Like a lot of people, I like to occasionally change how my computer looks. The easiest way to do this is to change the desktop wallpaper. I have something of an eccentric taste when it comes to what I like on my desktop. It probably has something to do with being raised by parents that [...]
I had recorded some Max & Ruby TV shows for my granddaughter and burned them onto DVD (subject of a future article). To make a label for the disk I needed a font which looked much like the one used on the television show’s opening title. Unfortunately, my disk label software did not show me [...]
If you are ready to give Linux a shot but aren’t quite ready to turn your back on your current operating system, you should visit The Live CD List. As of this writing, it has 315 Linux distributions that have Live CDs or DVDs available for download. As mentioned in our earlier article highlighting Ubuntu [...]
I am not ashamed to admit that I am not an operating system monogamist. I don’t use just one operating system and I don’t think anyone else should have to either. I regularly use Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux. It is just more fun for me that way, and [...]
One of the great new features of the Audacity 1.3.2 Beta is the Timer Record functionality that they have added. This feature allows you to do a couple of things with a timer. You can either set a recoding to start at a pre-arranged time or you can start a recording and have it run [...]
I have a few publications involving computers and technology that I just can’t seem to do without. Hopefully this is the first of a series of articles/reviews to those magazines I really like. Hopefully my fellow contributors will pitch in with articles as well.
Either first or second on my list is MacFormat, covering the Macintosh [...]
This is the first in a series of tutorials on how to use Audacity and its great set of features. Audacity is free, open source software for working with audio which we featured in an earlier article. This tutorial is aimed at showing users how to capture audio from an external device, in this case, [...]
When it comes to browsing the Internet, we have all kinds of choices as to what software to use. There is the ubiquitous Microsoft Internet Explorer for those on Windows PCs, Apple Safari for those on the Mac, Opera and many others. Then there is Mozilla’s Firefox, which is available in Windows, Mac and Linux [...]
LITTLE UTILITIES I LIKE
Doing a lot of tech support for our school (and my friends), I occasionally need to re-install Windows XP or Microsoft Office on a computer. Invariably, the computer owner no longer has or can find the original Windows or Office disk, therefore they don’t have the CD Key Code required by Microsoft [...]
LITTLE UTILITIES I LIKE
Working both with websites and with print publications, I often need to match a previously used color precisely. Say, for example, I open a brochure file created 6 months ago. The previous graphic designer (or me) used a graphic created in Photoshop or Illustrator. The graphic has a color in it we [...]
Many people have all sorts of video files in all sorts of formats on their computers and would love to be able to pop a DVD in and be able to watch them on their TV. Maybe its a Quicktime (MOV) file, or some cool Flash Video (FLV) that you downloaded from YouTube or even [...]
There are times when we come across a site on the Internet that we really like. In fact, we like it enough to want to share it with others. LifeHacker.com is one of those sites. According to the site, “Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don’t live to [...]
Are you tired of having to launch big, bloated applications like Windows Media Player or iTunes just to watch a video or listen to a song? If you are, then VLC could be the media player for you. VLC is basically everything that I’m not. It is small, fast, free and lightweight.
I often need to capture screenshots for use on websites (like this one) or for software training materials and I did not know how to do this easily on the Mac. It turns out that Apple kindly included a very handy utility in OS X called Grab. It has a number of very cool features [...]
FTP is an acronym that has been around about as long as the Internet itself. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and essentially is a method of transferring files from one location to another. If you work on the Internet as a designer or developer, or if you use the Internet to backup your computer [...]