Category: Business

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Using Your iPad as an Extended Monitor

air-display-logo

Looking to use your iPad as a dual monitor / extended laptop screen? There are currently three apps that claim to do the following &  I put each through its paces and make a recommendation.

  • Use your iPad as a second monitor / dual display
  • Supports both landscape and portrait mode
  • Allows you to set your screen resolution
  • Works on either Macs or PCs

Each of these apps basically work in the same way. All three claim to extend your display when both your laptop and iPad are on the same WiFi network.  However, the difference between these apps becomes apparent  in execution.
Air Display vs iDisplay vs MaxiVista  using  Win7 64bit SP1 and first gen iPad w/ IOS 4.2.1
Continue reading “Using Your iPad as an Extended Monitor”

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Cleaning Up a MacBook Air OS 10.5.8

lippupalloA customer came to me with their MacBook Air (first Gen) with a 75GB SDD.  It only had 1GB free space on the internal HD and would not run Apple Software Updates.  Software Update would claim that there was not enough free space and 2.9GB was needed.
Monolingual removed all language files (other than English), keyboard layouts, and processor architecture.    Supposedly it not only saves HDD space but also speeds up OSX through optimization.
When running Monolingual, it is important to choose Remove on each tab (Languages, Input Menu, Architecture) individually.  When I hit Remove after choosing all languanges, but was on the Input Menu, it told me I saved 60Mb.  Wow, not great…  But then I realized if I hit remove on the Language tab, it removed about 3 GB of data from the Macintosh HD and the Monolingual app took much longer to run.  Removing architectures (all but Intel and Intel 64bit) resulted in recovering 786M of space.
Continue reading “Cleaning Up a MacBook Air OS 10.5.8”

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IE9 is the Current Most Secure Web Browser Against Socially Engineered Malware

ie9
IE9 is only available for Windows 7 (and Vista if you have to use that).  Don’t worry though XP users, IE8 is right behind at number 2 in the new malware study performed by NSS Labs.
NSS Labs Web Browser Group Test Socially-Engineered Malware 2011
IE9 also boasts some impressive browser speed improvements. With hardware accelerated video and graphics, IE9 is FAST.
See 9 reasons to get Internet Explorer and Download IE9
Also, make sure you read on how to use an add blocking add-on such as Simple-Adblock with Internet Explorer.  Now if only IE9 could sync bookmarks easily. Continue reading “IE9 is the Current Most Secure Web Browser Against Socially Engineered Malware”

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How to Add the GooglePlus +1 Button to Your WordPress Posts

Google +1 Webmaster Dev Page
plusone
Certain code snippets need changed slightly to add to a wordpress site.
Edit theme footer.php and insert the following just before the closing body tag:

This calls the Google Analytics tracker into play.  Now open your theme Single Post single.php and add the following snippet:

size can equal small, medium, tall or leave out all together for standard
count equals true shows the number of +1 votes, equals false hides that from your page
callback adds site tracking analytic data for Google +1 clicks that can be viewed in Google Analytics.

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How to Increase AT&T 3G Speed on Android

android3gThere are steps to increase your ROOTED Android phone’s 3G performance on the AT&T network if you are using a stock ROM.  Using the Dell Streak running SimpleStreak 1.2 as an example, I was consistently pulling ~800kbps from various Ookla servers.  My buddy’s iPhone 4 would hit 2.5MB sitting right next to me running the test simultaneously.  The issue does not manifest when using a custom ROM such as CyanogenMod on the Nexus One or StreakDroid on the Dell Streak.  That is because they have already added the modifications to the build.prop to specify the category settings of the radio interface layer (ro.ril).
The radio interface layer is controlled by ro.ril commands in the build.prop file (2.2.2 Froyo) and indicates the class category of the target network. Android is available on every network throughout the world, so some testing has been done to ensure the best performance on the AT&T 3G network using the Dell Streak. Please note, these settings may work on other phones. In fact, many of these settings were gleemed from Amon_RA’s testing with the Nexus One. Continue reading “How to Increase AT&T 3G Speed on Android”

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How to Protect Your Laptop from Theft

lojackEvery 50 seconds, a laptop goes missing.   Laptops are a common target of theft.  In addition, because of their portable nature, laptops are misplaced, lost, or simply left behind.  Last year, my wife’s laptop was stolen from our home.  Since that time, I have been looking at effective solutions to protect information and recover stolen property.
Thankfully, my wife is not what some would call a ‘power user’.  Her laptop didn’t have much in the way of personal information.  She only used her little netbook to access Facebook, Gmail, and sync her iPhone to iTunes.  All of our taxes, scanned records, financial databases, etc are on my computer.  After filing a police report, we changed the passwords to her various online accounts.  The police report did little to recover her laptop, so I perused local pawn shops for weeks afterwards hoping it would show up.  It didn’t.  So, I tried several free software solutions that promised to secure stolen data.  Of course, every solution requires a program be installed on your computer BEFORE it is lost or stolen. LaptopLock is free, but hasn’t been updated since 2007. Enter LoJack for laptops.
LoJack for Laptops works on nearly every version of Windows and Mac OS X v.10.3 and higher.  Some models of laptops even have a module built into the BIOS that lets the software persist even after a hard drive format.  That means even if the laptop is completely erased, you still have a shot at recovering your equipment.
For $99, you get three years of guaranteed protection to locate, lock, delete, and recover your laptop.  The service is transferable to another laptop if you buy a new machine in that time.  LoJack even has a theft recovery team that works with law enforcement to help recover your machine.  LoJack protects your laptop in these five ways, but only if you have signed up your account and installed the client software BEFORE your property goes missing!
Continue reading “How to Protect Your Laptop from Theft”

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Android Malware – How to Protect Your Droid

androidmalwareRecently, several malware apps have been discovered in the Android Marketplace.  Tech headlines are brimming with descriptions of malware called DroidDream, DroidKungFu, Plankton, & YZHCSMS.  Well, at least you would think that tech headlines would be all over this subject.  According to Google, just one of these password stealing programs, Plankton, was downloaded over 210,000 times. These malicious programs are capable of stealing personal information, passwords, contacts, emails, browser history, device ids, sending SMS text messages (at a premium cost to you), discretely calling expensive premium numbers, and more;  all the while hiding themselves from you, the user.  These apps are piggybacked onto legitimate looking apps (Angry Birds Rio Unlock anyone?) that you can download from Google’s official Android Marketplace.  Remember the old adage, if it looks too good to be true/free, it is.   Be very wary of installing apps from unknown sources / unknown official market developers.
What does this mean for the average ‘Droid’ user? Continue reading “Android Malware – How to Protect Your Droid”