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computer tips by WorldStart.com
Get the latest Technology news, helpful computer and software tips, discounts on new gizmos and gadgets that make life easier
.
The Week in Technology
Apple will be releasing the newest version of their Mac OS X, OS X 10.6 named
Snow Leopard. This new release will not be a complete overhaul, but instead
update several different components of the latest version, OS X 10.5 which was
named Leopard. The release is rumored to be August 28th.
Google is celebrating after moving up the ladder and becoming the third largest
email service with 37 million unique visitors last month, beating out AOL's 36
million unique visitors. The first largest email service is Yahoo with roughly
104 million users; The second is Windows Live Hotmail which has 47 million
unique visitors.
Sprint, the third largest wireless carrier, will be expanding its WiMax
wireless Internet offering to 17 new cities by the end of this year. The
company will also be expanding its 4G wireless coverage to Boston, Houston, New
York City, San Francisco and Washington D.C. by 2010. Verizon Wireless plans to
release it's 4G wireless coverage by 2010; ATT Wireless is looking of a release
date in 2011.
Microsoft has announced that the Zune HD, the newest version of their popular
portable media player, will be released in September. Pre-Orders for this
device will be available at major electronic retailers. The device will have
the ability to send 720P video to an HDTV using a separately sold docking
station. This device may become a major competitor for Apple's iPod Touch.
Q: For some reason my
desktop looks like it's in safe mode or something. How do I fix it?
A: Sounds like a bit
quality issue. You might notice after you've been in Safe Mode or played a game
on your PC that the desktop looks strange--the icons are bigger, the colors are
off, etc.
If you have an icon for your monitor or graphics card down in your system tray
(by the clock), you can
right-click
to see the settings and change it there. You'll probably find that it is set at
256 colors—change it to "High Color" (16 bit) or "True
Color" (32 bit).
You can also
right-click on a blank area of your desktop and choose "
Properties". Look
for the resolution slider and change the color settings to one of the specified
depths above. Why does this happen?
The higher your bit quality, the more system resources being used. Some games
change your settings to the lower quality so they'll run faster. Since Safe
Mode runs only the essentials to allow trouble shooting it also uses the lower
setting.
~ David
Accidentally
Zoom No More
So, here's the
scenario… you're happily working in a MS Office 2007 program and things are
progressing nicely.
Then suddenly it happens - the program window goes "wacky" and you
find yourself looking at the file after a zoom in or zoom out.
What happened there?
To be quite honest it could be several things but the cause I'd like to discuss
today is the Zoom Slider addition found the on the status bar of the Office
2007 programs.
The
Zoom Slider is the little slide button located on the far right of
the Status bar.
It can be a quick and easy way to slide the view around to suit your needs.
The problem comes in for those of us who rarely, if ever, choose to zoom in or
out and yet find ourselves accidentally clicking on slider.
That accidental click can cause some chaos and wasted time as you return things
to normal.
If this is you then my suggestion is to get rid of the Zoom Slider.
No Zoom Slider = fewer accidental zoom changes
Getting rid of the Zoom Slider is one of the easiest things you can do to make
your work day go a little smoother so let's take a look.
The first step is to
right-click on the Status Bar.
From the list of options you need to
uncheck Zoom Slider.
And that's it… Zoom Slider is gone leaving you with a few less moments of that
"What just happened?" feeling.
~ April
Lost Bookmarks You
know what stinks? Losing all of your bookmarks for Firefox! If you've ever been
in this unenviable position then you know what a pain in the butt it can be!
Browse on over to Worldstart today and learn how to combat this problem!
RemindTRON
Need reminding of certain things? Are you forgetful as all get out?
Try the RemindTRON today and see a difference! This is the featured site over
at Worldstart today, so make waves and get over there! Here's
the link you need: http://www.worldstart.com/
Enjoy!
Google Chrome Beta 3.0 Updates
There's a brand new Beta for Google Chrome which comes with the following
updates:
1.) The
Beta release shows 30% improvement over the current stable channel release 2.)
Improvements in the most loved and most used features of Google Chrome:
New Tab page
Omnibox 3.) Added
style with colors, patterns and images 4.)
HTML 5 capabilities
We shall see an overview of the above features in the following section.
Customize the new Tab
page:
We can rearrange the most visited website thumbnails on the New Tab page by
clicking and dragging the thumbnails. These website thumbnails can be pinned to
a particular spot so that they don't disappear even if our browsing habits
change. The notable feature is that you can hide parts of the page if you don't
want to see them using the layout buttons on the top right of the New Tab page.
The following image shows you these features.
Rearrange website
thumbnails
Pin website thumbnails
to a spot
Omnibox
It is the most important part of Google Chrome that helps us to get to the
websites we are looking for with few simple keystrokes. The presentation of the
drop-down menu has been optimized and little icons are added to distinguish
between suggested sites, searches, bookmarks and sites from our browsing
history.
The address bar doubles as a search box, when you type the search term in the
box and press Enter to see the results in the default search engine. The
address bar can also be used to search sites that we have previously visited.
You have to press the Tab key on your keyboard to convert the address bar in to
a search box. The below two images show you these features in a glimpse.
Then type the search term and press enter to see immediately the search results
on the page. In the above case we will see YouTube`s page for “dog on skates”
as below.
Tweak the Chrome of
Google Chrome
We can also change the theme of the browser by visiting the Themes Gallery.
The 2 images below show you a sneak peek at the "Woody Desktop“ theme and
a “Grassy Field”.
We can see the website thumbnails clearly in the above images.
Experience
HTML 5 capabilities:
HTML 5
capabilities including video tag and web workers are being built into the beta
release.
Speed,
Speed and more Speed:
Google Chrome has become more faster with
prioritizing the requests for the new page including fetching text, images, and
video content. The request for the new page is prioritized ahead of the older
pages.
Viruses:
The Good and Bad Today, I have some
information about viruses, spyware and other malware. Listen up!
Did you know that the number of malware programs on the Web today is predicted
to increase to one million this year? Yikes! The number of bad programs
continues to grow at an alarming rate, but that's actually some good news!
That's right, I said one million viruses is good news. Here's why!
It seems as if the numbers are growing so quickly because fewer malware
programs actually get the chance to infect a user's PC. With antivirus, anti-malware
and anti-rootkit software doing better and better as time goes by, the chance
of a new threat ever reaching your computer is dwindling down. Because of that,
people who write those nasty programs are being forced to write them faster and
faster in order to keep up.
According to stats by Sophos, a leading threat researcher, 85 to 90 percent of
malware families have a fix created almost immediately. Also, e-mails with
viruses attached have less of a chance of getting through to your computer. In
the past, one out of 40 attempts would successfully infect your computer. Now,
that number is one out of 1,000. That is great news for all of us! That's even
more of a reason to keep your protection up to date. It just shows that we're
all doing much better at keeping viruses at bay. Let's keep up the good work
and give those virus makers a run for their money!
I love this site! Not only does it provide you with an excellent and useful
free service, it also provides a demo account so you can try it out before you
register – so you can see if it is something you will actually use.
Click the image on the left to start in the demo account or click the demo tab.
Explore the different tabs that will be available to you: About, Socialize,
Contact, and Stream. Click the link at the top of the page Open Theme Selection
to see the many ways you can customize it!
About – this is where you will be able to put a greeting or personal
information about yourself.
Socialize – this is where it will list the different social networks you are a
member of. For example: Facebook, Twitter, Dig, your Blog, etc.
Contact – here you will place your contact information. For example: your
e-mail address, Skype handle, web site, etc.
Stream – here you will place the streams you subscribe to, so people can check
out what you check out online.
Are you ready to register and setup your own personal business card online? I
know I am! Registration is easy! Click the Sign Up tab, then fill out the form
with: a username, create a password, and provide and e-mail address. One word
of warning, don’t pick something crazy for your username because it is going to
be your profile’s URL. Check the box that you’re over 13, and then click the
Create My Account Now button.
You will immediately be able to get started customizing your business card. I
started with the third option of creating how it will look. Then I added my
social networks, and contact information.
The important step in setting up your card is after you’ve filled out and saved
all the information you want your card to have on it, is Step Five: Embed. This
is the tab where you will find the information you need to embed your online
business card onto a website. You can also use your URL and just make a link to
it. Check mine out here.
This is a great option for making your contact, social networking, and business
information easily known online!
