Your blog is only one blog out of hundreds of millions of other blogs available on the Internet, which means if you’re trying to gain readership and make money you have to stand out above the crowd. Little mistakes can end up affecting you in a big way if you aren’t careful. Take care to avoid these common blogging pitfalls:

1. Writing wordy posts

It is a rare day that someone is going to sit down and read your entire post verbatim. It’s just not going to happen. Instead, people are going to scan through posts to hit the highlights of what the post has to offer. So make your blog posts concise and to the point, and skip being overly wordy. Writing posts with bullet points or numbered points is the best way to impart information to your readers.

 2. Publishing sporadic blog posts

You don’t have to fall into the category of bloggers that publish every day, but you should have some sort of consistency to your blogging schedule. Maybe it’s blogging three times a week, maybe it’s blogging one really great post once a month – whatever the case, your readers should be able to know when they can expect a post from you, otherwise you’ll never gain a consistent readership.

3. Blogging to just to get new content up

On the other side of publishing consistently, you also can’t just write a post to get something new up on your website, you have to publish something of quality. Hastily written blog posts usually translate to poorly written blog posts. Your readers read your blog because they gain something from each post, and to have a successful blog you have to continue to offer them something each time they read.

4. Disregarding social media

Social media is one of the easiest ways to market your blog, so you are doing yourself and your blog a disservice by not being involved in the major social media players. Very rarely will content promote itself, especially when you consider how vast and varied the content available on the internet is, so harness the power of social media to leverage your blog posts for you.

5. Focusing too heavily on ads

Your readers probably not only know that you use advertising, but expect it to some degree. However you can’t go crazy with advertising and not anticipate that it’s going to become annoying to your readers. Readers want to think that you blog for the pure joy of blogging, that you blog for them. They don’t want to think that you’re making a profit off of them, so keep the advertising classy and not too flashy.

 6. Publishing without proof-reading

Every good writer knows that an article isn’t finished until it has been proofed and edited. A blog is no different. You’ll come across as sloppy and careless if you don’t take ten minutes to proof-read your work before you publish it.

Blogging requires a certain amount of finesse and writing savvy. Don’t get lost in the shuffle because of mindless mistakes.

Common Blogging Mistakes is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Do you have a windows 7 machine that you manage remotely?  Maybe you have a machine that your wife or child uses, or a media center machine in the front room that you want to make changes to while somebody else is using it?  Enabling Concurrent Sessions in Windows 7 will allow you to do this i.e. allow more than one person to be logged into Windows 7 at the same time.

Enabling concurrent sessions in Windows 7 is easy:

1. Download the file from this post,  and remember where you extracted the files e.g C:\Win7RDP
2. Go to the folder where you extracted the files, right click on “install.cmd” and select “Run as Administrator”

Now if you want to enable Multiple Concurrent Sessions i.e. log in on the same account more than once:

1. Launch a Command Prompt with Administrator priveleges (Start > CMD > Right Click > Run as Administrator)
2. At the C:\Windows\System32 prompt type “cd\Win7RDP”
3. type “install multi” and hit enter

How To Enable Concurrent Sessions In Windows 7 is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

One basic SEO tip is to increase the density of your keywords on your pages, so I was surprised to find that the default behaviour of the WordPress RSS widget is to display the titles from the sites added, but if you check the page source, the full feed i.e. all the text from each of the posts is added to the page!

This obviously isn’t good, but the solution is easy:

1. Install the Linkable Title html and php Widget WordPress Plugin: we need to install this plugin so that we can add php to wordpress widgets
2. Once installed, add a new linkable title widget where you want to display your feed and add the following code:

replacing sitefeed.com/rss with the sitefeed that you want to display.  This code uses WP’s inbuilt function to display just the titles from feeds e.g. for the Connected Internet Tech News feed I’ve added:

Edit the number at the end to choose how many title to display.

WordPress SEO: Only Display RSS Titles In Sidebar is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Freelancing and contracting can be daunting at first. If you have left fulltime employment, you may miss your job security and having people around you who guide and support you when you need it most. However, contracting can offer you a greater quality of life, flexibility to do what you want and greater financial reward.

If you are new to the world of freelancing or are considering making the change soon, here are a few helpful tips to maximise you earnings.

Be Sociable as well as Professional

Many people struggle with the idea of working on their own but working as a freelancer or contractor needn’t be lonely. Build relationships with the clients you obtain as if they were colleagues and talk to as many people in the department as possible. See it as a perk of the job. Every time you get a new contract, you also get a chance to meet new people and make new contacts.

Don’t Burn Your Bridges

Most advisors will tell you to focus your time on the people that provide you with the most money. This could be recruitment agencies that provide you with work or clients that you deal with directly. The problem with this is that many freelancers often take this advice too literally. They screen calls or don’t bother responding to emails, because they don’t want to <em>waste their time </em>with people that won’t generate money. The key is to keep your finger in as many pies as possible. Keep all of your contacts sweet and you will always have the option to pick and choose who you decide to work with. After all, you never really know where the next big job is going to come from.

Practise What You Preach

It seems like an obvious thing to say, but make sure you use your skills to help you get business. If you are a web designer, make sure your website demonstrates your very best work. If you are a software programmer, design something in your free time which you can talk about and don’t be afraid to show off. Show that what you do is important to you, that you really strive to be the best. This will win business over and over again.

Be Transparent

Building solid relationships means you will generate repeat business. Building good relationships isn’t only about the work you provide, it’s also about YOU. If a company feels they can trust you and depend on you, why would they both looking elsewhere when they need the service you provide? To inspire trust, go above and beyond to do the right thing. IF you complete a project in less time than you had initially quoted, tell them about it and reduce your fee. You may make less money in those situations but you will get more work in the long run and that is key to freelancing success.

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer

When you work for a company, you are surrounded by your peers who stimulate and educate you. Freelancers sometimes struggle to develop or discuss new ideas as they often work alone. This needn’t be the case. Go to networking events and don’t just look for work, look for your competition. Get friendly with them and study what they are doing. Discuss the industry and your ideas.  Is there anything they are doing which you don’t? Can they teach you something new? Understanding your competition can often be as important as understanding your clients.

Above all, be 110% committed and dedicated to what you do. Never forget why you got into it in the first place and enjoy it!

How to Make More Money as a Technology Freelancer is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Microsoft will be releasing today the Windows 8 Consumer Preview – or the Windows 8 Beta to you and me.  If you are a brave soul who likes playing with the latest software, then remember this won’t be fully supported by Microsoft, although there are places you can go to get help.

One place to get help with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is the Windows 8 News site, who have an active forum available for help.  On the site, there’s a new Windows 8 Consumer Preview board where you can share your experiences with the latest build.  If you need more help with Windows 8, then use the Windows 8 Help forum and sub-forums.

To register with the Windows 8 forums yet, then click here.

Where To Get Help With Windows 8 Beta is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

In typical Apple fashion, iBook Author was unveiled on January 19. The new e-textbook publishing app from Apple held almost supernatural overtones as the project was foretold in the late Steve Jobs’ biography written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter Isaacson. While controversy has already descended upon iBook Author’s license agreement, a bigger issue exists regarding the tepid adoption rate among students towards the current state of digital textbooks.

Though little elicits more collective groans than the myriad of complaints against college textbooks, initial interest in electronic replicas of bound volumes has been met with sighs of disappointment. For Apple, with it’s the entrance into the digital textbook market, the anticipation of moving the e-textbook industry forward has become palpable.

Not living up to expectations – yet

What began as a hopeful promise of cheaper book costs, up-to-date delivery of content and fewer trips to the chiropractor as a result of lugging books hasn’t worked out on all counts. For one, though some textbooks are in fact cheaper purchased in digital form, many come with added fees if you want access to interactive features or use of the book beyond the end of the course. One study’s finding reported a savings of as little as one dollar by digital book users over traditional textbook usage. Other more subtle expectations have also fallen short.

In an age where most college students have known no other time than the digital age, expectations run high for tech features. College students of all ages want value-added aspects from their e-books. When a digital textbook purchase results in nothing more than a replica of the book’s print edition, this new generation of consumers is unimpressed.

As for weight and space, many students like the idea of having a bound copy of their core subject textbooks to use years after graduation. While cultural changes may eventually result in a shift to completely digital publishing, for now, Apple has some obstacles to overcome.

Taking on the experts

Some suspect that Apple’s entrance into digital publishing is an attempt to consolidate the many different resources available for this relatively nascent industry. However, there are quite a few sites for acquiring digital texts that seem to be doing just fine. Two of these, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Amazon Kindle Textbook, offer an already-large selection of digital textbooks. More importantly, both have extensive business experience in the publishing industry.

CourseSmart is an online distributer of e-textbooks that works directly with educational publishing powerhouses such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill Education. Having established relationships with educational publishing houses, CourseSmart is well-positioned to fend off threats by competition, which Apple seems to be making with iBook Author.

Been there, did that, then left

Betting against the late Steve Jobs’ now-publicized intentions is something to be approached with great trepidation. However, a large portion of the education community has a long-standing grudge where the computer giant is concerned. In the 90s, Apple dominated the school computer landscape. Unfortunately, they made a terrible miscalculation in relying on developers to create supporting software. When the plan failed to materialize – according to Apple’s standards – the company bailed. They left thousands of school districts with functionally obsolete platforms that were not much more than very pricy word processors. Microsoft and PC manufacturers combined to satisfy the needs of schools, who likely never forgave Apple.

Although Apple has seen its failures, betting for the company seems to be a solid bet in the long run. Apple, however, should not underestimate their competition. If they do, the success they hope to achieve from the release of iBook Author may be a long, lonely battle.

Apple’s leap into the shallow pool of e-text publishing is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

In the land of deals there are always a few days that reign supreme. But with mobile phone shopping at an all time high, consumers can position themselves to get an endless supply of discounts and special offers. These deals are as varied as they are plentiful. Users can find cut-rate prices on individual items as well as storewide savings. Specific sales are perfect for getting the lowest prices on “hot” products like the new iPhone or Kindle Fire. Storewide savings really come in handy for big items like lawnmowers, washers or tables that are rarely discounted. Forget Black Friday and take a look at some of the best apps to keep you in the green everyday.

There are tons of applications available for finding deals. Chinoki is known as the “cherry picking” app. Once Android or iPhone users have the application set-up they will select some of their favorite businesses. Chinoki will text the user when special deals come out from their selected brands. Chinoki users will be exposed to fewer offers overall—because they’re waiting on the stores to create them. But Chinoki helps cut through the junk because all the deals users do receive are relevant.

The Shopkick app promotes certain “hot” items. Users get “kickbucks” for just walking into stores that feature the items. They can also get them by scanning barcodes and purchasing promoted apps. The kickbucks can be redeemed for additional savings, gift cards or other incentives. Most of the shopkick promotions are only available for people who have application, which is free for Android and iPhone users.

Shopkick isn’t the only app that encourages consumers to scan barcodes. Redlaser has around 12 million users. This app uses a phone’s camera to capture barcodes and search for a more competitive price. It will also list the nearby stores the product can be found in, or if you scan a book, it will check the local library for a copy. Redlaser can provide additional information on the product you are scanning. Users can look-up reviews for video games or nutrition facts on food items.

The App Addict’s Guide to Savvy Shopping is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Almost all modern phones can play full songs as ringtones and most come with quite a few options pre-loaded. But in the age of customization, you simply cannot settle for something that came in a box. Especially for something like a ringtone – which is almost an identifier of personal taste – nothing that came canned will do. Thankfully, making a custom ringtone for yourself is not hard at all. Here are a few easy ways to make them.

Free Windows Ringtone Makers

AV RingtoneMAX

This one is a mini powerhouse of a ringtone maker. Not only can you record your own sounds using its inbuilt recorder but you can use effects, mix two tracks and use various different formats like OGG, MP4, WAV, MP3, CDA, WMA, etc. Once you are done, AV RingtoneMAX can transfer the ringtone directly to your phone via Bluetooth or if you don’t have Bluetooth, you can store it on your hard drive and transfer it some other way. This software comes with clear instructions every step of the way and is easy to use.

ToneThis Ringtone Maker

Tone this is yet another powerful yet simple piece of software for making ringtones on your windows desktop. In addition to making ringtones, it also allows you to create wallpapers for your phone. And once you are done, it can send the ringtone to your phone via your cellphone carrier. It’s step-by-step ringtone and wallpaper creation process is easy to use even if you have not used such an application before. You can take any supported audio file from your computer and turn it in to a ringtone with precise start to end controls. It also comes with a Firefox toolbar that can send online media directly to ToneThis to avoid legal hassles of downloading copyrighted media.

Free Android Ringtone Maker For Android

Ringtones Studio

Ringtones Studio is one of those simple apps that do exactly what they promise to do. This one makes Ringtones and does it in a way that is easy for all to use. You can use it to slice up any music from your own library and make ringtones out of them. You can also use your phone’s microphone to record something and then edit that to make a new ringtone. The app keeps track of all your created ringtones and also lets you assign individual ringtones to your contacts. The controls are very accurate and are designed to be easy to use on a touchscreen. You can also edit sounds to make them in to alarm or notification sounds.

Free Ringtones For Your iPhone

RingtonesX

RingtonesX is an interesting app. It is an app that has a catalogue of over 50,000 hit songs from various different genres of music that can be downloaded as ringtones. They are all free and up for grabs. The point to be noted here is that these songs are cover versions of popular original numbers. On the upside though, this means that hit songs become quickly available on the catalogue soon after their release. This makes this app give you (legal) access to making ringtones out of these songs much faster after release than any other app. Sound quality is very good, crisp and clear.

Free Online Ringtone Makers

Mp3mer.com

Mp3mer is a powerful online ringtone maker with oodles of options to make your ringtone sound exactly the way you want it to. Featuring advanced effects and filters like flanger, echo, tremolo, bandpass filter, highpass etc. it will be a delight to anyone looking for exact control over their ringtone. There are three modes – Easy, Advanced and Expert – with increasing options. And there are multiple formats to choose from – mp3, aac, mp4, m4r, mpc, ogg and qpc. Once you are done, you can download it to your harddrive and then put it on your phone. As an online tool, it will work on any computer with access to the internet and a modern browser.

Melofania.com

Melofania is the fast and easy way to make your ringtones online. It has a simple design and allows you to quickly get a song in to the online app and cut it up exactly the way you want to. It limits the ringtone to a 30 second clip of the track starting from any position on track. It displays a waveform to help you choose the right parts and you can preview the part. Once you are done, click on get ringtone and then you will have the option of choosing between two formats – mp3 and m4r (used by iPhone). And that’s it. You are done!

Top Apps To Make Free Ringtones – iPhone, Android and Windows is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Remember all the craze about Netbooks a few years ago?  It seemed that you couldn’t turn a corner without somebody trying to offer you a netbook.  Now, most netbook users have turned their netbooks in for a tablet PC, and it’s not hard to see why when you feast your eyes upon devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab.   This great new tablet is probably the most worthy recipient of the title ‘iPad beater’.

Samsung at the very least have pulled together a fantastic piece of kit.  Based on the Google Android operating system, the Galaxy Tab will probably appeal to a wide base of users, particularly those who appreciate the greater freedom that Android provides.

Slimmer and smaller than an Apple iPad, the Galaxy Tab also has an impressive spec sheet:

• Android 2.2 running TouchWiz 3.0
• 7-inch TFT LCD with 1024 x 600 resolution (WSVGA)
• Weighs 380 grams
• 1GHz Cortex A8 processor
• 16GB or 32GB internal storage
• microSD expansion for up to 32GB additional storage
• Front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera and rear 3 megapixel camera with flash
• 4,000mAh battery
• 3G data / voice/Bluetooth
• 5GHz dual-band 802.11n WiFi
• Standard back color is white, carriers might offer different colors
• Full HD video playback
• 30-pin dock connector on the bottom that allows for HDMI, USB and docking accessories

The interface will also be familar to Android users, with  incorporates a 7 inch WSVGA screen, as well as four buttons on the front for home, options, back and search.

Samsung have produced a series of videos, to assist with the launch of the Galaxy Tab.  My favourite is by the Samsung CrescentSuperbike Racing Team, who use the Samsung Galaxy Tab to improve their lap times.

To learn more about the Samsung Galaxy Tab, click here or check out the facebook page here.
Sponsored Post

Not Just Another Tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

No matter what size your site or organization is, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you need to understand at least the basics of.  Optimizing your site for Search Engines, not only helps to bring in more content, but also helps you write better content as you will focus on covering the topics that users want to read, and also write in a style that is easily understandable.

There are several tools that allow you to keep tabs on your site’s performance, but personally I find the best way to keep tabs of the performance of my sites is via a browser extension.  Although these aren’t as detailed as some standalone SEO tool, they allow you to see quickly how your site’s are performing whilst you work.

A new Google SEO extension is the SEO Chrome Extension from sorezki.  This SEO company have pulled together several useful SEO and social media features into one plugin.

Installing the plugin is done in a similar fashion to other Google Chrome Extensions.  Once installed, a button is added to your browser’s toolbar allowing you quick access to the following data:

• Yahoo Site Explorer: Number of pages indexed, site links and Page Links
• Google: PageRank, Domain Links, Indexed Pages
• Alexa: Links in, Popularity
• Compete.com and Bing.com metrics
• Social Media data: information from Faceook, Twitter, deli.icio.us, Google Buzz, StumbleUpon and Digg on the number of pages shared, tweeted, dugg, Buzzed, bookmarked

The video below shows the Sorezki SEO Plus Google Chrome in action:

As you can see from the video additional levels of detail are also provided, that will help you further optimize your content if you devote some time to the task.  The extension allows you to easily see how your site ranks for top keywords, and provides suggestions on how to improve your rankings in clear easy to understand instructions.

More: Sorezki SEO Tool

New Google Chrome SEO Extension is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Looking for ways to unlock a mobile broadband dongle without having to pay someone to do it? Then this is the right place to be! Outlined below are proven methods for resetting and unlocking dongles. The methods do require some technical abilities; as such, do not try them if they seem too complicated for your personal level of expertise.

Before we begin, let us talk about why the dongle is being unlocked. This procedure is often performed because the owner finds a better package deal from another provider. Providers are not overly keen on allowing clients to jump from one provider to another because, well, it is generally bad for business. So, as a precaution, they lock their dongles using networks which are designed to prevent the owner from using them elsewhere.

The technology community has figured out ways to bypass the network locks and have made it public knowledge for all to utilize. The first step is to see if the dongle is locked into a specific network. In order to do this, a program known as DC-Unlocker is required. The program is available for download from the DC-Unlocker website and is installed onto a computer.

The SIM card needs to be removed from the dongle so that it can be inserted into the SIM card slot on the computer. If the computer does not have a SIM card slot, one with a card slot will be required before going any further. With the card inserted, start the DC-unlocker program and wait for it to detect a network and/or software locking down the SIM card.

If the card does not have a network, it can be removed and replaced with a new card. However, if this is the case, the existing network information will need to be entered onto the new card by using the existing software or a generic software program.

If it is indeed locked by a network, then a quick call to the provider will usually result in an unlock code for free, or a small fee. If the provider is not able to supply a code, certain mobile phone stores are now offering the unlock service for a minimal fee.

In the event that the card is locked by software, using a generic software program will often work to complete the changes. The generic software can be located through the DC-Unlocker website or the manufacturer of the SIM card. To change the card settings, the existing software will need to be removed and the generic software installed.

As a last resort, flashing the firmware will work, but is much trickier than the other options. Entering the model number of the dongle into a search engine, such as Google, to locate the firmware reset instructions is the first step. Secondly, download the firmware, which is generally available from the manufacturer along with the required generic software.

With the dongle, software and firmware acquired, start up the generic software dashboard and follow the instructions precisely. Failure to follow the directions precisely can lead to big problems with the card and the dongle. If the person performing this task does not have sufficient knowledge or does not feel comfortable, calling in a broadband expert is the best option.

DC-unlocker

Download

More: DC-unlocker

Ways To Unlock Mobile Broadband Dongles is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Our mobile phones are no longer optional. They are an integral aspect of our modern lives that keep us connected to our network. The problem, however, is that as mobile phones become more indispensable, the cost of mobile services rises accordingly. If you’re not vigilant, you’re paying too much. For students and those of us on tight budgets, this is a significant issue, so let us examine a series of tried and true strategies for saving money on your mobile phone bill.

1. Know Your Contract. Be Aware of Hidden Fees.

The biggest mistake you can make is apathy. The mobile service providers feast on apathetic clients. Know your plan inside and out. Read the fine print. Know what services are available to you, and be aware of hidden fees. For instance, some economy plans apply a surcharge if you check your voicemail more than three times in a day.

2. Monitor Usage

Don’t simply guesstimate usage. Most providers have a free online or telephone-based service that allows you to check your usage. Keep track of this. Know what you’re using, and then consider that within the context of your plan. Chances are, some aspects of your plan go unused and other aspects are not broad enough, so you can likely save by expanding them.

3. Downgrade (or Upgrade or Switch Providers)

At this point, you should have a clear assessment of how your plan fits you. If you’re in a contract, then you likely can’t switch providers. However, most providers will allow you to downgrade mid-contract as long as it doesn’t bring you below the mandated threshold, such as an agreement that allowed you to buy your phone at a discount.

4. SIM Only Contracts

Once you’re out from under you contract, consider switching to a SIM only contract. The advantage of SIM only contracts are the rates, contract lengths and obligations tend to much less than standard contracts. This type of contract essentially separates the phone and the service. The downside to this is that you won’t be able to upgrade your phone as often, and when you do, it will be costlier, at least in the moment.

5. Avoid Roaming Charges

Roaming charges are too expensive, so avoid them unless it’s an emergency. The biggest mistake people make is that they use their mobile on holiday or even that they simply leave the phone on, which allows some charges to accumulate. Instead, turn the phone off, and buy a temporary mobile phone at your destination.

6. Use Apps to Avoid Unnecessary Charges

Calling long distance, you can often use Skype and similar apps to circumvent charges or at least make the calls at a reduced rate. Similarly, you can avoid charges on 0870 calls by using freely available apps that convert these calls into calls to 01 and 02 numbers.

7. Consider a Cashback Service

Some mobile phone services provide a cashback feature where they serve you advertisements on your phone or even on the Internet on your PC using their browser tool. Every time you click on one of these ads, you’ll make a little money. This isn’t for everyone, but it’s a good option for students who have time to spare.

8. Trade in Your Handset for Cash

When you’re ready to upgrade your phone, don’t trade the old phone in. Sure, this is convenient, but you can actually save more money by selling your old handset. Then, you can put those proceeds toward the purchase price of your new phone.

Best Ways to Save Money on Your Mobile Phone Bill is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Even if you are blessed with fast internet speeds, sometimes one application can hog all your bandwidth making it hard to use others.  E.g you might use a torrent client, download manager, videochat or streaming service and when you do, it becomes impossible to perform other online tasks.

If you suffer from this problem then NetBalancer might be for you.  This application allows you to monitor and control your internet traffic quickly, and assign priorities to each application to increase or limit how much of your bandwidth they utilize.  Applications with a higher network priority will get more bandwidth and applications with a lower priority, less.

[Start slideshow]

Key features of NetBalancer:

• Set download and upload network priority for any process. Currently supported priorities are High priority, Normal priority, Low priority, Block traffic, Ignore traffic and Limit traffic
• Set download and upload speed limits for a process
• Manage priorities and limits for each network adapter separately
• Group local network computers and balance their traffic synchronised
• Protect all settings and priorities with a password to prevent unauthorised changes
• Show all system processes with their in and out network traffic speed
• Show current connections for any process
• Show downloaded and uploaded traffic for any process since NetBlancer’s start
• View overall system traffic as a graph
• Show last 15 seconds traffic in system tray
• Fine tune priorities (see Level Severity setting)
• Native 64 bit support for best performance
• Set global traffic limits

The free version of NetBalance allows you to manage 3 processes/limits at a time, which should be enough for most users.

NetBalancer

Download

More: NetBalancer

Prioritise Network Traffic With NetBalancer is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Regular tweeters take note:  the classic twitter layout is no more.  Twitter users now must make themselves familiar with the “new” layout (first introduced last September).  Rest assured that the changes are meant to make tweeting more accessible and intuitive.  Here’s a brief overview of some of the fundamental changes with the new Twitter.

The Home page

The first changes you’ll notice are on the Twitter home page.  The right hand panel has been updated with a section that suggests Twitter users based on data from your personal profile.  You can refresh this section to quickly sift through users to follow.  This updated sidebar enables you to fully utilize your Twitter account without ever leaving the Home page.  Every feature is available from the Home page, further simplifying an already spare social media tool.  You can even view @Mentions and retweets from the Home page, or view the most popular trending topics at the moment.

Infinite Scroll

This feature marks perhaps the most significant change with new Twitter.  Before when scrolling through your tweet feed you had to wait for older tweets to load or refresh the page.  Now (internet connection permitting) you can scroll through your tweet feed indefinitely, going back in your feed history for as long as you wish.  This new feature makes Twitter seem more real-time than ever, allowing you to view past and present content seamlessly.

Mini Twitter Profiles

On “old” Twitter, clicking a profile on your tweet feed would redirect you to that user’s page.  Now you can view a user’s mini profile on the previously mentioned sidebar to the right of your tweet feed, leaving you free to simultaneously browse user’s mini profiles and your tweet feed without being redirected to another page.  A user’s mini profile includes hard numbers on their tweets, followers, and those they’re following.   You can also view the user’s bio and their previous few tweets.

View embedded content

The new Twitter also allows for easier viewing of embedded content such as shared videos and photos due to agreements the site made with media sites like flickr, etsy, vimeo, and youtube. This feature gives the new Twitter more social media muscle, enabling the user to view different types of content from one platform.  Specifically, the embedded content gives Twitter more of a traditional blog feel while maintaining its appeal as a snappy social media tool.

Navigating the new Twitter is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

We would all love to have a computer that ran at optimal speeds at all the time and had the ability to solve problems for us. How wonderful it would be to benefit from high performance computing. There would be no need for massive updates, for waiting, and for wondering how to troubleshoot something. Our computers would always be a benefit, not something that we frequent fight with when it decides not to do what we want it to do.

However, you don’t have to be a giant firm to benefit from high performance computing.  There are a few quick tech tips that you can use to keep your computer running like a super computer including:

Downloading Linux

When most consider the operating systems needed for their computers to run, they think of Microsoft or Apple operating systems. While Apple is by far the safer bet, in regards to viruses and needed updates, very few consider Linux.  Linux is the operating system that all the top 10 super computers listed in the Top500 run off of. It is a powerful operating system that is backed by a community of consumer techies and computer gurus to provide the most elite and easy to use operating system on the market. Linux is also incredibly safe as it rarely falls victim to viruses and isn’t bogged down by frequent software updates.

Keeping it Clean

If you want your computer to continue to run at top speeds, don’t load down your memory with unnecessary documents and files or your processor with multiple documents opened all the time. Try using cloud services to store all of your files so that you can keep your memory free, and check with your system to make sure that your computer doesn’t automatically open 50 programs every time you start it up. Both of these things can dramatically slow down your computer preventing you from getting full use of it at all times.

Defragment It Occasionally

When you download and delete programs, it will cause gaps in your computer’s memory. Instead of using these “gaps in memory,” your computer will continue to use new memory. To actually get the full use out of your memory, you need to defragment it on a regular basis. Defragmenting will compact all the files that you have downloaded, and will free up memory that was once being used but no longer is.

Computers are a vital part of every day life. Whether we use them to keep in contact with old friends or need them to complete basic business operations, they are and will continue to remain deeply embedded in our lives. Instead of paying for frequent updates or trips to the local computer tech store, use the above tips to keep your computer clean and running at high computing speeds – well, at least speeds higher than the average consumer can obtain.

How to Run Your Computer More Like a Super Computer is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Last week my wife purchased a nursery rhyme CD for our little girl and she asked me to add it to our music library.  At first I couldn’t as the CD included copy protection, but then I found an easy way to make a copy of CDs with copy protection, or Digital Rights Management (DRM).

All you need is a copy of iTunes, which will allow you to make a copy of your CD, so that you can add the MP3 files to your music library, or to your mp3 player.

1. Open iTunes and insert your CD
2. Setup your iTunes import preferences
3. Click on ‘File’ and select ‘New Playlist’ and give your playlist a name
4. Now click on your CD, select all the tracks and drag them onto your new playlist

How To Copy Protected CDs To Your PC is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Not getting your full broadband speed is one of the biggest complaints many users have of their ISP, particularly if you are using your connection to download torrents or other P2P traffic as ISPs tend to throttle these more than other web traffic.

One way to get around these blocks and to get a faster and more secure connection is to use a VPN service such as VyperVPN.

With a VPN service, your online traffic is made more secure as all it goes via VyperVPN’s servers which are fully encrypted, so it’s impossible for your ISP to throttle your connection as you’re ‘annoymous’.  It also means that you will be invisible to hackers, so your connection is more secure.

VyperVPN also adds other cool services, such as allowing you to connect to VyperVPN servers located in different areas of the world so you can appear to come from there.  For instance, I have created a script for my Windows 7 Media Center to allow me to access Hulu which is only available to US users, from the UK by connecting to one of VyperVPN’s US servers.  Servers are available in Asia, Europe, US and UK so you can connect to almost any restricted internet service in a couple of clicks.

Other features of VyperVPN:

Privacy:

Stop Your ISP From Throttling Your Connection With VyperVPN is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Yes, people do still use RSS! Although RSS maybe never took off outside of the blogger community, it is still a very powerful tool for easily following multiple websites.   One of the other uses of RSS is to promote on your site the latest posts from another site.

This can become messy if you own a number of sites, or if you want to promote RSS feeds from several friends or partners, as each feed would traditionally need its own widget.  However, there’s a great free service from the email company MailChimp called ChimpFeedr.  This free service allows you to enter multiple RSS feeds to create one single feed of all the posts.

Creating a mashup feed is simple; just enter the address of each feed you want to add and when you’ve finished click ‘Chomp Chomp!’ and you’ll be given a new RSS feed url that combines all your feeds.

More: ChimpFeedr

Create RSS Feed Mashup With ChimpFeedr is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Last month I wrote a post ‘Make Windows Clock More Accurate‘ explaining how to make the windows clock more accurate by changing the server that Windows uses to synchronize time.  As some readers pointed out, this didn’t completely fix the problem of Windows always running late.

The problem goes even deeper, and it appears that Window’s inbuilt task to synchronize time is, well, a bit stupid.  This task will only check if the Windows Time Service is running, and will only update the time once a week even if you change the schedule.  To stop the couple of minutes a week drift in Windows, we have to create our own task to get the windows time to update once a day

Create Scheduled Task

• Go to the start menu and type in ‘Task Scheduler’ and click on the link
• Click on ‘Create Task’ in window that opens up.
• Give the task a name like daily time update
• In General, click on ‘Change User or Group…’ and enter ‘Local Service’.  Also tick ‘Run with highest privileges’ and  choose the configuration operation for your Operating System

• Go to the ‘Triggers’ tab and click new. Choose ‘Daily’ and choose a time for the task to run
• Go to the ‘Actions’ tab and add these actions in this order :

• Now go to ‘Settings’ and tick ‘run as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed’

Make Windows Clock More Accurate – Part II is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

We have all seen it. We’re at the grocery store and in line, right in front of us, is the savvy shopper who just bought an entire week’s worth of groceries for only $10. Have you ever wondered how he or she does it? Not only is this shopper saving hundreds of dollars every week, but also how in the world does this person keep track of all those coupon codes? Chances are that deal-wheeling shopper in front of you uses a separate email account to keep track of all of those deals.

If you’re like many in today’s economic climate who want to save money on groceries, on school supplies, or even at your favorite restaurant, then learning to save with your email address is a great place to start. There are many advantages to setting up a separate email account for coupons. Let’s take a look at some of the most common advantages.

1. A separate email account will save you time.

If you have a designated email address for only coupons and coupon codes then you always know where to look. Simply go to your email and check out the savings at your favorite store.

2. Search for your coupons.

If you are subscribed to any coupon code aggregator that support email coupon alerts (like this one from Rather Be Shopping), you are most likely to be receiving highly-targeted coupons which are relevant to you.

What’s more, an email account that is separate from your personal account allows you to search for the coupons you use most. You don’t have to wade through pages and pages of coupons you don’t even use. If you are using a separate email account to collect your coupons, your search results will only contain deals received from your favorite sites.

3. Give your email address to your favorite websites.

Have you used coupon aggregators to find great deals? Or have you gone into your favorite clothing store and been asked for your email address? Every time you are asked for your email address online or in person, give your separate email address.

You’ll be much more organized this way.

To organize things even further, you can use labels to break coupons by category, future plans or retailer.

4. Get rid of spam.

Today’s world is spam laden. Nobody wants to have their inbox full of unwanted messages. When you set up a separate email account for coupons and deal, you can save your personal account from hundreds of unwanted spam offers.

5. Know where to go.

After you’ve made your weekly grocery list, go to your email account and check for coupons for the things on your list. Often online coupons last much longer than those that come in your weekly mailer. Go to your inbox, search for a coupon, and you’re all set.

Setting up a separate email account for all of your coupon codes is a great way to save money and save your sanity. You can easily and quickly search for those coupons that you need. You won’t have to worry about wasting time going through hundreds of coupons you don’t need and you can have one handy place to keep track of all the coupons you’re interested in.

Simply sign up for a separate email address and start to see the savings for yourself. Who knows, the next time you are in the grocery store you may be the savvy shopper who only spent $10 on a week’s worth of groceries.

Coupon Clipping Tip: Create a Separate Saving Account is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

One of the biggest bugbears for web designers or bloggers, is ensuring that your website is displaying properly in all browsers.  It’s impossible to check your website in every version of a particular browser, e.g. IE6, IE7 and IE8… that is unless you use a service like browsershots.

With browsershots you can very quickly and for free generate a screenshot of any url in dozens of browsers at once, to ensure that your website has maximum compatibility.   All you have to do is enter your url, wait a few minutes and then check the screenshots that are generated.

You can also specify other options such as screen size, javascript, java and flash. If you don’t want to wait for your images to be generated, a premium service is available.

More: BrowserShots

BrowserShots: View Your Website In Multiple Browsers Quickly is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Ensuring that your webpages load as quickly as possible is not only important for your site visitors, but how fast webpages load is now part of Google’s search engine ranking mechanism.  There are many tools out there to help you reduce the size of their images, but RIOT is probably the best free tool available.

Radical Image Optimization Tool (RIOT) maximises the compression of your images to make them as small as possible, whilst maintaining as much quality as possible.  RIOT shows both the original image and the optimised image side by side so you can adjust how much to quality you want to maintain.  75-80% seems to be an optimum setting for RIOT; check out the image below for example:

A massive reduction of 90% has been achieved, reducing a 572KB image to a 46KB image, and as you can see the image quality has been maintained.  I’m in the process of running all the images used on this site through RIOT, and I’m achieving an average file reduction size of around 70% with my custom settings.

Main features:

• open many image types including rare/scientific types
• save and optimize JPEG, GIF and PNG with a simple, clean user interface
• works in dual view: (original – optimized image) or single view (optimized image).
• Automatic preview of resulting image
• in-place compare function (alternativelly display the original image over the optimized image to notice small pixel changes)
• compress files to desired filesize threshold
• fast processing (all is done in memory);
• see instant results including resulting filesize
• batch support (process multiple files at once)
• transparency handling options
• decide if you want to keep metadata (comments, IPTC, Adobe XMP, EXIF profiles, ICC profiles).
• Unsupported metadata is removed
• transfer metadata between image formats (destination format must support them)
• common tools: pan and zoom, rotate, flip
• basic image adjustments: brightness, contrast, gamma, invert
• visually reduce number of unique colors for PNG and GIF images in order to reduce filesize
• (two quantization methods are available: Xiaolin Wu and NeuQuant neural net)
• resize image by using well known resample filters (ex: Lanczos3, Catmull Rom, Bicubic, and others)
• out-of-the-box support for external PNG optimizers (optipng, pngout, etc)
• the compression and the results are comparable to those of commercial products, even higher.
• Adaptive logarithmic tone mapping algorithm (Drago) used for HDR images

RIOT Image Optimization Tool

Download

Optimize Your Images with RIOT is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

When trying to boost your internet speed you must first make sure that your internet connection is the problem and not your computer. In order to make sure that adware, spyware or malware or viruses are not affecting your PC or Mac you must first run a full antivirus scan and remove anything that the scan deems necessary. After checking for viruses and malware you should load an anti spyware program such as AdAware or Spybot. These programs will allow you clean out any remaining programs that are slowing down your internet connection. Also make sure that anytime you need faster speeds to dial down the amount of downloading you do, downloading big files while trying to surf the web can slow down your computer significantly.

Also clear the full history, cookies, and internet cache from all the browsers and computer. If you are able to back up your data you should also do a full restore on your computer because many spyware and viruses often avoid security measures. The only way to truly make sure your computer is clean is to completely reset it.

After this you must unplug and reset both your modem and router if you use one. This will clear the memory on the devices and give them time to restart, generally if it is a modem or router issue resetting both will clear up the problem. If your router is defective return it and purchase a working model. Once you have done this check that all connection in and around the area where your computers router or modem is plugged in are firmly secured and not hanging or loose.

The third step to boosting your internet speed is finding out what that speed is. This is the basis for how you will figure out what speeds you are happy with and which are just too slow. You can check your download speed on a number of websites, many internet service providers offer a counter on their home page or you can simply search Google or any other search engine for an internet speed test and you will be able to find a decent tool to gauge your download and upload speeds. This will also allow you to do an effective comparison of Internet service providers.

Once you find out how fast your connection is, contact other service providers in the area to find out what their download and upload rates are. T1 to T3 lines are generally the fastest you can obtain in a residential area, and even then they are incredibly expensive. Cable and DSL are generally the next fastest and their speed in your area can be determined by a number of factors. Cable is better when less people are using it, so if you live in a neighbourhood or house with a small amount of people you might want to consider cable. For DSL the farther away you are from the signal relay station the weaker your signal is. DSL however has no issues with how many people use it at a time.

After your comparison of internet service providers choose the one that is right for your area and your individual internet needs and finally boost the speed of your internet connection.

Boosting Your Internet Connection Speed is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

I had been hearing about Mint for a few months before I finally found out that my bank was signed up with them. But being that I still wasn’t sure of what they were, it wasn’t until one of the tellers I was friendly with took the time to convince me one day that I should check it out. She said that she used them all the time to help reduce her spending and control her budget. I was intrigued, mainly because the bank itself had those kind of services. If she was really endorsing another service other than the one she worked for, it must be at least decent, right?

It was only hours later when I registered, and I have to say that I am seeing major results. Because I have two main bank accounts in addition to my credit card accounts, there is a lot to keep up with. Other people have even more, with loans and mortgages and investments…it can make anyone’s head spin, and a single online banking account won’t show it all.

Mint works by pulling all of those accounts together and listening it on one single website. It gives you the complete picture, and makes it easier to see what it is you have and don’t have. Using that blueprint you can make changes where necessary, which is very helpful. I have already saved a ton of money by keeping from overextending myself.

You can also reign in your spending and keep a tighter budget using Mint. Just follow these helpful hints.

Make or Edit Categories

I was kind of shocked when I first added all of my accounts. I thought it would show me their current state and it did. But it also showed the last yearof activity, which was an awful lot of information for my PayPal and bank accounts. Add to that two credit cards, a large loan for a car and an additional savings account, and I was practically swimming in data.

Luckily, most of it is properly categorized. It will break them down into smaller genres, such as Shopping, Utilities, Mortgage, ect. While this is handy, sometimes things aren’t placed properly or it isn’t exactly how you would want it. Luckily that problem has an easy fix, and it doesn’t take long at all to change those already made or just create your own.

Here is what you have to do:

• Go to your main account and to Transactions at the top, then select the one you want to change.
• Next, select the appropriate category for that transaction and see if there is a subcategory. From there you can either leave it under the same main category or add a sub section. For example, if you were in Shopping you could create one for Clothing in that section. Or you could change the initial title.
• From there, go to Edit Details. This will allow you to change the rules of the category, so you can decide what is sent there. You can also add tags and notes in order to further specify what should be placed there in the future.
• Finally, go to the dialogue box and  select “Always remain (Insert Category) as (Chosen Name) and (Chosen Subcategory). From then on, all transactions of that type will be renamed per those specifications, as well all existing activities that meet the requirements. So you don’t have to go through and tag and change things yourself.

Another good idea is to take some time to set up rules for anything that has been uncategorized. Inevitably, there are some transactions which wont be able to be set into their proper place. You can use the steps above to take care of those as well.

The best part of having everything in their proper genre is that you can get a gross amount of any category, subcategory or particular store. Which will let you see exactly how much you are spending, which might just come as a shock to you. I, for one, saw that I was spending almost $300 a month on eating out, including my husband’s lunches…shocking!

Set Up Budgets

We all have to follow by a budget to make sure bills are paid on time to the places we need them to be, and that we have enough to cover everything. Getting on top of it can be difficult, but Mint makes it easier by giving a complete view of your financial situation. That includes any overspending so you can see what you have to cut out to be more fiscally healthy.

There are several default budgets that you can use that will be set to your available income each month. However, you can customize your own as well. Just click on Planning in your main account and select what budget you want to edit. Or else click on Create Budget to start from scratch.

If you are using a tablet budget you can just change the amounts and details to fit your lifestyle. Start by changing the amounts with the triangles beside each selection to go higher or lower. For more advanced options, click on Edit Details and put in whatever you need. Mint will do the rest by automatically updating everything to fit those specifications.

Use Email Alerts

Usually a site will have very specific email alerts that may or may not be helpful. With Mint, you can create your own to tell you when your funds are low, when you have a bill coming up, when you become overdrawn, when a deposit is made and more. Even for unusual activity that can directly alert you to fraud.

Get The App

Want to be mobile? If you have an iPhone you can download the app and take it on the go. You can add tags, check and log transactions and make account changes from your phone. This is handy if you want to keep track of your spending while you are out, specially for a night on the town or when shopping.

Mint is a great site that can really help you to balance your finances in a more easy and simple way. It is free, simple to use and available now in its full version after a long time stuck in beta. So check it out.

HOW TO: Use Mint to Manage Your Spending Habits is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Google Adsense is probably the most popular ad network for bloggers.  Famous bloggers like Darren Rowse make thousands of dollars each month from adsense, and many bloggers get some sort of cheque through the post.

Everton from Connected Internet has just shared a tip on increasing adsense revenues using Doubleclick For Publishers (DFP) that I’ve never seen before:

In summary, serving ads via DFP:

• Increases the earnings of existing adsense units
• Makes it viable to run adsense ads in positions that previously did not make financial sense like headers, sidebars and below posts

 

For any blogger or website owner using Google Adsense, this is essential reading.

More: Increase Adsense Revenues

How To Increase Google Adsense Revenues is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

The success of smartphones can be easily connected to the consumer’s desire to spend some quality time even when he has just a few free minutes. When you are stuck in traffic or take the subway to the office, there are enough dull moments when you wish you would have a method to kill time.

It’s not like you can turn your laptop on and play some video games or read a book, because the environment is less than favorable for such activities. On the other hand, the smartphone is already in your pocket and the few applications installed on it can light up your day.

To extract the most from it, you can not rely solely on the few games installed by default and accessing the Android Market will open a whole new world of opportunities. This being said, most of the apps available for download will not cost you a dime and they range from games and video players to picture viewers and applications that enable you to listen a large variety of online radio stations.

TuneIn Radio Pro

Does your Android phone have an FM Radio? This option seems to be left out from most mobile phones these days, as it will just make the phone more expensive without any real benefit. How so? An avid radio fan may claim. Well even with the smallest data traffic caps offered by most mobile network operators, one can still listen to plenty online radios, as audio data over 3G doesn’t use that much of your monthly quota. Still, some may claim it’s hard to find an online radio of their liking fast, or that they just prefer the local stations for the news and things like that.

This is where TuneIn Radio Pro steps in. It doesn’t only offer all of your local radios based on the area you are currently in, but almost all the local radio stations in the entire world, grouped and sorted on areas, countries, cities, and regions. Your current region is of course favored in the menus.

TuneIn also offers customized presets, an online profile, with favorites and top listened stations, and even the ability to record everything you hear, so it can be listened later. So tune in today.

TubeMate

As the name suggest, this is one of those little apps that you can use do download pretty much anything found on YouTube. TubeMate not only offers the option to download videos from YouTube at various format to be locally played from your mobile phone later, but also it can convert them to mp3 for audio only playback. The downloaded files list can be sorted and tapping on one file shows options to play as audio or video with any of your installed apps.

TubeMate also has playlists and a lot of options accessible via the Preferences menu, offering the ability to tweak every little setting.

QuickPick

QuickPick is to date the best picture viewer application I could find for the Android operating system. Not only it is fast and uses less resources than any other app, putting the stock gallery app on the Android to shame, but it has various thumbs and list views to please everyone.

Multiple file operations can be applied directly from the app, you can use it to share pictures via internet, bluetooth and any other service: Facebook, Gmail, Picasa, etc.

Ever had one of those problems where game or random app pictures would just show up in your gallery mixed with your regular photos? No more, as QuickPic can exclude folders from indexing, and anything under them will not appear anymore.

In addition, it also offers a slideshow option, with a timer setting and everything related.

QuickPic can also include videos, you can change the background on which pictures are shown, and all files can also be sorted by path, by date or by name.

Hidden files can also be protected with a password, offering that selective picture showing that gallery doesn’t have.

Lastly, QuickPick can automatically or manually switch screen orientation depending on the picture’s format, and can also control brightness independent of the rest of the phone.And of course, QuickPickwon’t cost you a penny.

Three Cool Android Applications is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

The Windows Start Menu is a good place to pin all those programs that you use quickly, but it can quickly get filled up if you’re a heavy user.

One way to create more space is to pin folders to the Windows Start Menu, so that you can group your programs into sensible groups.

Out of the box Windows doesn’t have this functionality, but it’s easy to add in just two clicks.

This tweak works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7; it won’t work if you are using the classic start menu.

To add the tweak manually:

1. Click Start, Run and type regedit.exe
2. Navigate to : HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Folder \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers
3. Create a new key : {a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8} with no value
4. To disable, go back and delete this key

If you don’t want to mess around with registry entries, just download the file below.  Once unzipped, click on pinfolder.reg to install the tweak and click yes twice.  To uninstall, click on undo.reg.

Once you’ve added the tweak, find the folder you want to pin and hold down the Shift key and then right-click on the folder.  To create your own custom folders, go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs and create your new folder which will then appear in your Start Menu.

To download the reg tweak, click here.

How To Pin Folders To Windows Start Menu is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

How many times have you sent a webpage to print, and you end up with 6 A4 pages when you really only wanted one section?  If this applies to you, then The Printliminator is for you.

This quick bookmarketlet is installed in a second and The Printliminator tool pops up and allows you to quickly and easily remove the elements on the webpage that you don’t want to print, just by clicking on them.  If you make a mistake just click on the ‘Undo last action’ button.   It couldn’t be simpler as the video of The Printliminator below shows:  

More: The Printliminator

Improve Webpage Printing With The Printliminator is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

When Gmail launched in 2004 it offered at the time a whopping 1GB of storage, which dwarfed the few megabytes of storage that other webmail services offered at the time.  Since then google have been continuously increasing the amount of storage available within Gmail, with my account currently offering a 7.5GB quota.

However, for some heavy users this still isn’t enough email storage.  Or, you may be like myself where I like to keep all emails on your smartphone and you might not have enough storage for GBs of emails.  Unfortunately Gmail doesn’t have any tools to sort emails by size, but this is where the Find Big Mail service comes in.

Find Big Mail is a free service that will very quickly add additional labels to Gmail showing your biggest emails.  Once the analysis is completed, making space within your mailbox is as simple as clicking on the various labels and deleting the emails you no longer need.

If you are worried about privacy, Find Big Mail only obtains temporary access to your Gmail account in order to perform the analysis.  A small drawback of this of course is that the emails contained within the labels aren’t dynamically updated, so to get updated results you have to return the Find Big Mail Website.

More: Find Big Mail

Find Big Email In Your Gmail Account is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Those of you who rely on your Windows clock to inform you of meetings, other appointments or maybe to schedule tv recordings in media center have probably realised that it’s not very accurate, typically incorrect by a few minutes.  This might not sound like much, but if this means missing the beginning or end of your recorded tv programmes it can be very annoying.

The reason this occurs is because the default time server Windows uses to synchronize the time is not accurate.  Fixing this is easy through replacing the default time server with an alternative time server.  There are dozens available, but I find pool.ntp.org the most reliable and accurate.  To change your Windows Clock to synschronize with pool.ntp.org:

• Right click your clock on the taskbar and click on Adjust date/time
• Click on the internet time tab and then the Change settings button
• In the server field remove the default entry and enter pool.ntp.org
• Hit Update now and you should get a confirmation saying that Windows has updated the time
• Click Ok twice

Make Windows Clock More Accurate is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

As Internet providers offer less expensive services and reliable computing systems have become widely available, consumers are choosing to do more of their shopping online. By shipping online, customers can avoid long lines, unavailable products, and high prices by using Internet for comparative shopping capabilities, while enjoying the convenience of the service. The ability to find deals can save consumers hundreds of dollars, and the same tools for finding deals can be used by those who are merely researching for school, work or business, as well.

Researching is a necessary skill to navigate the many possibilities of the Internet. Here are some resources for researching products, services, and general information online.

Wikipedia

This site is a great place to start for initial information and search leads. Since the web site is user generate content, there is bound to be some inaccuracies, but this should be fine since this is only a jumping off point for research. Within your search check the references and related sources, which may lead you to more relevant information. The related sources usually include outside links, which can lead to more reliable research information.

Search Engines

These resources can be a great place for many research options at once. The options are ranked by most relevant source associated with the keyword searched. The perk of search engines is that most now offer a shopping tab, which lists along with the relevant, ranked sources. For example, electronic cigarettes can be used as the keyword, and any site with these words separately or together will be listed in the ranked web sites. The shopping tab will also list the different places that sell them and list the price from low to high. This tool is especially helpful for shoppers.

Multimedia

Web sites that combine many forms of media, such as Youtube or Vimeo, can be very helpful for different types of researchers. Content with explanation as well as videos can be useful for finding out how something works, demonstrations of tasks, or exploration of culture. Make sure to verify any information, since most of these sites are user generated.

There are many resources available online to help anyone find the item or content they need, and most of these resources are free, which is especially useful for extensive research. There are literally thousands of web pages, so a researcher should always look at a few other sources to compare their research. Use specific keywords to make the most of the vast information on the web..

How to Find Anything Online is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Boosting your rankings with the search engines does not depend soley on links you’ve dropped on other pages and the niche language used, but also on social media.

Twitter—and maybe even Facebook—influence those rankings. To get on board with the latest SEO trend, it’s time to incorporate geolocation Tweets into your strategy.

Google and Bing have recently confirmed that they both use Twitter as a measure to rank pages in search results. Although it’s unclear how heavily the search engine leviathans weigh Tweets, it’s still worthwhile to utilize a free social network to bolster your rankings. After all, there may be hundreds of factors that determine rankings, so it’s up to you to employ every SEO strategy under the sun.

Tweeting your location is optional, and gives you flexibility on how specific you’d like to be. You have the option of including the town, neighborhood or exact point (coordinates) from where you Tweeted. However, such specificity will not help your rankings as it will not develop any consistency of location.

Therefore, it’s probably most strategic to set your Twitter location as fixed to one city. There has yet to be a major study to confirm how the search engines use geolocation Tweets for rankings, but a mini study at SharkSEO in January found some conclusive results.

It seemed that Google recognized Tweets that had pages specific to a country, and SharkSEO’s study the two countries were the U.S. and the United Kingdom. SharkSEO hypothesized that sites popular in a region or country did not get a boost in global rankings, only in rankings exclusive to U.K. for example.

To gainfully capitalize on geolocated Tweets, many companies large and small will hire an internet marketing consultant. For a more “DIY” solution, this writer found both SEOBook.com and SEOmoz helpful.

Doing it yourself (at least the actual task of Tweeting) isn’t difficult, it’s simply a matter of Tweeting links to your pages and including your location. But analyzing your rankings as a result of your geolocated Tweets may be more difficult and require expertise. Either way, the energy and money is well spent if Google places you in those much-coveted high rankings.

How To Boost Search Engine Rankings is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

For those looking for a merely cost-effective route to build a website, you may be disappointed by the options and results, which could end up doing harm to the overall success of your business in the long run. Sites, such GoDaddy, allow you to cheaply and quickly display your content, but hiring a professional to create a visually appealing site can presents chances to connect with potential clients and business contacts. Even if you’re working on a budget, you should factor in some key components in order to build a better web site that will engage its viewers.

Some of the characteristics that make a great website include:

• Clearly Identifiable Goals
• Easy to Navigate
• Visually Attractive, but Not Graphically Overwhelming
• Informative, Consistently Updated Content

First, consider who your audience is, and create content based around that simple concept. If you hope to provide services for customers, you should understand that there’s a lot of competition online. You will want your site to look credible and professional, as people become increasingly familiar with the Internet and inundated with content on a daily basis. You should want to stand out, not blend in. If your presentation looks homemade, users aren’t going to see you as an authority, and you could end up driving away potential clients and customers. Presentation is the key and the more professional your website looks and feels the more likely consumers are going to view you as an authority.

You may have a website that is organic and seamless that presents information to users in a thoughtful and coherent way but you’re still not generating the kind of profits or traffic that you would like. Introducing good search engine optimization (SEO) tools into your website is the best way to quickly make strides towards improving the success of your business. There are many companies you can hire that will offer their advice, show what’s working with your website, and how you can improve it. SEO will also increase your online presence, and search engine ranking, while balancing any negative feedback that your company has received in the past. It’s a multi-lateral approach to make a business stronger and more effective.

If you hope to include a multi-media approach to supplement the additional features on your website, you may want to consider professional advice or assistance. A multi-media approach is always good for a web sites overall appearance. Including video, audio, and other web content is a great way to engage clients and potential customers and make your services stand out but you’ll want to combine all of these elements in a way that seems fluid and seamless. A web site, can at times, seem thrown together with video that doesn’t run smooth and audio that doesn’t work. This will definitely end up hurting your efficacy. Use video management software and other devices that will make your website’s presentation coherent and seamless.

Whether you’re building a website or simply looking to improve upon your existing content, look at some of these approaches that will go a long way towards establishing your site as a major competitor in the online market. Think of your website as the face of your business, and give your face the best presentation so the business can be relevant in a technological culture.

Building a Better Website as a Part of Your Marketing Plan is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

In the world of networks there are two camps: wired and wireless. Both can allow several computers to engage the internet and each other at once, but the former tends to guarantee speed and security and the latter improves ease and maneuverability. But besides these simplistic differentials there are a few other factors that come into play when deciding which to build your home network on:

The space in question is probably the biggest factor, if only because you aren’t going to move or alter your house to accommodate the network you chose after the fact. Spaces with many rooms spread over a large area might make a wireless option sound ideal, but walls inhibit most wireless signals and the more walls separating the computer from the router, the harder it will be to get a worthy connection, especially beyond 100 feet, which is the standard range of most wireless signals. An environment such as this invites a wireless investment only if laptops are what are primarily being used and the user is able to move around for a better signal. Otherwise a range extender will need to be purchased.

Wired networks built with durable Ethernet cables and a powerful Wired Routers will do wonders for those who need consistently strong connections to multiple computers throughout the home and don’t want to worry about information safety. When your network is wired, security is less a concern because you aren’t putting your network into the air and exposing it to potential interloping use, making passwords and firewalls less a concern.

But the cost is the accumulation of wiring throughout the home. While most houses being built today come ready-made for wiring up a network, the thought of a floor littered with blue rubber might deter you from choosing a wired network if security and fast speed aren’t your biggest concerns.

Once you’ve decided though, installation and configuration is almost identical for both options. One is in no way harder than the other, with the effort for both being the same as putting together a new sound system in your living room. While you may spend most of your time rigging cable if you go with wired, the same amount of time would be spent creating passwords and getting all the computers to recognize each other if you decided on wireless. Either way the effort is something that can definitely be achieved in an afternoon.

If you’re still undecided think about it this way: how do you envision the Internet? Do you see something like a massive underground spring, waiting to be tapped? Or do you instead see an arena in the air, where your job is to try and find a seat? Finding your philosophy regarding this issue may make sorting out your network a little easier.

Home Network Debate: To Be Wired or Unwired is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

I’ve been trying to put the dissapointing spurs result behind me, so that I can get behind my second team Man Utd tonight, who are playing Chelsea in the quarter finals of the Champions League.

Watching tonight’s champions league match live on your PC is easy if you read my guide to watching Champions League Football Free online.

The guide can also be used to setup Sopcast watch matches from other tournaments, even those that are not being broadcast live in your country.  This includes tonight’s other game featuring Barcelona V Shakhtar Donetsk.

I think Man Utd will come away with a draw at Chelsea.  Whatever happens, at least we will have one English side featuring in the Champions League semi finals.  Hopefully Barcelona will meet Real Madrid in the finals, to increase the chances of an English finalist.

Watch Chelsea V Man Utd Champions League Match Online Free is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

As a Spurs fan I never thought game’s like tonight’s Real Madrid V Tottenham Champions League quarter final match would happen in my lifetime!  Watching tonight’s champions league match live on your PC is easy if you read my guide to watching Champions League Football Free online.

The guide can also be used to setup Sopcast watch matches from other tournaments, even those that are not being broadcast live in your country.  This includes tonight’s other game featuring Inter Milan V Schalke 04, and tomorrow’s games:

• Barcelona V Shakhtar Donetsk
• Chelsea V Man Utd

Let’s hope that Spurs bring home at least a draw, so that they have a chance of going through after the second leg at home.  If Gareth Bale is playing then hopefully Spurs will have a chance.

Watch Real Madrid V Tottenham Champions League Match Online Free is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

• Firefox 3.6.15 Released
• Windows 8 Screenshots Leak, Show New Features
• Windows 8 Screenshots Leak New Features
• Ask Toolbar Removal, How To Uninstall
• Win A Ghacks T-Shirt On Facebook
• Web Platform Installer, Install Free Microsoft Software
• sWeather, Local Weather App For Windows
• Windows From The Beginning To Now
• Ebay Negs Summarizes Ebay Negative Feedback [Firefox]
• Fix Your iTunes Library With Tune Up

Posts From Our Partner Sites March 4, 2011 is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

I have a very connected home, with each of my HDTVs connected to a Windows 7 Media Center, with all of my music, photos and videos stored on server machine that also acts as a TV tuner farm.   I’ve spent many man hours over the last couple of years configuring my media centers to get the best drivers, codecs, 1080p performance, flac support, blu-ray performance etc, but until this week I’d never really touched the TV display controls on my displays.

This was partly because of laziness, but mainly because I have to admit I didn’t know how to get the best picture possible out of my HDTV displays.  Whilst reading one of my favourite sites, Missing Remote, I spotted an old post which gave simple instructions on how to calibrate the settings within your HDTV e.g. brightness, sharpness, contrast, colour balance etc to get the best possible picture.

Optimizing each of my displays took me around 5 minutes using the guide and a few test patterns on disk, and the improvement in picture quality was amazing.  Even my wife who at times finds it hard to distinguish between SD and HD quality, immediately saw the difference on our main display.

To learn how to get the best possible picture from your HDTV, click here.

How To Get The Best Picture On Your HDTV is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Do you fancy receiving gadgets, amazon vouchers and more for free?  If your answer to this is yes, then signup now for free with IDG TechPanel where you’ll be invited to complete some interesting and rewarding surveys.  In return for completing the surveys you can choose from a wide variety of rewards such as electronic gift cards, virtual Visa cards and more!

IDG are one of the world’s leading technology media, events and research companies, so this is not another weak attempt to get your email address for spamming purposes.

Join the IDG Tech Panel

Join The IDG Tech Panel And Get Free Gadgets & Amazon Vouchers is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Software that plugs the gaps in our digital music libraries has been around for years and in this regard Tune Up Digital Music Manager is nothing different, but like all digital music maintenance software it needs to set itself apart from the competition, and this it does rather well with a series of very useful additions.

The software plugs into either Windows Media Player or iTunes on your PC and appears as a side-panel in the software.  You need to create an account with the software, all will become clear why in a bit, and you’re in business.  It really is a very simple piece of software to set up.

In fact I only experienced one glitch when the Tune Up software failed to appear next to Windows Media Player on my PC.  A quick visit to the WMP options though revealed that the Tune Up plug-in had been deactivated.  A simple case of ticking a box and pressing the apply button rectified the situation, and the next time I started WMP, there is was.

The basic tools of finding missing information and album art from your music collection work well.  You simply right-click on a track or album and send it to Tune Up.  Just a few seconds later and you get back information that I found to be very accurate and up to date.  It does this by digitally listening to your music collection and comparing the tracks to details in online databases.

One of the nicest features I found in this was the album art chooser.  This isn’t something I’d come across in media management software before as it presented several different album art choices, sometimes the same art in different resolutions, sometimes different album art from around the world.

So far as the media information tools work then Tune Up does exactly what its supposed to, and does so very quickly.

This software still needs to set itself apart from the competition though, especially as the free version will only allow you to clean up 100 tracks and add 50 pieces of missing album art.

How it does this is its party trick, and I was really quite impressed by what it was able to do and how quickly it was able to do it.

Tuniverse is Tune Up’s social integration and, while it allows you to share you playlists with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and more, it can also provide you with a wealth of information about the artist(s) you’re listening to.

This information includes videos, biographies, discographies including live previews of tracks, Album recommendations, artist news and band merchandise.  The system automatically integrates with popular websites including Amazon, YouTube and eBay rather than rely on its own store that perhaps you might be wary of.

This is a nice move, while some media players such as Microsoft’s Zune player offer some of this functionality, Tune Up brings it all together in a friendly panel with collapsible sections.

If you’re still not impressed by the software then the last feature I found particularly impressive, and here’s where your Tune Up account comes into play.

Simply by signing up with the service and providing a small amount of information as simple as your home town, the software can scan your entire music collection and in just a few short seconds get you details on upcoming gigs and concerts for all the artists you like the most.

I’ve found even knowing when artists are playing near me to be a nightmare and the number of times I’ve missed a concert or three because I took my eye off the ball are too numerous to count.

Tune Up makes this easy and simple.  All you need to do is press one button, yep, you heard me right, one button and within a few seconds all the relevant information about concerts and gigs is provided for you right in your media player.

I was very cautious when I first heard about this software that it’s claim that…

• TuneUp digitally “listens” to your music to identify it
• No more “Track 01″! No more “Unknown Artist”!

…would just make it like any other piece of media management software in that you’d use it once, perhaps twice and then forget about it.  This simply wouldn’t justify the cost of $19.95 for a year or $29.95 for a lifetime’s licence.

I genuinely believe though that the cost of a lifetime subscription is easily outweighed, not just by the integration with band news, new music recommendations and merchandising suggestions, but the one click concert feature is almost enough to justify the cost of the software on its own.

If you’re a serious music fan and want to find out more about your favourite artists, a casual listener who likes to explore new artists based on what you already like or a concert goer, there’s definitely something in Tune Up for you.  Recommended!

Tune Up Digital Music Manager is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

More and more users are using a dedicated PC to watch and record television, or to view photos and videos on a large monitor or LCD/plasma TV.  One of the major headaches for HTPC users is getting their PCs to go to sleep automatically when not in use, or getting it to wake up automatically when another PC needs access to shared files or applications i.e. when the first PC is acting as a ‘server’.

A new free application called Waka-htpc has been released, which as of writing has only been downloaded 25 times but will become very popular with HTPC users once word of it gets out.  In fact around a dozen of the downloads were done by me for my PCs and the author actually added the ‘Active Application’ (see later) functionality at my request!  Waka is short for ‘Wake Up and Keep Alive’, and the application ensures that your PC can be woken remotely when you want it to by other PCs, and put to sleep only when you want it to.

Two applications are available for download – Waka Server and Waka Client.  Waka Server is installed on the PC that contains the files or applications that you want to share, and Waka Client is installed on any PC you want to access those files.  Configuring Waka Client is easy – just enter the host name of your ‘server’ pc (found in control panel) and it’s MAC address.  If you want to be able to wake your server over the internet i.e. if your not on your home network then this is also possible by using your IP address or even better a dynamic dns service if like most people you don’t have a static IP address.

Once installed, as soon as a PC running the Waka Client software wakes up or is turned on, then if the PC running the Waka Server isn’t on, then the Client PC sends a Wake-On-Lan (WOL) command over your home network telling the Server PC to wake up. The Waka Server software then ensures that the ‘Server’ PC doesn’t go to sleep as long as any Client PCs are on, overriding any local power saving settings.

Once all the Client PCs are off, then the Server PC can be managed in one of two modes, ‘Passive Suspend’ or ‘Active Suspend’. Passive Suspend hands over the power management of the Server PC to windows, and your PC will follow any any power management rules such as turning off your PC automatically after 15 minutes of activity.

Active Suspend is the more interesting of the two options and where Waka really shows its strengths and usefulness. Users are able to specify how long a PC stays on before it suspends, with options to reset this timer if there is any user input (mouse, keyboard or remote) or to ignore the timer if the display is in use e.g. watching a film or video.

In Active Suspend mode, Waka also allows users to set active applications and holding applications.  Entering programs into the active applications section, tells Waka not to put the PC to sleep if that application is running.  For instance in the screengrab of my Server settings, you can see that I run AirVideo to stream videos and movies, and DVBlink2 to stream live TV to my iPad and iPhone from my main media center which acts as my Server as it has around 8TB of storage.  By adding these apps to my active applications, I can wake my server up while I’m on the road and watch a video or tv show, knowing that the server will go not go to sleep until I’ve finished.

Holding applications are a bit more complicated.  The developer explains these best:

In Windows 7 any application at any time can tell Windows that it is using the PC and that it should therefore not let it go to sleep. The list of applications currently requesting that the PC not go to sleep can be found by running a “powercfg -requests” command from an elevated command prompt. Sometimes application developers are overly zealous with how important they see their application and therefore stop your PC from going to sleep when you actually would like it to. Therefore the Waka Server allows you to choose which applications are allowed to stop the PC from going to sleep, you do this by adding them to the list of “Holding applications”.

An obvious holding application to add is Windows Media Center, which stops PCs going to sleep if they are recording a TV Show, to ensure that Waka respects this request and doesn’t override it.

Overall a great application which deserves more than 25 downloads, so check it out now!

More:  waka HTPC

Waka – Control When Your PC Goes To Sleep And Wakes Up is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Get The Best Broadband Deal Down Under is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Are you confused by the number of cell phones available and the various tariffs? Don’t know what features are essential and which aren’t?  Then maybe you should check out Cell Phone Expert, designed to make choosing your next cell phone easier and cheaper. CellPhone Expert will cut thought al the jargon that phone manufacturers and networks try to bamboozle you with, and cut down to the essentials of what you need in a phone and a tariff.  This is only possible because CellPhone Expert are independent and are thus able to provide unbiased overviews of hundreds of phones, allowing you to easily compare prices and tariffs.

For every Cell Phone that is available on the site, two links are provided to reviews and plans available for that phone.  The cell phone reviews are written in a nice user-friendly way, with the amount of jargon kept down to a minimum.  The pros and cons of each phone are listed, and each phone is give an overall star rating out of 5.  To add further credibility to the review section, site users are able to submit their own reviews and and star ratings.

To further aid finding the right phone, a number of search options are provided e.g. Cell Phones can be sorted by the most popular or the highest rated.  Or, or only phones that have required features such as WiFi, TouchScreen, Bluetooth etc can be listed.

Once you’ve selected the right phone for you, then finding the right plan is a breeze.  Phone deals from Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wirelss, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Cricket and other retailers like Wirefly are all compared.  CellPhone Expert continuously update the deals available to ensure only available deals are presented.

So, do you fancy a new phone? Then head on over to Cell Phone Expert.

http://www.cellphone-expert.com/cell-phone-reviews/

Find The Best Cell Phone Deal With Cell Phone Expert is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

If you still boot your PC up everyday, rather than putting it to sleep, or if your PC just takes forever to boot then Soluto is probably for you.  What Soluto does is provide all users with a safe and simple way to reduce their boot time, by providing ultra user-friendly information about the applications that load when your PC starts.

Many users are totally unaware of how many applications load in the background when their PC stats, and each and every one of these applications not only take time to load into memory, but they will drawn system resources.  Soluto is a must have utility, that helps all users remove these programs by tracking and identifying them when your PC boots, and then providing clear and concise information on each app, allowing users to quickly pause (load not in boot, but at your command), delay (load not in boot, but later when your PC is idle) or let it load at boot.

To make it easier for users to decide what changes to make, Soluto even groups the apps into categories – No Brainers, Potentially removable and Required.  After running Soluto, I was able to reduce my boot from 50 seconds to around 35 seconds by removing or delaying 19 apps:

Installing Soluto is easy and requires no user intervention.  To give this great free software a try, click here.

Source: Windows 7 News & Tips

Improve Boot Times With Soluto is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Windows 7 Media Center is probably the best all-round media center available, beating other solutions hands down and with a few easy tweaks it can be made even better.   One of the limitations of W7MC is that the TV EPG only displays details for 7 channels at a time – scandalous for users like myself with 50″+ plasma TVs.

With a few quick tweaks it is possible to increase the number of channels displayed to 10:

To Increase the number of channels in Windows 7 Media Center’s EPG:

1. Close Windows Media Center
2. Install the Take Ownership registry file
3. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\ehome and find Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll,  Right-click on the file and click ’Take Ownership’
4. Copy Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll to a temp directory and put this patch in the same directory
5. Run the patch (you may need to take ownership of the Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll in the temp directory)
6. copy the new version of Microsoft.MediaCenter.Shell.dll created by the patch to C:\Windows\ehome

You now should have extra rows displaying in W7MC.

Source: Windows 7 News & Tips, hack7mc

Increase The Number of Rows In Windows 7 Media Center EPG is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Ever paused a football match or tv show in Windows Media Center and then returned to find it playing rather than still paused?  That’s because by default Windows Media Center only pauses live TV for 30 mins.  This restriction probably made sense in the good old days of Windows XP Media Center, but now most media center users have GBs and TBs of storage to spare in their machines.

If you want to increase the size of the Windows Media Center Live TV buffer then there’s a great little app available called MCE Live TV Buffer Manager.   Just install the app and you can increase the size of the MCE Live TV Buffer in 15 minute increments all the way up to 120 mins.  The app works on all Windows Media Centers – W7MC, VMC etc

Download: MCE Live TV Buffer Manager

Increase Windows Media Center Live TV Buffer Size is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Twitter is awesome. I’m sure all other Twitter users like me would agree. Our online social network lets us keep friends and family constantly updated on every second of our day. We can also choose to follow the Tweets of our favorite celebrities and follow their activities the instant they Tweet about them. But while Twitter offers all these things in an easy to use interface, there’s no reason why developers cannot strive to make Twitter even more convenient for Tweetees.

Today we explore five of the best desktop Twitter applications that let you enjoy Twitter right from your desktop, without the need to open your web browser! Read on and find which of these Twitter clients is best for you.

1. Twhirl

Twhirl is a free Twitter desktop client. This small AIR based application compatible with Windows systems from 2000 to 7, packs a lot of features within. Use Twhirl to Tweet from your desktop, view your friend’s Tweets and the ones you’ve subscribed to, send and receive private messages, and automatically find Tweets with your username in them. You are notified of any updates making things a lot easier to handle. Furthermore Twhirl incorporates accounts of other popular websites such as Facebook and FriendFeed (amongst others). Twhirl includes a lot more which you can easily try out after installing this amazing Twitter client.

2. Seesmic

Seesmic is a great desktop Twitter client that also lets us use our Facebook account. We Twitter users can view aggregated Home, Replies, Private and Sent columns. We can also manage and post from multiple Twitter accounts, create unlimited columns for our saved searches and lists created from Twitter. With a brilliant user interface and amazingly cool look, most of Seesmic’s users consider this application to be much better than standalone Twitter. Have a look at what Seesmic has to offer and soon you will use Twitter only through this wonderful desktop Twitter client.

3. Snitter

Snitter has its own unique set of features. Some of the actions we can perform using this application is to easily view our friend’s Tweets and the ones we follow, view and filter friends and followers, use keyboard shortcuts with the application, and execute searches on Twitter. Snitter is a tiny tool which can be minimized to the tray and be used as a nifty extension to complement your Twitter usage.

4. Spaz

Spaz is a desktop Twitter and Identi.Ca and Laconi.Ca client. And AIR based application, it is crossplatform. For Twitter users the ability to shorten URLs (through accounts on Short.ie) is also added within Spaz. Then of course there are the features to read and post Tweets. Having multiple themes to choose from, Spaz will also be a worthy choice for a desktop Twitter client.

5. Twittastic

Twittastic will satisfy all Twitter users. It’s compact and has all the required features to properly enjoy Twitter. Apart from reading and sending Tweets and shortening URLs, we can also simply drag and drop images in this application to be uploaded to Twitpic and files to Drop.io. A cool and unique feature is to invert the text we type. Try out Twittastic for a fantastic Twitter experience.

5 Great Desktop Twitter Clients For Windows is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Sometimes time can be really slow. Minutes seem like hours and idleness becomes an intolerable botheration. When you find nothing occupying your time, head on over to the internet and take advantage of the countless tools built only to entertain you.

We have gathered a list of 10 of the most interesting websites you can spend your idle time on. Without you even noticing it, time will fly by and you would be left highly entertained. Read on.

1. XKCD

XKCD is a comic strip website which uploads a new strip about every three days. The comics aren’t for everyone’s tastes as they often involve science, math, and even metaphysics. For anybody who has even a little knowhow in these fields, the comics can prove to be quite funny. However not all comics are for “intellectuals;” some strips, as in the image above can be understood by everybody and provide an entertaining read. The number of strips on the site is countless and all can be browsed by the RANDOM button.

2. PlaySEGA

PlaySEGA is an amazing website which lets users play FLASH versions of SEGA games for absolutely free! Games are sorted in categories so you can easily find one that suits your tastes. You can also search for a particular game if you know its name. Although a lot of games can be played for free after a simple registration, the best games fall under the paid plan. Try out PlaySEGA and you’ll be hooked to the screen in no time. And be warned: switching over to the paid plan will become quite tempting.

3. SeeNOW

If you’re lookingfor a way to have fun with your friends’ photographs, pay a visit to the free website SeeNow. SeeNOW can blend any picture of a face you take into different scenarios causing hilarious results. When you upload a picture, the site automatically adjust the contours, brightness, and lighting of the result to achieve better results. Sometimes the results are amazing which makes the picture even funnier. SeeNOW will keep you occupied for a long time.

4. BitStrips

Reading the strips on XKCD might spark the thought of creating your own comic series. The hardest part about that is not coming up with funny ideas but perhaps drawing the characters. With the brilliantly user-friendly interface of BitStrips, comics can be easily created by choosing our characters and placing them in a timeline. We can add text into every frame, giving our comic the final touch. In no time, your funny thought would have materialized as a comic. If you’re not in the mood to create your own comic, then read from the numerous comic strips created by other users. Time will fly.

5. Gizmoz

If you are truly idle then you have the time to spice up your social networking experience in a very unique way. This unique way is Gizmoz. This website lets us create cartoon-like characters out of our photographs. Recently they have joined hands with DAZ3D and now we can even create 3D cartoon-like characters. Short videos can also be made in which our character says anything we want him/her to say. The character or the video can then be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever network you’re on. Gizmoz will let you spend your idle time doing something that will amuse your social networking contacts.

6. Cyclomaniacs

Contless FLASH games can be found on the internet but only a handful are as engaging and addictive as Cyclomaniacs.

With easy controls, various levels of different difficulty, and a good overall feel, Cyclomaniacs has all the ingredients for a good game. The objective is to race our bike and finish first. But it’s not exactly that simple. Along the way we need to gain “stunt points” by performing tricks in the air and making our biker do scary aerobic tricks. A game that will keep you hooked, Cyclomaniacs is worthy option to spend your idle time on.

7. Memoov

If you want more out of your idle time than creating comic strips, then promote to creating animations. You might think special computer programming and graphics knowledge is required to create an animation. But Memoov is one website which not only programming-illiterate users can enjoy but also ones who don’t know how to draw! Pick a character, customize him/her, place him/her in a scene, and choose its actions. You can even have your character speak different dialogs. Create an animation in your free time and share it on YouTube to share it with friends and family.

8. DoodleWall

When bored in class or attending an uninteresting meeting, we often find ourselves doodling on a piece of paper. With DoodleWall, you can do the same on your monitor! Create a username and then a wall, then start doodling. You can keep the private, public, or share it with selected friends. A simple tool, it can lead to a lot of interesting ideas if you put your creativity to it. See how you can have fun with this simple website by visiting it.

9. GoAnimate

A great alternative to Memoov is GoAnimate that provides users with a better interface (and better characters plus scenes plus sounds effects) to choose from. The timeline shown at the bottom of the page lets users easily organize their scenes and create better animations. Once a work is complete, it can be shared on the same site and the URL can be given out to other people. We can also view others’ created animations on the site and gather a lot of great ideas along with getting some quality entertainment.

10. Festisite’s Personalized Money

Ever wonder how you face would look like on a currency note? Well now you don’t have to hire a printing press to get that job done. All you do is head on over to Festisite’s Personalized Money Generator page, upload a picture which you want to appear on the note, and click on FINALIZE. Your custom currency note will be created in a jiffy. The array of different currencies and denominations is quite impressive. Upload a friend’s photo and share the results with him/her to get a good laugh.

Top 10 Sites To Occupy Your Idle Time is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Photoshop.com is a wonderful photo editing website. A product by Adobe, the site lets users upload photos and videos up to a total size of 2GB. Our media is not shrunk and stays on Photoshop in its original resolution. The site also provides us with various editing tool such as different effects and photo frames which enhance our pictures. Once we are done editing, we can share our media on numerous social media sites including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and Photobucket.

Now this great free-to-use site has released a great free-to-use application for iPhone. The Photoshop.com Mobile App for iPhone is a user-friendly tool for iPhone and iPod touch equipped with iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

With this iPhone application we can get access to our media store on our Photoshop account – this means adding another 2GB to our iPhone’s media storage. Moreover we can upload photos to our Photoshop account using our iPhone.

Using the editing tools which the application has to offer, we can perform quite a number of editing tasks. For instance if our hand shook while shooting a photograph, we can quickly straighten it up using the editing tools of the Photoshop application. Other editing features include cropping, rotating, and flipping photographs. Borders and photo frames can also be added.
We also apply a number of special effects to the pictures we open with the application.

With the feature named Soft Focus, we can give our pictures an extra glow. We can use the Sketch effect to give our images a more artistic touch. We can also change the colors of our pictures.

All the edits we make via this application are performed easily using our fingers on our Apple device’s touchscreen. Having quite a small size and providing a user-friendly interface for photo editing free-of-cost, Photoshop.com Mobile App for iPhone is one application I recommend to all iPhone/iPod touch users.

How to Edit Photos for Free on Your iPhone is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.

Imagine a program that helps you write your thesis, helps your son work on his science project, lets your daughter create comical animations, and lets your spouse create family videos and edit audio files.

Your first response would probably be “That’s too much to ask.” Fortunately however, the developers behind Creaza thought differently and made those tasks possible with their creation.

Creaza is free online tool that offers you an integrated, web-based toolbox for creative work. This creative work can be anything from working on a research project to making videos.

The tool is divided into four main categories which work seamlessly with one another.

Mindomo:

Mindomo is cool way to create mind-maps. While working on your project you should brainstorm before getting your hands dirty. Jot down all your ideas in a map-like diagram and then play around with the collected ideas to squeeze the best ones out.

Cartoonist:

The Cartoonist tool can be especially helpful if you’re creating something for children. Through cartoons you can make learning easy and fun. You can carry forward your mind-map ideas and base your cartoons on them.

You get 8 cartoon scenarios to choose from. Choosing any category will open up a panel where you can create your cartoons:

The panel is user-friendly and all tools are self-explanatory. You can create brilliant slides of cartoons which can not only help you while catering to an audience of children, but also help you with giving presentations. Cartoons can be used to deliver a serious message and sometimes the impact, even though delivered by animation, can be greater.

Movie Editor:

Speaking of presentations, you can take them to the next level by incorporating real videos into them. With Creaza you can create those videos with the help of Movie Editor. You get two options to choose from:

Choose an option to open the video creating panel which has a lot of great tools to make great videos:

Audio Editor:

The fourth tool Creaza has is equally impressive. The Audio Editor lets you mash up and edit different sound clips stored on the site. Like in other of its tools, you can insert your own media (audio, in this case) and build on it or edit it.

Using Creaza for free has a few limitations though: you cannot export it on your PC and the maximum storage size you get is 25MB. Apart from lifting these restrictions, going for the paid version gives you more themes to work with. Details can be found here.

Give Creaza a try and see for yourself that it can be the perfect tool to implement your creativity.

How To Create, Publish and Share Digital Stories is a post from One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? - Tips for your PC, Mobile, MP3 player, Software and more. Each day One Tip will be posted: Simple and quick to apply for all user levels.. Visit One Tip A Day - What Will You Learn Today? for more articles.