Tag: TECHTIP

Your tickets are booked. Your bags are packed. Your passport's been dusted off. It's finally time to take off for that exotic vacation you so sorely deserve, and to totally disconnect from the rest of the world... sort of. Sure, you probably won't want to spend too much time trolling through e-mails instead of strolling across the Île Saint-Louis. If you're like us, though, you'll still ...

Whew. What a week it's been. First, we cleaned up our Reader's act, then we got some friends and followers, and recently we shut the door to any nosy neighbors in our privacy rundown. Now, we are going to teach you to share your Reader finds with anyone, including your friends on other social networks and news sites. Don't worry. You can thank us later. ...

You're amped. You've whittled your Google Reader account into perfectly organized folders and categories, and you're cruising the Web at warp speed, sharing links left and right. But you suddenly realize that you aren't quite sure if you want your future employer and/or offspring to see that you are a huge fan of cat sweaters. Maybe you have been bit by the bug of oversharing? Yesterday, we ...

Yesterday, we showed you how to use Google Reader to get organized, put together folders and take advantage of feed recommendations. So you think you've finally got RSS all figured out, right? Well, don't get too cocky, kid, because today we're going to explode your Google Reader world. Since you're now up to date on world news and breaking LOLcats news, you're going to want to show your legions ...

So you want to master your RSS feeds, eh? (If you don't know RSS, read our thorough breakdown.) Google Reader is our go-to feed aggregator, and -- if you're a Gmail user -- we're willing to bet that it's yours, too. You can access Reader through Gmail, Google, or even directly at reader.google.com, but you probably know that already. After all, you're no novice Reader(-er); you're just horribly, ...

Since album art practically defines music (e.g., Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures,' Nirvana's 'Nevermind', even Britney Spears's 'Britney'), no collection is complete with covers in disarray. Artwork is a key component to any obsessively organized music library, and the latest version of iTunes makes it a breeze to sort and add art. While most downloads from the iTunes Store come with artwork, ...

Share Here at Switched, we've been through countless hard drives over the years. That trusty ol' 400-gigabyte drive is going to fail sooner or later, swallowing your precious, carefully crafted music library as it goes -- unless you've prepared yourself. Fortunately, transferring your fully intact iTunes library to a new drive or computer is a cinch. You can, of course, grab the music files ...

For years, we chose to organize our music files by hand -- curating with an obsessive, Rob Gordon-esque eye towards genre, then era, then back to a year/artist/album format. Unfortunately, the pleasures of organizing your CD and vinyl collections simply don't transfer to MP3s and M4As. We finally convinced ourselves to just let iTunes do the organizing and spend our time creating mixes and ...

With a simple change to your Gmail settings, you can (allegedly) ensure that all of your incriminating Google Chat conversations won't come back to bite you. According to The Atlantic, users can take chats "off the record" by clicking the 'Actions' tab in the chat box and selecting the option from a drop-down menu. If a chat is off the record, the transcript will not be saved or archived by your ...

As we slowly move away from physical media, our digital music libraries continue to expand with music blog downloads, digital purchases and rips of our increasingly dusty CD collection. Libraries expanding past 10,000 songs are pretty common these days, and, much like e-mail and Web searching, smart filters can help you sort your tunes and manage your library. Arguing with friends over the best ...

For better or sometimes worse, everybody shares their photos on Facebook. But, until now, there hasn't been an easy way to grab entire albums from the social networking site. Every possible method has required tediously clicking away, one photo at a time. According to The New York Times, though, a developer has created a free Firefox extension that allows Facebook users to download entire photo ...

(function() { var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0]; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js'; s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1); })(); digg Everyone has their own coping methods and inbox philosophies for e-mail management. Whether you're subscribing to a super-involved "Getting Things Done" ...

We heard back in June that Google planned on adding a "normal" view to the always innovative Gmail. The service that introduced many people to the idea of threaded e-mail is now making one of its defining features optional. Starting today, users can open their settings, and find an option for "conversation view." Turning it off will make Gmail behave more like an e-mail client circa 1999, meaning ...

Targeted advertising in a fact of life. Advertisers use cookies to track your browsing habits so that the ads you see are more attuned to your interests, and thus more likely to appeal to you. This might make some people (notably those who might enjoy the illusion of privacy) uncomfortable. Thankfully most of the major advertising networks allow you to opt out of their targeted advertising ...

Rather than switching back and forth between our cell phones and our PCs, we wish text messages, missed-call notifications and low-battery alerts were delivered straight to our desktops. Android owners have a solution in Android Notifier and its partner app, Android Notifier Desktop. Setting up the apps does take a little work, but nothing that deserves a tech support call. Android Notifier will ...