Modern gadgets like phones are very convenient. It is a mainstream gadget people use today from students to professionals. It is simply something we cannot live without today. These phones have become better and offer new features as time goes by wherein it evolves into something that provides more and more services and entertainment. From photos, videos, instant messaging and so on, phones are simply embedded in a modern man’s living. However, what would you do in an event of losing some precious data in your phone?

Phones are not problem-proof. There are many cases of losing data in a phone like missing photos or accidentally deleted files. Fortunately, there are many possible solutions in recovering deleted data in your phone. There are two possible ways in doing so.

 How To Recover Deleted Phone Data?

There two methods available in recovering deleted phone data is by using a third-party recovery software and the other by using your phone’s backup feature.

Using A Third-Party Program

In using the third-party recovery program, you must first turn off your phone to avoid it from synchronizing to your backup program if ever you use one. Synchronization will overwrite the data in your phone and will decrease the chances of recovering the lost data. Also, remember that third-party recovery tools would have a different set of instructions regarding usage. Hence, the usual procedure requires you to install the tool in a computer, plug your phone, scan and recover.

Using Your Phone’s Backup

The next solution is to use your phone’s backup as given by the operating system or manufacturer of the phone. Apple’s iPhones use iTunes for backup and synchronization. Androids use Google backup services as well as other backup apps and cloud storage options. Windows Mobile also have its own backup program that you can install in your computer. Blackberry phones have Blackberry Desktop Software, Motorola have MotoBackup and other phone brands would have its own backup tool as well. To use these backup tools, you need to plug-in your phone to the computer to scan your phone and recover missing data.

After recovering the lost data, it is highly recommended to save the files in your computer or Mac as well as back it up in virtual storage options like iTunes or cloud storage to avoid losing it again. Remember, it is better to backup your files frequently so that recovery will be simple and easy if ever your phone goes bad.

The first time I saw an Apple reveal video, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Steve Jobs shtick is a work of marketing theatric genius. The large-screen background, the adoring crowd, the understated ‘elegance’, the mock turtleneck, the blue jeans. It all had borrowed elements of a college lecture, a motivational speech, and old school preaching mashed into one.

All the while, you can hear a pin drop as the gathered Apple faithful lap it up drop by drop. I could have sworn Steve Jobs could trot on stage with a stick he found on the way to San Franciso and the whole crowd would go gaga over iStick. Seriously.

There seems to be a mental force field in operation during Apple’s product reveals that ward off healthy skepticism and a healthy sense of humor. I am almost tempted to say that this whole process of group thinking fanboys gathered into a sacred cloister marveling in awe at their master’s latest revelation is eerily similar to Apple’s famous 1984 ‘Big Brother’ ad where a gray mass of IBM cloneheads is herded, lock step, into an auditorium to see a grey and white image of their great leader spouting off propaganda.

They eat it all up until the truth of their brainwashing is destroyed by a female who runs in and throws a hammer at the screen. Sad to say, everything except the sledgehammer swinging, is in play whenever Apple holds a product reveal. Conformist thinking. Check. Compliant and docile crowd. Check. Applause at the right time. Check. Banal spouting of ‘revolutonary ideals.’ Check. Seriously.

It would be too easy to try and dismiss this observation as merely hate. Haters, after all, are going to hate. The problem is this isn’t hate but its opposite. A bemused amazement and appreciation of Steve Jobs’ marketing skills. Even from the dead, the man’s legacy continues to work its magic.

In a way, Apple’s product reveal is an extension of the long-running ‘we are an innovative world-changing company’ marketing tag line, Apple has been pimping since Day One. It’s not like it had a choice. During the late 70s many other companies were cranking out home computers. Apple needed a marketing angle and it found it in its LSD-popping, long-haired, ex-hippie co-founder Steve Jobs. Steve played the iconoclast card since day one, and it stuck to Apple to this day.

Was the company really that innovative? Actually, almost all its bedrock innovations were improvements of other company’s pioneering products. What was pioneering is to foster this cult-like devotion and subscription to ‘innovation’ and exhorting its fans to ‘think differently’. Indeed, this multi-billion dollar corporate behemoth made the whole ‘sticking it to the man’ ethic the marketing theme of the Macintosh in 1984-hence, the ‘Big brother’ video.

To this day, the whole ‘I am too cool’ or ‘I stand out’ ethic still rings out in Apple’s marketing messages. Quite ironic considering its products are everywhere and it is currently the world’s most valuable company. Maybe it’s time to move on from the cult marketing? It’s not much of an inner circle when almost everyone is in the circle, is it?

Open source enthusiasts can almost be every bit as annoying as Apple fan boys. Let’s do the quick attitude checklist, shall we? Considers every other option a bad choice? Check. Considers even buggy versions of open source software superior to or at least comparable to commercial software? Check. Thinks even forward thinking and socially responsible commercial software companies are parts of The Establishment? Check.

I like to rib open source fanboys a lot but, truth be told, they have a lot of good reasons for being so ecstatic about the benefits and wonders of open source software First of all, open source weighs in at a great price-it is free. Next, open source software can be tinkered with by any Tom, Dick, and Harry the world over. This means any hiccups the software might have will be at least diagnosed by several dozen doctors at any one time.

Moreover, since anyone has the legal right to dig deep into its guts and make changes or rip code and splice it to another piece of software, open source has fostered a creative explosion in many different software categories. Indeed, open source software has caught on so fast and so deeply that Microsoft itself originally treated the spread of open source as high tech’s version of cancer.

Regardless, despite the opposition of the convicted monopolists at Redmond, Washington, open source is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Despite the awesome advantages above, why hasn’t open source totally sunk their commercial counterparts. For example, why hasn’t Open Office killed off Microsoft Office? To take things several notches higher, why hasn’t GIMP finished off Photoshop? The truth is, commercial software will always possess certain key strategic advantages that open source software can’t touch. After all, commercial software has money and these funds can continue to power commercial software’s advantages. What are these advantages?

Constant development

I’m sure open source fans can point to the fact that certain open source software continuously crank out updates. This is misleading, if you look under the hood, many are beta releases with beta features and bug fixes. Commercial software, on the other hand, update with new tested features that answer many users’ feedback and needs. Such software exists to make money. That’s why it’s to developers’ advantage to crank out new features. Comparative open source titles can only play catch up.

Faster patching and Tech Support

Commercial software can’t play fast and loose with sub-standard releases. One too many shoddy releases and they can kiss their brand reputation good-bye. As a result, patches come quickly and vulnerabilities are patched up fast. Moreover, commercial software comes with tech support.

This goes a long way in detecting issues and gathering the customer feedback needed to produce a more stable and more professional product. In contrast, ‘tech support’ for open source software involves the software’s community. Good luck getting minor to middling issues resolved.

Professional job networking site LinkedIN has been a public company for quite some time and so far, it has avoided the fate of Facebook’s stock. While Facebook is the undisputed 800-pound gorilla of the social networking space, LinkedIN can boast of something Facebook wishes it had-a steady and growing revenue base.

Indeed, the uncertain nature of Facebook’s revenues and far from certain revenue outlook have resulted in Facebook stock selling way below its initial public offering price of $38. Facebook can learn a lot from LinkedIN in terms of using a massive database of personal information for job placement and job search purposes.

To be honest, it has been somewhat of a mystery why Facebook hasn’t jumped with both feet in the job search industry since it has a huge 1 billion user base and very finely-tuned personal data indexing technology. As anyone who has taken out a self-serve ad at Facebook knows, Facebook’s targeting technology is quite thorough and detailed. Why not put this to use when trying to match people up with jobs that suit them?

Well, Facebook has made some initial moves. It has opened a job search function but it’s not as robust as LinkedIN’s. I suspect that even Facebook does decide to eat LinkedIN’s lunch, it will have a tough time. I am not saying it is impossible or Facebook won’t eventually succeed, I am just saying it will have to make more adjustments than it’s done so far. Here are just some of the hurdles Facebook needs to overcome to dominate LinkedIN’s space.

Special Filtration and Self-Selection of Facebook members

For Facebook to even get into the human resources matching game, it has to do a better job filtering members for this feature. It has to ask more extensive questions and get more extensive information. Moreover, it has to arrange the data in such a way that it meets the needs of head hunters and personnel departments worldwide.

Most importantly, it needs to market itself as a jobs resource. This should attract more people who have the proper background so they can meet the recruitment needs of companies that already use LinkedIN.

Finally, it has to upgrade its privacy rules and mechanism to ensure that there is an effective way to make information known to employers while at the same time keeping information private to ‘friends’ and family.

Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft Corporation and turned it from an early producer of programming language modules for home computers into the world’s largest software company. He retired from day to day operations to focus on philanthropic activities and handed the reins of the Redmond Washington tech juggernaut to his college buddy and company founding member Steve Ballmer.

That was about a decade ago. Sadly, Ballmer’s turn at the helm of Microsoft has not only been lackluster, it has downright sucked. If you are a Microsoft stockholder, you might be saying WTF for the past ten years as the stock has tracked sideways while Apple, formerly Microsoft’s distant competitor, is now the world’s most valued public company.

What happened?  Steve Ballmer, that’s what! Listed below are three of Ballmer’s top screwups. No wonder this dude is facing lots of pressure to resign. I don’t blame Microsoft shareholders one bit. I’d be pretty teed off too if I was holding Microsoft shares.

Screwup #1: Missing out on the iPod

Let’s face it-MP3 players have been around for quite some time. File sharing and central cloud-based file sharing have been around for while as well. So why couldn’t Microsoft, with its huge sales army, its massive global brand, and oodles of money, swipe the iPod market from Apple soon after Steve Jobs debuted the iPod?

Microsoft could have easily taken the market by storm and left Apple crying like a little kid who got his candy taken by schoolyard bullies. But no. Microsoft had to go and launch Zune. They could have easily used the Windows platform as a software ‘hook’ for cheap and generic hardware ‘clients’ to take the steam out of iPod. Ballmer could also have offered music download libraries. It’s not like MSN doesn’t have a tech backbone for this. What a wasted opportunity at a relative softball pitch.

Screwup #2: Misjudging the iPhone

I can understand why Microsoft balked at entering the smartphone market after the iPhone. The iPhone was a huge gamble. After all, the iPhone at that time was merely a souped-up version of the iPod Touch. There were just too many question marks. You really have to give Steve Jobs credit for turning the Apple fanboy/cultist masses into product evangelists who totally revolutionized telephony.

What isn’t as easily forgivable is why Microsoft didn’t mobilize its forces when the iPhone dust settled and it became clear that it changed mobile phones forever. Microsoft, instead of watching this development like an eagle, then fumbled around until it got a deal with Nokia. Too little, too late?

Screwup #3: Letting iPad set the rules

It goes without saying that Ballmer and crew messed up when they didn’t match the iPad. The problem is, they didn’t have a coherent answer or strategy. They were left twiddling their thumbs at the gate while Apple changed consumer tastes and expectations. See, that’s the real advantage Apple has-while Samsung, HP, and other companies can come up with sleek tablets, Apple is able to block them off in the minds of consumers because of its branding advantage.

This is the firewall that is pretty much dooming Microsoft’s Lumia tie up with Nokia. It let Apple set the rules, and now it’s playing catch up in a game it didn’t set. Bad move.

If you were going to assess how Apple is doing under its new head honcho Tim Cook, you would have to compare him with Steve Jobs. Sorry to break it to you, Timmyboy, but it had to be done. That’s like comparing Leonardo Da Vinci to the guy who prepares his canvases for him and manages his studio.

The simple truth is, Steve Jobs set a certain standard for Apple and that’s the standard Apple will be known by. Either it can continue to reach it and raise the bar ever higher or it can look back fondly at the heights it reached while it slumps down to hibernate until its next prophet makes an appearance, if ever.

You might find this idea a bit whimsical but it’s not like Apple has set new standards after Steve has moved on to the Great Beyond. The iPad mini? More like a marketing move than a grab at dictating future trends. The iPhone 5? Pardon me for sleeping through the announcement. Let me spell it out for you-Tim Cook is a technocrat and industrialist. He is not a visionary. You can read that sentence again until it sinks in. This is a serious problem for Apple.

Cognitive Dissonance

Apple’s whole shtick is that it ‘thinks differently.’ Remember the awesome ad campaign featuring Einstein, Martha Graham, Gandhi, and other visionaries? That’s Apple. Even when it finally managed to wrest Microsoft’s fangs from the jugular vein of the consumer technology market, Apple still retained that aloof ‘too cool for you’ mystique.

In fact, the way Steve Jobs positioned the company, Apple looked like it totally believed its press. The problem is, it isn’t true. Its image is a great marketing scheme to extend the ‘cult’ loyalty of Apple’s years in the wilderness and transfer it over to its new product line. Yes-that product line-the one dominating the tablet, personal mobile audio, and smart phone markets.

For a while, it worked because Jobs was still alive and available as marketing circus ringmaster. The problem is the real soul of Apple has left its mild hippie and modern hipster pretensions. Underneath the shiny icons and fan boy adulation is a hard, all business, manufacturing juggernaut with outsourced tentacles in Korea, China, and beyond. Tim Cook is at the heart of that system.

Tim Cook: Technocrat or Visionary?

Cook holds down the design and industrial production factory behind the Apple brand; he is the mastermind that orchestrates dozens of outsourced manufacturers and weaves their disparate products into magical Apple devices. This is a totally different dynamic from perpetuating and creating new Apple myths.

Apple’s soul is in manufacturing efficiency, and it is only a matter of time when the limited imagination of manufacturing slams hard against the high pioneering and iconoclastic pretensions Apple’s brand fosters. It can easily become an American version of Sony-a company whose glory days are behind it. I’d hold off on buying Apple stock if I were you.

The great thing about cloud computing is that you are able to access your software whenever and wherever you are. As long as you have an Internet connection, your cloud-based software application is only a click away. If that isn’t awesome enough, cloud-based computing frees users from the traditional headaches of local computing.

For one, you don’t have to deal with security issues since all these are resolved at the server level. Another great reason for migrating to the cloud is the fact that cloud computing is like leasing-you only pay for the part you use. If you are already using cloud computing, hang on to your seats, there are some major changes taking place in cloud-based computing technology. These changes are set to transform cloud computing and take into a whole other level.

Greater social integration

Social networking has revolutionized key segments of business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) computing. Thanks to social networks, terms like ‘tweets’ and ‘likes’ are very commonplace now. Social networks and their ability to share content has transformed media.

Well, it looks like social networks are also set to transform cloud-based computing. Some cloud-based applications now have facebook apps and many incorporate tweets. This integration of cloud computing and social networks is only natural since cloud services can use the free promotions they can get from social networks while the networks’ core offerings are enhanced by integrating with powerful cloud-based services.

Increased crowdsourcing

The more people use a cloud service, the more usage data and non-personally identifiable ‘by-product’ data they produce. The most common example of this, of course, are the search terms you use when you use Google, a key example of a cloud-based service. Now, imagine the online service actively sorting through this by-product data to help increase your productivity? Due to the huge amount of users, popular cloud services can harness the data storm they are enjoying to enhance their services and offer premium services.

Mobile integration

Increasingly, cloud services are interacting with mobile device apps to provide realtime updates. This makes great sense because mobile devices have only so much space and computing power. By splitting the load with a cloud-based server, the mobile device’s app functions more like a thin front end while the cloud-based back end does the heavy lifting.

Apple’s iPad is still the best selling tablet on the market, despite the competition being faster, better looking and with a lot more features. One of the main reasons why the iPad is so popular is its simplicity – you really can’t find any other tablet that is as easy to use as this one. Despite that, the operating system is actually very advanced, capable of doing pretty much anything you need it to.

The iPad was conceived as a consumer device, and as such, entertainment was one of its main purposes. There are plenty of apps on the market for entertainment, and below I’ve listed just my top picks:

Netflix

Netflix is the number one service for watching TV shows and movies on demand by subscription. Their desktop application has been very successful, and when the mobile version was first released, everyone was ecstatic. The iPad app is pretty much a must have if you have a Netflix subscription (if not, get one!), and it allows you to stream movies and TV shows straight to your tablet, watch trailers for upcoming releases, find more interesting titles based on recommendations, share your watch list with your friends and more.

IMDB Movies and TV

IMDB is the largest database for information about actors, movies, producers, directors, TV shows and anything Hollywood related, really. The iPad app is a must have if you’re even remotely into watching current shows or any sorts of movies. The app lets you search for titles and names with ease, view trailers, communicate with other people on the forums, and use pretty much every other feature of the site while being in the comfort of a native app.

HBO Go

HBO has been building up quite the reputation – what with all the awesome new shows they have. HBO Go is the channels official online streaming service, which you can watch from anywhere, anytime using a subscription. Most of the TV shows that air on prime TV are available on HBO Go within a few days, so you don’t have to put up with advertising and watch the shows when you want. The HBO Go app for iPad lets you do just that.

LOL Pics

If you like wasting your time browsing funny pictures on your computer, you’ll probably hate me for mentioning this app. LOL Pics takes all of the funny images you can find online and puts them in one small, easy to use app on your iPad. You can sort the pictures by tags, description, site, category and other factors, and there are so many of them you’ll never be able to finish scrolling!

Entertainment is definitely one of the iPad’s strong points, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of apps on the iTunes Store in the category. If you have an iPad or plan on getting one, be sure to check out the apps above and search for more on the marketplace, of course.

There are many things you can do on an iPad and iPhone, thanks to their Mac OS X derived operating system and the almost a million apps on the iTunes store. Browsing the Web, watching movies and listening to music, editing documents, making cheap video calls via VoIP, remotely logging into computers, administrating servers – these are just a few things that iOS can do in the palm of your hand.

But I’d like to bring your attention to a more obscure capability of iOS – editing photos and videos! OK, so quite a few people know that the former was possible, but the ability to edit videos was introduced with iMovie for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, so it’s still relatively unknown. Since then, there have been quite a few great apps released that can do this kind of resource intensive editing. Here are some of the best apps for photo and video editing:

iMovie

iMovie was released specifically to showcase the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 performance, and needless to say, it did impress. The app lets you shoot, edit and save HD movies just like you would on a desktop, which is really impressive. You can cut frames, mix audio/video, add special effects and much more.

Photoshop Touch/Express

Adobe’s Photoshop is the most popular photo editing app in the world, and with tablets and smartphones quickly overtaking laptop and desktop niches, the company just had to release a version suitable for the new age touch screen devices. Photoshop for iOS (Touch for the iPad and Express for the iPhone) has pretty much everything you need to take a photo, edit it and share it with friends. You can create effects, resize and crop the picture, use layers and tools and more.

Photo Editor by Aviary

If you want something simpler than Photoshop for editing the photos you take with your iPhone or iPad, Aviary’s Photo Editor is the second best choice. You can do basic editing quickly and easily, and the app has support for easy visual effects, text and other tools. Despite being simple, it’s a great tool for anyone who takes photos often and shares them online or with their friends.

Snapseed

Snapseed is very similar to Instagram and Aviary – it lets you both edit photos and transform them, as well as add special effects and filters for a better result. It’s a paid app, though, but if you don’t want to use Instagram and another editing app separately, it’s a great choice.

The iPad and iPhone are very versatile devices that can be true computers in the hands of those who know how to use them. If you’re an avid photographer or like to take videos, be sure to check out the apps above – they can enable you to edit your creations without even using your computer.

With Windows 8, comes effort of Microsoft to step away from the traditional desktop and icons and in turn focus the PC in a different direction. While there has been a lot of good press about Windows 8, a lot has been said about the Metro style interface which some love and others loath. At any rate, in this article we will discuss the strengths of Windows 8.

The biggest change to Windows 8 comes in its support for not only x86 based processors, but ARM processors, the type you find in iOS and Android phones and tablets. This means that Microsoft will finally have a true tablet oriented operating system, one that should allow it to compete better with Android and iOS.

Speaking of tablets, with Windows 8 comes an even bigger focus on multitouch. Windows 8 supports up to ten finger multitouch and the entire Metro style design is geared towards touch as the icons,
buttons and interface have been enlarged to support fingers of all sizes. More importantly, with the two different onscreen keyboards, Microsoft is allowing more than one type of input on its tablet. That doesn’t mean that the physical keyboard and mice are obsolete, as they are very much alive.

Also coming to Windows 8 is an easier way to reinstall Windows which can be useful for fixing broken operating systems. With Refresh and Restart, reinstalling Windows is a lot simpler and does not require the complete reinstall of the operating system. The operation will only reinstall the core Windows files that may be causing the system to be bogged down.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is making it easier for users to carry their settings and files across multiple computers. With Windows To Go, users can download all their files and settings onto a USB stick and plug it into any Windows 8 PC and have the exact desktop, files and settings they are used to on their own computer. Needless to say, this can be extremely handy for those who travel a lot or use others computers a lot.

As if all these improvements were not enough, Microsoft is for the first time bringing an App Store to its desktop operating system. While it’s rules and regulations to have apps administered into the store will be more lax than Apple, the company is using this means to not only allow developers to get their software to users quicker and easier, but to increase safety from malware, virus and other harmful programs and scripts for Windows 8 PC’s.

Windows 8 is set to be released in the fall of 2012, and along with the launch, Microsoft will be bringing the an updated Visual Studio, Microsoft Office and Windows Phone 8 to the mix. For those gamers, this is the same time that the new Xbox 360 dashboard will drop to the masses along with Microsoft’s Project Glass which will take use of Microsoft’s new Windows 8 tablets to diversify gameplay.