Category: Tech Tips

Honestly, we just don't have the patience to watch those 15- to 30-second ads that play before some YouTube videos. But, as one Lifehacker reader points out, you can skip the ads and get straight to watching the video by simply hitting the refresh button on your browser. After doing so, the video will load minus the ad. It's a simple way to save yourself time and prevent annoyance. Enjoy this ...

It's summer, which means your gadgets will be spending some time around water. But a trip to the beach or lake doesn't have to spell doom for a camera or cell phone. Lifehacker recently wrote about some cheap and easy ways to waterproof a gadget (and protect against STDs, too!) Believe it or not, you can use a clear, non-lubricated condom as a waterproof bag for cameras and other hydro-sensitive ...

If you lived through the MP3 revolution and still managed to hold on to a few of those ancient relics known as CDs, they're probably in pretty bad shape. A few scratches here and there, though, don't necessarily mean that you have to toss your entire Van Halen box set out with the Thursday morning trash. [Ed. note: Although you should've done so with the Sammy Hagar era stuff long ago.] The only ...

Share Whether it's from careless roommates or too many viewings, we've all had our favorite DVD get scratched and skip as a result. But you don't have to give up on your beloved disc; there could be hope for it yet -- in your pantry and bathroom. The folks over at Unplggd have compiled a step-by-step guide to removing scratches with nothing more than a banana, some toothpaste, and window ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/01/18/save-space-make-your-mac-monolingual/'; Share By default, Macs come loaded to the gills with language files for the operating system, printer drivers and such, as well as all of the iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, Safari, iEtc). For multilingual types it's nice as it allows them to use their Mac in their native tongue with just a couple mouse clicks. For ...

Among the thousands of books and periodicals available on the Kindle Store, there are hundreds of free, or extremely cheap, items listed. To find them, go to the Kindle Store, via your Kindle or Amazon.com, and type "-domain" (minus the quotes) in the search bar. ...

The Amazon Kindle2 offers dozens of useful keyboard shortcuts, but here are a few of the particularly nifty ones: To take a screen shot, hit Alt+Shift+G. A .gif file will appear in your Documents folder, which you can access when connected to a computer. Play Minesweeper by hitting Shift+Alt+M from the Home page. Hit M to mark, R to restart, and use the controller to move around. Refresh ...

For many Mac users, widgets trapped in the Dashboard are all but useless since you can't use them without flipping the Dashboard on and off. Follow these instructions to festoon your desktop with your favorite widgets -- including those you create yourself with Safari's Web Clip feature! Open Terminal (in Utilities) and type in the following: defaults write com.apple.dashboard ...

As handy as iPhoto may be for organizing your digital snaps, it's an absolute glutton for hard drive space. The application alone takes up a half gigabyte of space, and even just a few thousand photos can take up tens of gigabytes -- a considerable amount considering the typically smaller size of laptop hard drives. As it turns out, that's because iPhoto keeps an original copy of every photo you ...

Use these handy tips to get the most from your Zune: To restart a crashed or frozen Zune, press and hold the On/Off button for 10 seconds. If you want to completely erase all content from your Zune, press and hold the Home and Media buttons until it restarts. To add a favorite item to the main menu (up to 10), press and hold on an item and then select Pin to Quickplay. To quickly ...

The next time you need to tote a giant data file to or from work, don't fret if you don't have a flash drive handy. Simply pop the SD (or other memory card) out of a digital camera and use it instead, assuming it's large enough for your purposes. For large files you'll get the best performance using faster SDHC cards, an SDHC card reader (instead of a plain SD reader) and plug into a USB 2.0 ...

When cruising e-mail on your BlackBerry, rather than scrolling relentlessly to get back to the beginning of a long message, tap the letter T and you'll be popped instantly to the top. Hit N and you'll go the next e-mail in your in box; hit P and you'll see (you guessed it) the previous one. ...

With online services like Netflix Watch Now and Hulu offering full-screen, high-quality streaming video, there's no reason to keep it confined to your laptop or monitor. Netflix's Watch Now is available already on a bunch of devices, however, if you don't have those you can still hook your PC or Mac up to your HDTV (or regular TV) to watch. Depending on the type of TV and computer you have, you ...

A life-changing tip for BlackBerry power users to add to their keyboard-command arsenal: Switch instantly between applications by holding down Alt and tapping Esc. Icons of your open apps will pop up; tap Esc until the one you want appears, then release Alt. It's akin to hitting Alt-Tab on a PC (or Apple-Tab on a Mac). ...

If you've ever received an MS Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document that just won't seem to open, odds are it's because it was created using Office 2007 or 2008 and you're still using an older version of Office. You can tell by looking at the file extension: if there's an x on the end (such as docx. xlsx, pptx) then it's Microsoft's newfangled XML-based file type. If you don't feel like ponying ...