Articles about How To

At CES 2012, we took a quick look at Samsung's booth displaying the Galaxy Note as a tool useful to artists and musicians, and I talked about the relatively small number of killer music applications for the Android platform.

Fortunately the band performing in Samsung's booth, Body Language, was willing to show us exactly how they incorporate Android devices into their live music setup, and how we can do the same.

Continue reading →

A new version of Android will be available in November, initally on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Much of the analysis of this Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android is focused on the implications of it running on both smartphones and tablets, where older versions of Android ran on one or the other (1), as well as shiny new gimmicks such as face recognition to unlock a handset.

This unification of smartphones and tablets is a red herring. Other things matter much more for Android. Android tablets are failing in the market, while Google’s smartphones sell in enormous numbers. This is a major issue for Google.

Continue reading →

Facebook's new Timeline profiles go live on Thursday, September 29, 2011, but you can convert yours now. You just have to pretend you're an app developer (or continue being one if you already are.)

It's a simple four-step process that can be done in a couple of minutes. Here's how you do it:

Continue reading →

Friday at about 2:45pm local time (12:45am EST) Japan experienced a devastating earthquake, which was given a preliminary register of 8.9 on the Richter scale of magnitude, higher than any in this zone since the invention of the Richter Scale.

According to the US Geological Society, the location of this quake, known as the Japan Trench subduction zone, has had 9 events registering magnitude 7 or higher since 1973. The only one to approach this magnitude took place in December 1994, and was ranked as a 7.8.

Continue reading →

For United States citizens interested in getting continuous news coverage of the Egyptian revolution, the options are limited to one: the live Al Jazeera feed on its website. Even though United States cable companies don't carry the station, it is easy to pipe that streaming news feed to your HDTV with a variety of Web-connected devices.

Set-top box maker Roku today announced that users of its popular set-top streamer can now push Al Jazeera's live and on-demand streams to their HDTVs with just a few steps.

Continue reading →

Apple is as much about its looks as its substance, which begs the question: why that drab, grey start-up screen with the darker grey Apple logo superimposed over it? Hardly inspiring stuff when you boot your Mac first thing in the morning.

Thankfully, there's a free tool out there that can help you transform this dull and uninspiring backdrop into something more colorful and personal. BootXChanger runs on Intel Macs sporting Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later, and is simplicity itself to use.

Continue reading →

Monday, Google announced it will be rolling out its "Cloud Print" mobile Gmail feature over the next few days to U.S. users. Cloud Print lets users pair their Google ID with various printers, and then send print jobs from anywhere the user has a connection.

In mobile Gmail's options menu, there is now a button simply marked "print" which lets the user send a print job to his Cloud Print tray from his Android or iOS mobile device. From here, the user can select the destination printer and begin printing the contents of selected emails, and .pdf or .doc attachments. This is an incredibly useful feature, as it eliminates the need for printer drivers for mobile devices.

Continue reading →

Mission: Assemble a full-HD video camera setup that can fit into a carry-on bag with a total weight under 6 pounds.

Deadline: SXSW Interactive Conference and Festival, March 12.

Continue reading →

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently voted to move forward on a rule-making process that could lead to new government regulations for the Internet. That is what the FCC and some activist groups want, although they claim to be supporting only "neutrality." Even key players seem confused.

The Open Internet Coalition (OIC) says neutrality "is about keeping the hands of several powerful network operators -- AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast -- off the Internet, preventing them from taking steps to change the basic open nature of the Net that has led to its success."

Continue reading →

Debian developer Joey Hess this week pulled the covers off of Palm's WebOS, and showed some interesting things going on in the background. Apparently, Palm Inc. collects daily samples of the user's location, which apps he has installed and his usage of them, and app crash logs.

As expected, many have panicked at the thought of both Sprint and Palm harvesting their usage data. But Palm appears to be working within the realm of its Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, and the company's data-sharing policy has actually been a known issue since the Pre's release.

Continue reading →

A friend and I were talking the other day about how people are by and large not just oblivious to, but downright hostile about, the simplest security practices -- in fact, the simpler the request, the greater the level of grumbling. What to do, besides don a bandolier of tasers and a t-shirt that says "GO AHEAD, ASK ME AGAIN WHY YOU CAN'T MAKE YOUR PASSWORD THE SAME AS YOUR USERNAME?"

To cheer me up (yes, I have been troubleshooting a family member's computer; how did you guess?), my friend told me about a corporate-cultural tradition at a firm at which he recently consulted. The rules around that office require that anyone leaving their desk log out of the system. And if they don't? Their machine is fair game for co-workers, who by tradition go into the culprit's e-mail and send out a "cc:all" message announcing that they're going out for tacos, and would anybody else like some?

Continue reading →

Download Windows 7 Release Candidate 32-bit from Fileforum now.

Download Windows 7 Release Candidate 64-bit from Fileforum now.

Continue reading →

A common but dangerous vulnerability spotted weeks ago on American Express's site was plugged this week after the hole gained blog and then press attention. But there may have been a faster, better way.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities are unfortunately quite common. An XSS hole allows an attacker to scarf up a legitimate customer's login info, in this case as he enters the site. In the case of the AmEx hole, that information could later be used by the attacker to snoop around the customer's personal information, or worse.

Continue reading →

Although some Apple developers are airing a lot of frustration lately, mDialog's Greg Philpott wants it known that he's basically happy about creating software for Apple platforms.

While iPhone software applications like Podster and Murderdrome have gotten nixed by Apple's App Store, thousands of others are indeed up there for download. A "social video" application from mDialog, available since the App Store's launch on July 10, is driving considerable new business for mDialog, said Greg Philpott, the company's founder and CEO. In an interview with BetaNews, Philpott also shared some tips for other developers interested in getting their software into the App Store.

Continue reading →

At the Digital Music Forum in New York City today, speakers talked up a couple of alternative approaches for offering freely downloadable digital tunes without going broke.

As Microsoft's Zunes, Apple's iTunes, and other online music distributors are quickly finding out, a lot of people just don't want to pay for song downloads to their PCs.

Continue reading →