburgh for bringing this one up. “pi” displays an approximation of PI, useful if you are making some calculation, I guess. The syntax is:

pi [number of digits to display]

3. dog

Coats was the one to bring this one up. “dog” is an alternative to “cat” (see the humor?), as it uses the same syntax to display a text stream into the console. You will probably have to install it as it is not a command offered by default, but when you do, I invite you to take a look at the manual page.

4. vdir

“vdir” is useless in that it is a redundancy. Its main function is to list the content of a directory, displaying the name of the files, the permissions, the dates of modification, the sizes, etc. However, all of this can be done via the good old command “ls” and its composite like

ls -l

5. clear

“clear” is also a redundancy. With this command, you will erase the lines from the terminal and “clear the screen.” But anyone adept with the console will save time by using the shortcut “Ctrl+l”, which does exactly the same thing.

6. ul

An interesting command, “ul” can be used to underline characters in the terminal. I still have not figured it out completely but I know that, for example, it will transform

echo $'hello w\b_o\b_r\b_l\b_d\b_ ' | ul

into “hello world“. As you can guess, it replaces the meta-character “\b_” with an actual underlining.

7. w

You can say whatever you want about “w”, but it is to my knowledge the shortest command you can find by default on your machine. And I think that it therefore deserves to be in our list just for that. Surprisingly, “w” allows you to see information about the current users, like their name, their login time, etc.

8. filters

A moore’s contribution: filters is a set of tools that transforms text to give it some phonetic accent. “man talkfilters” will give you the list of the possible accents. But as an example,

echo "make tech easier is cool" | fudd

will give “make tech easiew is coow ” which supposedly imitates Elmer Fudd’s accent (the guy who hunts Bugs Bunny in Looney Tunes). And one of my favorites, the filter “warez” will give you your input in H4x0r code. The previous example becomes “]\/[ak3 73k]-[ 3az13r YZ c0ol" with "warez" instead of "fudd" at the end of the command.

9. fortune mods

Last time, I presented to you the famous fortune command which gives you a (relatively) short and random geek sentence each time you call it. However, if you can add your own fortunes to the database, it is also possible to download extensions, or mods, which add fortunes from a specific source, like Star Wars, the Chuck Norris facts, different languages, Matrix, Futurama, Calvin and Hobbes, and more. Install the mod that you want and do

fortune [name of the mod]

As an example, I installed the Chuck Norris fact extension in English, so by doing

fortune chucknorris

I get "Chuck Norris grinds his coffee with his teeth and boils the water with his own rage."

10. snow

Finally, a little script to end the top ten. I could not stop myself from sharing the snow.sh script from myh3r3.com which creates little snowflakes falling into your terminal. Copy-paste the code into a text file, name it "snow.sh", make it executable, and launch it in a terminal to admire.

#!/bin/bash
 
LINES=$(tput lines)
COLUMNS=$(tput cols)
 
declare -A snowflakes
declare -A lastflakes
 
clear
 
function move_flake() {
i="$1"
 
if [ "${snowflakes[$i]}" = "" ] || [ "${snowflakes[$i]}" = "$LINES" ]; then
snowflakes[$i]=0
else
if [ "${lastflakes[$i]}" != "" ]; then
printf "\033[%s;%sH \033[1;1H " ${lastflakes[$i]} $i
fi
fi
 
printf "\033[%s;%sH*\033[1;1H" ${snowflakes[$i]} $i
 
lastflakes[$i]=${snowflakes[$i]}
snowflakes[$i]=$((${snowflakes[$i]}+1))
}
 
while :
do
i=$(($RANDOM % $COLUMNS))
 
move_flake $i
 
for x in "${!lastflakes[@]}"
do
move_flake "$x"
done
 
sleep 0.1
done

Conclusion

First, I want to thank you all for your comments on the previous article. I tried to put here a synthesized version of what you reported in order to share it with more people. Of course, this list is still not complete, and even if I personally doubt that it will ever be, I still invite you to continue to share.

So again, if you can think of more, or if you have an example in mind of when these commands become handy, please leave us a comment.

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GreenForce Player has a very simple interface which resembles the interfaces of VLC Player and KMPlayer. If you want to play a single video, you can do it by selecting “Load” from the “File menu”. GreenForce Player also gives an option to create multiple customized playlists. You can easily create the playlists and save the playlists for future execution. You will need to get familiar with the icons on the top of playlists windows because I didn’t find any option that could show titles along with the icons on the window. So you will need to be content with hovering the mouse over any icon which will show the title. The playlist editor can be opened from “Media menu” or Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut.

The media controls on Greenforce Player are pretty basic and consist of the following:

• Reverse and Forward
• Play and Stop
• Previous and Next track
• Repeat and play random track
• Take screenshot of the video
• Volume controls

The title of the media file being played is shown in the status bar along with the current/total time of the track.

These were the pretty standard properties of GreenForce Player. Now lets take a look at something that we haven’t seen in any other media player yet, the password protecting features of GreenForce Player.

When you open GreenForce Player, you will notice a DRM menu. If you open the menu, you will get two items

• Protect Video
• Unprotect Video

If you have already opened the video file that you want to password protect then clicking on ‘Protect Video’ will automatically pre-fill the media to be password protected and the file name to be saved. You can also change the media to be password protected and the location where it is saved. You will need to enter the password two times and can also enter a password hint. The video file will be saved in gfp format which is the format of GreenForce Player. You cannot open gfp format in any other media player. So you will need to have GreenForce Player installed on the computer on which you want to play the password protected gfp file. The next time you open the encrypted and password protected file, you will be greeted with a password dialog box.

But there is one trick by which you can also create a standalone executable of the video file so that there is no need of any media player in order to run the password protected video. To create a password protected executable of the video file, you will need to go to the same “DRM -> Protect Video” menu and check the option “Add player to the media file”. This will create an executable file which integrates GreenForce Media Player along with the video file.

I hope you will like this nifty media player, GreenForce Media Player. What are your thoughts about the capabilities and features of this player? Please share with us in the comments below.

Download GreenForce Media Player (Installer and Portable)

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While the screencap I used here is for my email with the maketecheasier.com domain, it’s still based off of the Gmail system and works in all the same ways Gmail does. It’s set up through Google Apps. There isn’t the familiar “Trashcan” in the options on the top right, when viewing an individual email, and when you select one or more emails to edit, it only gives you options to Archive, Move, or Mark. Delete isn’t one of the options. It just seems frustrating to not have such a basic function available.

I actually had a similar problem with my email hosted on a separate domain. While I had a Delete option and a Trashcan, it would give me an error message afterward and would stay on the server. It had an easy fix. I went into the Settings app and selected “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” then clicked on the email domain I wanted to change. After clicking on the Account name, then “Advanced” at the bottom of the resulting screen, I then clicked on “Deleted Mailbox” which allowed me to change the folder I wanted the deleted emails to go into. By default it was set on “Trash” on my iPad, but once I changed it to “Trash” on the server, it resulted in the emails being deleted correctly. However, making this change to the Gmail settings didn’t solve the issue there.

The easiest way to solve the Trash problem for Gmail is to to just move the desired files into the Trash folder. If you click on edit in the email list pane, check off the emails you want deleted, then hit “Move.” This brings up a list of the folders on the server, including the Trash folder. There is also a Google app for iOS. It includes all the Google apps within it, such as Calendar, Docs, Google+, and Gmail. Using the mail here emulates the way it works online, including being able to delete unwanted email. You can also keep multiple Gmail accounts “open” at once. There’s also always the option, of course, to just keep up with the Gmail via whatever browser you are using by signing into your account there.

If you’re using Gmail that is set up for you through an organization or business that uses Google Apps, the administrator can choose to have Google Sync enabled for the email. If this is done, when you set your Gmail account in settings, instead of setting it up as a Gmail account, set it up as Microsoft Exchange. This will not only Sync folders, such as Trash, but will also sync your Google Calendars.

I still use the iOS Mail app, but that’s only because I like to have all my mail in one spot, and my Gmail accounts are more my secondary accounts. It’s only a minor irritation to have to move my deleted emails to the Trash. Hence the reason I don’t bother to delete them often. What iOS needs is more options for using Mail on the system. While there are multiple different browsers other than Safari, there’s only one Mail app, with no third party apps available, and this is what causes users to have to come up with alternate solutions such as these.

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