Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
How To
How To Perform A Hard Master Reset on the Apple iPhone 4
Dec 28th
There are a couple of scenarios when you want to do a complete master reset for your Apple iPhone4.
But remember, if you proceed with this operation: This will erase all data, all preferences, all settings and put it back to factory default settings, as if you pulled it out of the box.
It is something you should do as a last resort, but quite effective if you need it!
One circumstance would be if you’re selling or giving your phone away to someone else. In any case, be certain you want to do this before you go ahead. The process will give you one last warning on the way too.
HOW TO DO A MASTER RESET ON THE APPLE IPHONE4:
- All you have to do is go to the SETTINGS menu app.
- SCROLL DOWN to the last item — and click on “RESET”
- You’ll get several options: Settings, All Content & Settings, Network settings, Keyboard Dictionary, etc. CLICK ON “ERASE ALL CONTENT & SETTINGS”
- On the warning screen, click “ERASE iPHONE“
- Wait for the device to wipe all the data on the phone and come back to life!
Here’s a video walking you through the process in case this isn’t clear enough:
Poor Man’s iTunes: How To Download / Extract mp3 Audio From YouTube Videos
Dec 25th
iTunes = Lots Of Choices
There are over 13 million music songs priced at 69¢, 99¢, or $1.29 each on the Apple iTunes store as of 2010. That’s a lot of downloadable music content.
YouTube = Even More
But there’s another source of audio content that some people don’t think about — YouTube. I still use iTunes (or the Amazon mp3 store) for regular music downloads. But I also like to listen to other types of audio content to make good use of my time on my commute, waiting in lines, and other periods of downtime.
YouTube actually has tons of video content that is great even for the audio portion alone — I’m talking about lectures, tutorials, podcasts, interviews, sermons, and speeches. But by having them trapped within a video doesn’t make it as useful when you want to listen to it on the run (and sometimes literally!).
Extract Audio From YouTube Videos
The question is how to get the audio out of a video file on YouTube?
A couple of sites lets you download just the audio within a YouTube video. All you have to do is supply the video url and let them know if you want a regular or high quality version of the audio to be extracted.
Free Download Helpers
Two sites that work well (there are a bunch!) are:
-
www.video2mp3.net
-
www.vid2mp3.com
After the site does some quick thinking, it supplies you with a download link or even a direct URL to pass along to someone else so they can grab the audio file as well.
There’s over 150 million videos on YouTube supposedly. That’s a whole universe of potential mp3 files to download for you! Enjoy!
17 Must-Know Habits of iPhone Super-Users That Save And Extend Battery Life
Aug 31st
If you’re an iPhone 4 power user like me by the time lunch-time comes around, you start to get concerned about just how much longer you can last without an outlet and phone charger. . .
While the battery in the iPhone 4 far surpasses the older generation models supposedly, I find that I use my iPhone so much now that it has so many features (and apps!). So seriously, there are times where I’m done to 20% battery life by lunch time!
How do you keep your iPhone charged to extend the battery life when you’re out and about?
Well, I checked with a bunch of self-proclaimed iPhone gurus that I’ve connected with in the recent past.
Check out some of these tips below. Hope you find some new ideas to save the battery on the iPhone: Read the rest of this entry »
How To Get Free Access to 3 WiFi Hotspot Networks
Aug 12th
Last time, I blogged about getting access to Comcast’s WiFi hotspot network for free. It’s a little known secret that the marketing department over at the cable internet company hasn’t really pushed for some reason.
But today, I found out that there’s more to the story!
Comcast customers now get free access to two other cable internet wifi networks, completely free…and vice versa.
If you are a Comcast Internet customer like me, all you have to do is log onto one of the three wifi networks: xfinitiwifi, optimumwifi or timewarnercablewifi with your comcast email address and password like you do with your own Comcast wifi network
If you like Free, this is like FREE TIMES THREE.
If you don’t believe me, just look-up the coverage map for Optimum Online’s WiFi network and Time Warner see for yourself!
This is a huge win especially those that live in the tri-state New York City area since each company dominates different geographies around the City. So now when you travel about the region, you are most probably near either a Starbucks or McDonalds — or one of the three major wifi cable company wifi networks — You’re covered!
Check out this quick video that shares the details of the wifi network collaboration, worthy of to be called the real triple-play deal!
QUESTION: IS IT TRUE? DO YOU SEE ANY OF THE THREE WIFI HOTSPOTS IN YOUR AREA? LEAVE A MESSAGE TO SHARE THE RESULTS IN YOUR AREA!
How To Get Free WiFi Hotspot Access If You Are A Comcast Internet Customer
Aug 10th
Ever been out and about wishing you had a wifi connection?
Of course you have!
Instead of trolling for open wifi signals, you might want to consider a more reliable solution. Of course, you could sign-up for Boingo, Wayport or other WiFi networks, but if you are a Comcast Hispeed Internet Customer (randomly branded Xfinity recently to confuse customers as much as possible of course), you might want to check out this option before you go out and spend any more money.
I recently found out that I can get access to a free WiFi hotspot roaming account just because I’m a Comcast customer — and so can you!
In fact, through this largely unpromoted feature of Comcast Internet accounts, you already have it! There’s no need to turn anything on, upgrade or change anything on your account.
If you take a look at the coverage map of NYC and the Tri-State Area, you’ll see that there are TONS of Free WiFi Hotspots available for you to connect to in almost any general vicinity.
Check out the quick video blog update below which I recorded today and uploaded using the free WiFi connection that details how to get free WiFi access across town and while traveling:
Read the rest of this entry »
Windows 7 Hocus Pocus Disappearing Act Solved: Show Desktop Shortcuts
Jul 21st
I have always loved my laptop, but hated the OS.
So I recently upgraded my laptop from Windows Vista Business to Windows 7 on recommendation from…everyone. That’s right, just about anybody who used to use Vista before has said to do the switch pronto . . .
Windows 7 supposedly has more stability and speed than Vista. The techie mags and blogs seemed to agree, so I made the jump. . .
But now, as I get to know the new OS platform, I’m trying to figure out how to do all the tasks I routinely performed on a daily basis pre-Windows 7. Most of it has been ok — whenever you upgrade, it takes a little time getting used to the new look and feel. Upgrades are supposed to bring improvements and changes, right?
But there’s a couple of seemingly small things that have changed or plainly disappeared *POOF!* which make big differences in my daily workflow. It is frustrating because you sit there wondering where did they go?
Using the SHOW DESKTOP icon which was previously conveniently placed in my taskbar at the bottom of the screen was one of them. But guess what?! There’s no more icon/shortcut available in Windows 7 that’s available in the task bar! 
Personally, because I need to get back to the desktop so often, this creates a big hole in my Windows 7 experience. Luckily, there’s two specific ways to do the same function without much hassle or headache.  Here’s two ways to SHOW DESKTOP in Windows 7:
Free Screen Capture Software That Clicks With Me
Jul 11th
More and more, I’m find the necessity to create screen capture images of my desktop or a portion of a browser window more and more.
Typically, I’ve used the actual “Prt Sc” Print Screen button or the SHIFT+ALT+PRT SC combo to capture just the active window. This puts the screen grab into the clipboard memory.
From there, it’s an easy paste into MS Paint to resize or annotate with arrows, callout boxes, etc before saving it as “screen-URLorPROGRAMNAME.jpg” to use elsewhere – on blogs, twitpic, email, etc.
I’ve used a couple of Windows screen capture apps but none does what I want without cluttering my icon tray and hogging up resources. Recently, I’ve been testing out browser-based apps that do pretty much all I need. . .
One of them is called FireShot Pro and I used it with FireFox:
It’s been an easy-to-use screen capture program that works as a live browser plugin. The free version does most of what I need and even does Read the rest of this entry »
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!