Slow Computer? Turn Off Aero Transparency

The Aero interface is a big factor in the UI aesthetics of Windows 7. However, it can also take its toll in terms of memory usage. For laptops with lower RAM or lower-spec netbooks, here one trick you can use to speed up Windows 7: turn off Aero transparency. It might not be a big load off your memory usage, but it will still help especially when you need a boost to help your applications or games run smoother.

The New Wonders of WordPad

There have been many improvements made to basic accessories, not the least of which is to the oft-neglected WordPad. Scoring licenses for MS Office isn’t cheap, after all. Hardcore writers shouldn’t fret, however, because the built-in WordPad in Windows 7 can handle every document format you will need. Yes, not only can it read rich-text format and normal text and Word documents, it can also handle Word 2007 documents as well as the OpenDocument format (.odt) found in such open-source office suites such as OpenOffice Writer.

Window Docking

One thing I envied my Mac-toting friends for was how they could easily dock and cluster their windows on OS X. After switching to Windows 7 from XP, I could now do the same! Window management has never been easier. Just drag your windows to either edge of your screen to dock it to the left or to the right. You can also use the shortcuts. Windows button + Left arrow docks windows to the left, while Windows button + right arrow docks windows to the right. You can also drag windows to the upper edge to maximize them without hitting the window’s maximize button.

The Tale of the Taskbar

The taskbar is an integral component of any computer operating system. Up until XP, people usually had the Quick Launch toolbar along with active programs on the taskbar. This time around, programs can be manipulated in and out of the taskbar to serve as shortcuts, optimizing time as well as organization.
The taskbar also sports Jump Lists, which can be accessed by right-clicking on the taskbar icon of a particular program. You’ll usually get a quickstart list showing recently-opened files for that program, so you can easily resume writing a Word document or watching the last movie you opened on the Media Player.

There’s also a vertical rectangle beside the clock at the bottom right hand corner of the taskbar. You can press this to show the desktop, or hover over it to peek at your desktop while you have any windows open. It’s a fast and neat way to replace the Show Desktop button from the old Quicklaunch toolbar.

Managing Program Compatibility

Windows 7, being a new OS, will most certainly pose some problems when it comes to running older programs. The good news is that Windows 7 has a built-in tool that helps you manage compatibility of every program.

Here’s how: Just right-click on the icon of the program you’re having a problem with and select “troubleshoot compatibility.” You will then be asked to try and run the program using settings for a previous operating system (Vista, XP SP2, etc.) and a step-by-step process that helps identify permissions and other settings so that your program will be able to run smoothly on Windows 7.

Let’s break down the touchscreen market using certain aspects: capacitive versus resistive touchscreen types, and the market leader iPhone versus the rest of the pack.

Capacitive vs. Resistive

If you browse the spec-sheet of today’s touchscreen phones, you’ll see one of two modifiers preceding the word touchscreen: capacitive or resistive. This modifier denotes what kind of touchscreen technology was used for the display.

Capacitive touchscreens make use of sensors that react to conductive materials, which include human skin.  They are generally faster and offer better responsiveness compared to resistive touchscreens. They are, however, also more expensive—which is why capacitive touchscreen phones also tend to be more pricey.

Resistive touchscreens, while less responsive, are more accurate and generally more durable than their capacitive counterparts. I’ve been using a phone with a resistive touchscreen for a while now, and I have no problems in terms of responsiveness. I guess it boils down to personal preference when it comes to this aspect.

Of course, there are a few other technologies used to make touchscreen devices—such as surface acoustic wave technology and surface capacitance, among others—but the capacitive and resistive variants are the most predominant forms used in current mobile phone models.

iPhone vs. the Rest

Right now, it clearly seems to be Apple’s pet device, the iPhone, versus the rest of the market’s touchscreen offerings.

The iPhone offers tons of apps in its app store, with a good percentage of free ones for those who aren’t willing to shell out some dough. That is, in my opinion, where the gadget really shines and outplays everyone else on the market.

Couple that with excellent industrial design, aesthetics, and a user-friendly phone operating system and you’ve got a quality product worth its hype and its price. The new iPhone 4 is now out, and there are some subtle changes you should take note of in terms of physical design and phone software.

Brand loyalty is a factor many consider. After all, if you’ve purchased phones from a particular manufacturer and it hasn’t let you down over the years, there’s really some stock over your loyalty to a certain brand. Of course, discerning between the different models available in such a stacked market should still be an essential part of your selection process.

Speaking of different models, there’s practically a touchscreen phone for every need. There are entry-level touch phones, touchscreen feature phones, and touchscreen smartphones. It all depends on market positioning and what consumers look for in the spec scheet. In the end, the decision is in your hands. Know what you want, and get the phone that fits the bill—and your budget.

We won’t be tackling individual models here, because there are so many. Rather, we will discuss the things to look for in a laptop, things that can hopefully help you assess which one is perfect for your needs.

Having a gadget that keeps us connected to the internet is certainly a must-have. Especially given our propensity to be addicted to social-networking sites like Facebook, and Twitter, WiFi-equipped netbooks and laptops have become necessary gadgets.

With so many choices out on the market, many prospective netbook buyers are simply addled. There’s no need to be confused; all you’ve got to remember is that each model is designed for easy Internet access on the go. If you find yourself itching to log on to your favorite sites while idle at coffee shops or waiting for your appointment, then a netbook is your best friend. If you’re thinking of gaming or doing graphic design work, then stop reading and look for something else.

Netbooks cover a certain range of specs, and these aren’t very different between models. You’re assured of Wi-Fi on a lightweight and relatively small laptop, a measure of hard drive space, Intel Atom processors, and a webcam.

Your deal-breakers will come in several forms. You could be getting added features like BlueTooth and bundled products with your purchase, such as preinstalled licensed operating systems or free mobile broadband USB modems.

Price is, as always, an important factor. This makes purchasing a relatively-more-expensive netbook with more hard disk space better than getting a cheaper model with very limited memory. Personal preferences for brands, design, and other aspects also figure into the equation.

Battery life should also be taken into account, since you won’t always have an available electrical outlet with all the other laptop users around. Take note of the ones with 6-cell batteries, because these ones will get you better battery life than models with 3-cell batteries.

Also, keep in mind that you can buy some netbooks with a Linux operating system instead of Windows, and that should make your purchase considerably cheaper. However, Linux isn’t really for your average computer user, and it will be harder for a good number of people to get around the operating system or add programs later on.

There are also higher-end netbooks like the Acer Ferrari One, equipped with sleek looks, a hands-down better graphics card, more memory, and a faster processor all packed in netbook form—while also costing twice as much as your common netbook. These netbooks will net you better gaming capability as well as faster programs. If you want gaming mobility and can afford this baby, this is the netbook for you.

For most people looking for netbooks, though, all they really need is something that isn’t bulky and will last several hours for surfing the net, checking e-mails and working on documents and presentations. Netbooks are absolutely perfect for working on the go, whether it’s at your favorite Starbucks or while waiting for your thesis adviser or your boss to call you into his or her office.

The following is a description of how to effectively use Twitter for your business.

1. Pick a short and descriptive name for your account. The name should be as close as possible to your business’ name. Keep in mind though that there is a 140 character limit. When people retweet one of your posts or reply to you they will need to include your account name in there. Try to keep it as short as possible.
2. Understand why you should be using Twitter.
3. Stick to your area of expertize. If you business is in the legal industry, try to tweet about legal topics as much as possible. Don’t deviate much from your business’ main focus. It dilutes the overall value of your profile.
   
4. Have a designer create a custom Twitter background for you. This will make your account stand out and look more professional.
5. Use an URL shortener such as http://bit.ly when posting links.
6. Whenever you post a new article to your site, tweet about it on Twitter. Keep your tweet short and simple by describing the article and then posting a link, e.g. “Using Twitter for business http://mylink.com”
7. Only follow people that are truly interesting. They should ideally be involved in the same line of business as you. It’s perfectly acceptable to follow industry leaders, entrepreneurs and famous people, but try to stick to a specific theme (rather follow celebrities from a personal Twitter account). There’s nothing wrong with having a few celebs on your Business account, but make sure it’s appropriate and in good taste.
8. Retweet interesting tweets that your followers may find useful. Not everything has to be original. Retweeting also shows that you are actually reading and absorbing other people’s tweets.
9. Post a link to your Twitter account on your site/blog, LinkedIn account and even your Facebook page. Remember that your Twitter account gives people an impression of your business. If it looks professional and is updated frequently with interesting links and resources then potential clients will get a good feel for you and your company. Many people will carry out a search for your company on Google before doing business with you and a Twitter profile stands a good chance of ranking very high on Google for your company name.
10. Carry out regular searches on Twitter for people posting about your company and topics related to your business. This is one of the most powerful features of Twitter when used correctly. It will give you a good sense of what people think and gives you the opportunity to respond to them. Many successful business owners reply directly to people tweeting about their business and/or related topics. This is incredibly powerful and shows that your business is in touch with its target demographic.

If you follow these steps and keep your profile fresh and relevant, you will find Twitter to be an invaluable tool for your business.

With the ongoing trend towards applications running over the Internet, a few companies have created some outstanding online image editors. Best of all, some of them are free. In this article I’m going to introduce you to Picnik which I feel is the most intuitive and the most powerful of the free online image editing tools.

The 3 most common tasks you’re going to be faced with are:

• resizing an image
• cropping a section of an image
• converting an image to a different file format

Picnik tackles all 3 of these with ease. You start off by navigating to http://www.picnik.com and either registering or simply clicking the ‘Get started now’ button. Yes, you read that correctly. You do not even have to register in order to use the site. There are some benefits to a free registration on the site, but you absolutely do not need to. In fact, most of the time I use the site without registering.

Once you’ve clicked on the ‘Get started now’ button, the site takes you to a page where you can upload your photo. Click on the ‘Upload a photo’ button and browse for it on your computer. At this point you’re ready to carry out your editing. You can perform any of the following functions:

• auto-fix
• rotate
• crop
• resize
• exposure
• colors
• sharpen
• Red-eye

Using each of these is extremely simple and highly intuitive. Carry out the actions you want (of course you can perform a combination of the above such as rotating and then resizing a photo) and then click on the ‘Save and Share’ button. You are then presented with the choice of file format and in some cases the level of quality/compression of the file. Once you’ve saved off the file, you can simply browse for it on your computer.

I am a big believer in tools such as Picnik. The fact that you don’t have to have a piece of software installed on each one of your computers (home, office, etc.) and the fact that you can perform these common image editing tasks with such ease using a tool that is 100% free is incredible. Of course I’m not the only one who thinks so. Google bought the company recently

Enjoy your free online image editing and be sure to let us know your experiences with Picnik.

Want to navigate to anywhere on your computer?

WINDOWS + E

Opens the Windows Explorer
(Just hold down the windows key with one finger and press the ‘E’ key with another)
Easy to remember E = Explorer

Want to instantly minimize everything and get a clear Desktop?

WINDOWS + D

Easy to remember D = Desktop

Want to get them back open?
Press Windows + D again!

Want to find anything on your computer?

WINDOWS + F
opens the find all files box!

Want to lock your computer quickly when you leave it unattended?

WINDOWS + L
instantaneous protection from prying eyes!

Want to run a program from the Run command?

WINDOWS + R
couldn’t be simpler!

There are quite a number more, but these few should soon get you realizing how useful a key it really is!

After opening the Task Manager (see other posts) I spotted the problem. Outlook was running in more than one instance! This should not happen and is bound to cause problems and strange behavior. I tried closing Outlook down, but it was still showing as running in the Task Manager!

I closed down the running instances by highlighting them in the Task Manager and shutting them down one by one.

Did it work? For the moment yes, but as the next time I ran Outlook, I looked back in the Task manager, and there was another instance of it running again!

OK, so here’s the fix!

The problem was being caused by an addin that was running in Outlook as the result of installing some other software, and the culprit in this case was none other than another favorite of mine, iTunes!

Here’s how I fixed it:

I opened the Tools/Options menu in Outlook

Then I clicked on the Other tab, and opened Advanced Options:

Then I opened the COM Add-Ins

…and discovered that there was an entry called iTunes Outlook Addin in there, and it was ticked!

I unticked it, OK’d it and backed my way out, and from that point on, Outlook performed beautifully again – in only one instance, and when I shut it down it, it was really shutdown! No longer did I find multiple instances of it running in the Task Manager and no more buggy, unpredictable crashes or behavior. My good old trusty Outlook was back again!

Now I’m not saying that it’s the iTunes Addin that could be causing this to happen in your case, it could be any other addin. Just untick whatever addins are running one at a time, and try it out. Also look in the COM Add-Ins (it’s the button below the Add-In Manager – look at the image above to locate it), and try unticking some of the unnecessary stuff that may be running in there. Just remember unticking something may lead to another Outlook feature not working! You have to try this out by trial and error, unticking and saving one at a time.

By the way, if Outlook is shutting down properly when you close it, it should disappear out of the system tray down at the bottom right of your screen. NOTE: give it a little while to diasppear as it takes a while to shut down.

Here’s where you’ll see the Outlook icon running in the tray (Task Manager is open here, but it needn’t be, if Outlook is running you’ll see the icon down there):

….and here it’s gone from the tray after shutting Outlook down:

Easy fix. Let me know how it goes!

As you can see from the image above, this can become a serious problem. Fortunately there is a very simple solution to this problem. All you have to do is to utilize one of the URL shortening services that are freely available on the Web. There are many to choose from, but the one I recommend is bit.ly which has several other features once you create a free account including the ability to view click statistics over time.

So lets head on over to http://bit.ly and create an account. Once you’ve done that, log in to your account and paste in the long URL you want to share. This site is also useful for sharing links in other forms as well, for example link sharing in your e-mails and blogs. It’s especially useful for Twitter though because of the above-mentioned character count limitations.

Once you enter the URL, bit.ly gives you a cool shortened version to share with others. In truth you don’t even need to register an account, but then you will have no way of tracking the statistics of how many people clicked on the link and some other useful features that are only available to registered users of the site.

You’ll end up with a cool abbreviated version of the URL as you can see in the image above. This URL can be used in your Twitter tweets. It will not only save valuable character real-estate, but you’ll also be able to get invaluable statistics such as the ones shown below:

Nice and simple and you get the extra benefits on top of the core URL shortening feature.

The concept is simple: you get a maximum of 140 characters to get your message across. You can post as many messages (called tweets in Twitter lingo) as you want and people can read your tweets and even “follow” you on Twitter so they get all of your tweets conveniently displayed for them. The point is to get the message across in a short and simple manner. Efficient and unobtrusive.

Tweets can be grouped into lists so that you can aggregate messages of a similar nature into groups. Tweets and profiles can be viewed directly on the Twitter website, but you can also use one of any number of applications (installed on your computer or mobile device) to enjoy the Twitter experience.

Here’s an example of a Twitter profile being viewed directly via the website:

Twitter can also be viewed on mobile devices using any number of Twitter mobile applications so you can enjoy the experience while on the move.

So what is the point of all of this? Why should you be using Twitter? The answer is that it can benefit you in several different ways, both as a broadcaster and as a consumer. We live in a digital age. We all need to embrace this, geeks or non geeks. If you want to be “with it” or simply to appear to be “with it”, you NEED to start using Twitter. Recruiters and employers use it on a regular basis to get a read on candidates and employees. Clients and business folk use it to get a good sense of who you are. Even celebrities (Ashton Kutcher is the most popular celebrity on Twitter to date) are using it to promote themselves, their products and their enterprises.

There’s more to Twitter though than just being “with it”. It’s an excellent tool for learning and staying up to date with the latest news and trends. By following industry leaders, entrepreneurs, entertainers and friends, you can easily scan the latest tweets and get a feel for what’s going on. One second you’re learning about technology and the next you’re discovering a new movie. It’s a fun and trendy approach to staying ahead of the curve.

There’s no question that Twitter is abused by some who like to shamelessly self-promote themselves, but if you avoid them and stick to the important and interesting people and companies on Twitter and you’ll be in great shape. Head on over to Twitter.com today and get started.

No matter what your needs are, the iPhone will satisfy them. It will also do so very, very well.

Let’s start with the basic necessities: phone: check, good speakerphone: check, email: check, browsing: check. Great, we’ve got all the basics covered, and to be honest with you each of them will exceed your expectations. The speakerphone is crisp, the email is excellent and supports Microsoft Exchange server e-mail and the version of Safari the phone comes with is very good (you can also install other browsers as well such as the brilliant “Perfect Browser” app).

So what is it that truly differentiates the iPhone from the other smartphones out there? For starters, its touch screen is far and away the best available. Apple has mastered the multi touch technology where you can zoom in by pinching your fingers together and zoom out by pushing them outwards. The screen is also super crisp and offers a much larger viewing area than the Blackberry. It’s absolutely gorgeous for surfing the web and watching movies.

The other thing that sets the iPhone apart is the fact that you get a full blown iPod which is arguably the best mobile music player available.

So at this point you’re already ahead of the game with an outstanding phone coupled with the best screen and music player. Most people would already realize that the iPhone is going to provide you with an incredible experience, but there’s one thing that outweighs all of the above, and truly differentiates the iPhone from its peers: I’m talking about Apple’s App Store. With over 150000 apps available and growing daily, the App Store can transform your iPhone into just about anything you can possibly want.

Apple completely dominates this market and since the marketplace has such a captivated audience, the best developers and companies are targeting it ahead of the other marketplaces and so the dominance grows from strength to strength. The device itself is also about as cool as can possibly be.

Whether you want to run a business, play games, read the news, watch movies or simply listen to music and make some calls, the iPhone will literally change your life and you’ll have a great time while using it.