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When Wikipedia Vandals Attack May 10, 2012 
If you've been involved in a project that has been documented on Wikipedia and has earned its own Wikipedia page, it can be disconcerting to visit one day and see the page vandalized, as happened to an associate of mine recently. This incident led to a frantic email exchange. One consideration was how to deal with the problem without getting tagged as the vandal -- Wikipedia is collaborative, after all.
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Sorting Out the Image Format Jumble May 03, 2012 
Have you ever wondered what the differences are among the scores of digital image formats out there? Some of the more common ones we see are GIF and JPEG but what does it all mean, and why are there so many? Plus, how do you know which one to use for the Web, and how can you take advantage of the different feature sets each one offers? Read on.
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Ramping Up Your Laptop's RAM April 26, 2012 
One of the simplest ways to improve performance on a laptop is to add more RAM, or random access memory. RAM prices have been steadily dropping over the years, and it's now possible to see a significant performance boost with an investment of twenty or thirty dollars. If your machine is sluggish, you might need additional memory. Even if your machine is new, a memory upgrade is worth investigating.
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Finding Your Way Around a Router April 19, 2012 
Have you ever accessed your home or small office router configuration settings and been bombarded with a mass of incomprehensible, cryptic computer-eze and senseless acronyms and abbreviations? Never fear -- you can quickly come up to speed on the basics. The router is a computer networking device that manages the data. It interprets the packet's address and directs the packet to its destination.
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Run Your Software From a USB Stick for Security and Speed April 12, 2012 
Historically, freelancers have carried their software tools as compact discs, or as copies of the discs on a portable hard drive. Both have needed to be installed on the library, or client's computer. This has been time-consuming additional work. Security has also been an issue, with temporary document files and software footprints being left behind after an install -- a thorough cleanup being even more onerous at the end of the job.
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Making the Most of Chrome in the Cloud April 05, 2012 
I've got a mini-laptop hooked up to my TV, a larger laptop on my desk, a 7-inch tablet in my back pocket for reading at coffee shops, a 10-incher that floats around the loft and rarely goes outside, and a 4.3-inch smartphone that works well on crowded transportation systems -- all lacking in synchronicity.
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How to Overclock a CPU: Getting Started March 29, 2012 
Overclocking a CPU sounds seductive, right? Adjust a few settings on your phone or tablet, and the device goes faster. Games play without laborious, stuttering, forced slow-motion effects, and everything loads quicker. Well, like everything in life, these adjustments involve a tradeoff. Just as there are risks in taking your car out for a rural run and heavy-footing it, there are implications for a CPU speedup.
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Taming That Spaghetti of Wires Taking Over Your Home March 22, 2012 
New home construction and remodeling projects, from a multimedia wiring angle, have the advantage of incorporating cable management at the design stage. That design is structured into the build. Unfortunately, existing homes don't have this luxury -- tearing into walls is disruptive and expensive.
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And Now for Something Completely Different: Taking the Windows 8 Plunge March 16, 2012 
Microsoft has made available a consumer preview version of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system that you can try out. The OS caught my eye because the tile-like user interface appears radically different from the boring old reiterations of Windows 3.1 -- with minor tweaks that irritatingly require getting used to after every upgrade. This looks like it's worth it.
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Diving Into GIS: A Starter Guide March 08, 2012 
If you were looking at television weather maps during last week's U.S. tornado activity, you were looking at a GIS, or Geographic Information System. Those red and purple splotches racing across the screen represented intensity levels of rotating storm cells. The map itself, the county lines, and the splotches were all data layer elements making up the map.
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Bluetooth Is Not Just for Headsets March 01, 2012 
With cable-and-wire spaghetti proliferating in and around our homes and offices, threatening to consume our devices and us in the end, it may be time to take a look at Bluetooth wireless technology. Headsets protruding awkwardly from an ear is the typical Bluetooth image that comes to mind. However, there are other common wire-reducing applications, like file transfer and music distribution.
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Tube Tweeting: How to Use Twitter When Watching TV February 23, 2012 
If you think of some of the more recent significant developments in television viewing, you'll probably come up with a list that includes the digital video recorder, which provides easy time-shifting without lossy tape; the flat-screen, high-definition television, which provides high-quality images as well as space-saving and eco-advantages over the bulky old cathode ray tube; and rampant cord-cutting.
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Widening Your WiFi Network's Range February 16, 2012 
If you've followed the advice in my article, "How to Improve Your Video-Streaming Clarity," and can't use a Cat 5e or greater specification wired-solution for your network, you may be running into straightforward environmental limitations. The microwave just isn't getting from point A to point B and back again.
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Mounting a Tablet in Your Vehicle's Front Seat February 09, 2012 
Factory-supplied satellite navigation and entertainment systems can add thousands to the cost of a new vehicle. Plus, the speed at which consumer electronics come to market is significantly faster than a car's development cycle, so your in-vehicle equipment is outdated before the car leaves the new car lot. Even an aftermarket OEM kit is in the thousands.
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Setting Up a Virtual Phone System With a Little Help From Some Friends February 02, 2012 
Twilio's cloud-based communications platform allows anyone with rudimentary Web-development knowledge to build a voice and SMS text application. An API, client, and various XML and other helper code is available that lets you build in PHP, C# and more. Applications can include transcription, conferencing, voice calls confirming orders, appointment reminders, customer support and so on.
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Slinging January 26, 2012 
Slingbox lets you watch your television remotely. The Slingbox hardware device captures the source image and audio at your home and squirts it into the Internet. Proprietary software is used to replicate a television-like experience on laptops or other devices like smartphones.
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