How to Do It Yourself!

Taking Notes iPhone-Style - A GD How-To

How to Do It Yourself!

Taking Notes iPhone-Style – A GD How-To

So here was the dilemma… I was sitting outside in the sun rereading a book I purchased a number of years ago. (Yes, a dead tree book!) I remember some insights in it that might prove useful for some talks I need to be giving in a few weeks. So there I was on vacation reading it for the second or third time. And I was right, there was something worth noting on every other page. The problem was I didn’t have time and paper nearby and, quite honestly, I didn’t feel like sitting there and taking notes while reading in…

Create Podcasts On The Go With AudioBoo- A GD How-To

How to Do It Yourself!

Create Podcasts On The Go With AudioBoo- A GD How-To

This began as a review of Audioboo, a relatively new service that allows you to create voice podcasts either on your computer or on the go using an iPhone, or an iPod touch in quickly and easily upload them to the net and share them with the world. In the process of creating this review I decided to make a brief podcast of my very first recording and realized that it actually might be more useful and, I hope, more interesting, if I did this post more as a “how-to” than a review. Step One — Visit the AudioBoo website…

How to Do It Yourself!

How to Create Perfect Panoramas

There you are standing on the edge of a beautiful lake on a warm July day. With the naked eye the scenery is magnificent. Unfortunately while the upgraded camera on the iPhone 3GS works well, any given image only captures a small portion of the view. Fear not! For there is a simple way to capture and share a beautiful panorama of the entire image in just moments. Here’s a quick “iPhone How-To”.

How to force quit an application on the iPhone 3GS

How to Do It Yourself!

How to force quit an application on the iPhone 3GS

If you’re using one of the new iPhone 3GS models you may have noticed it’s no longer possible to force quit an application by holding the home key down for 5 seconds. This worked on prior models but now holding the home key down will only bring up the voice control. Instead to force quit an application running on an iPhone 3GS press and hold the power button for 5 seconds. When the Quit/Cancel screen appears THEN you can hold the home key for 5 seconds and the application will force quit. When even that doesn’t work I’ve found the…

Building a Rainwater Collection System: A GearDiary DIY

How to Do It Yourself!

Building a Rainwater Collection System: A GearDiary DIY

Ten years ago, I acquired two 55-gallon plastic drums to store an emergency supply of water for the impending Y2K disaster occurring at the stroke of midnight 2000. Of course, I became suspicious when the plane I was flying on did not fall out of the sky on 9/9/99 and my trusty Honda still ran like a charm well past January 1, 2000. Being the positive person that I am, I was grateful to acquire several storage containers of personal hygiene items, first aid supplies and all kinds of camping paraphenia that I still use. So what if Y2K was…

iPhone 3.0 and 3G S Impressions Tips Tricks and More

How to Do It Yourself!

iPhone 3.0 and 3G S Impressions Tips Tricks and More

As the dust continues to settle on “The Week Of The iPhone” we’re all getting increasingly used to devices with a new OS or entirely new devices. That’s means the list of wishes for OS 4.0 begins now. It also means increasing familiarity and impressions that are more valuable than the initial “OMG did you know it can do this?” and “Wow! Wow! Wow!” What follows are some likes, dislikes, tips, treats and more, disappointments and dreams for future updates.

My Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh - The Installation

How to Do It Yourself!

My Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh – The Installation

This is Part One in a series about my journey with my new Dell Mini 9 into Hacktinosh territory…I’ll be talking about my installation process, my impressions of the Mini as a Mac netbook, performance, software, and more. I was pretty early to jump on the netbook bandwagon. When I saw the original 7″ Asus Eee PC for the first time, I knew that I had to have it. I had been lusting after computers like the Sony Picturebook for a long time–something that could fit in my purse and go with me everywhere! As a writer, having a full…

How to Do It Yourself!

Swapping the Drive On A 13″ MacBook Pro

Yesterday Mitchell posted a first look at his new 13″ MacBook Pro. In his terrific overview he showed a few pictures of his swapping out the installed drive for a mammoth 500GB drive. As luck would have it the 120GB Solid State Drive I ordered from NewEgg earlier in the week arrived while I was reading it. As a result, the iPhone 3G S that is “Out for Delivery” isn’t the only piece of “zipper” Apple Hardware I’ll be enjoying. Instead of taking some shots of the install I figured I would grab my Flip UltraHD and film it. So…

Take Control of Time Machine

How to Do It Yourself!

Take Control of Time Machine

I’m a Apple fanboy through and through. This I admit freely. But I’m also man enough to admit that not everything Apple does is perfect. Time Machine, Apple’s default back up program, is one of those not so perfect things. My biggest problem with Time Machine is the inability to customize just when Time Machine backs up. The only time management setting offered by Time Machine is on or off. When it’s on it backs up everything on your Mac, every hour. I find this to be a major nuisance as it seems my iMac is always backing itself up and it’s…

Loading Windows 7 on an Acer Aspire One D150 is a snap - once you know the secret

How to Do It Yourself!

Loading Windows 7 on an Acer Aspire One D150 is a snap – once you know the secret

My friend Mark contacted me via GTalk video chat three days ago to test out his new Acer Aspire One that he purchased for $349 at Costco. I was so impressed that he was able to connect and video chat without difficulty on a Netbook that cost so little that I immediately ordered one for myself on Amazon. Last night I put Windows 7 Release Candidate on the machine by creating a bootable USB drive (I used a 16GB drive – instructions here – that I bought for $35 from Staples). The USB thumb drive was the easiest way for…

How to Run the Slingbox iPhone Application on 3G

How to Do It Yourself!

How to Run the Slingbox iPhone Application on 3G

When Mac Rumors first leaked the story that the Slingbox application for the iPhone was set to launch cries of joy rang out from iPhone users everywhere. That is until they read further and learned that the application would only run on a wifi connection. For fear of overloading their network AT&T apparently asked Apple to restrict use of the Slingbox application. Luckily for those users who running Jailbroken iPhones there’s a nifty utility called “VOIPover3G” which tricks applications into thinking there is a wifi connection present when in fact there’s only a 3G. This allows the Slingbox application to…

One simple tweak that made my iPhone Gmail retrieval lightning fast

How to Do It Yourself!

One simple tweak that made my iPhone Gmail retrieval lightning fast

Dan posted earlier today over at Whatsoniphone about my discovery that if you enable Advanced IMAP controls in GMAIL Labs (look under settings) and remove the check marks from your folders so that only the INBOX is checked – your iPhone will retrieve email at a blistering pace as opposed to the 3 to 5 minutes that it previously took. Almost from the day that I bought the first generation iPhone I have been bothered by slow retrieval of my Gmail. Since I have a large number of folders, it makes perfect sense that this tip to stop synchronizing the…

Windows 7 on the HTC Shift

Editorials, How to Do It Yourself!

Windows 7 on the HTC Shift

There have been two activities that have become the norm across the world of technology blogging in the last couple of years: unboxing, and loading Mac OS X onto netbooks. As a person who is lucky enough to have the opportunity to play with lots of phones, notebooks and other “unboxable” items, I’ve done the former a fair bit, and as an owner of a MacBook Pro for the past few years, I can understand peoples need to load OS X onto any device with an x86 processor. Another trend that’s come up in the last month or so is…

Bloggers Photo Guide

Editorials, How to Do It Yourself!

Bloggers Photo Guide

The idea for this post came from a little back and forth amongst the GearDiary team concerning getting better images to go along with our blog entries. Specifically, some were looking for tips to produce better tech gear images with monitor screens, i.e., multimedia devices, smartphones, laptops, video monitors, etc.

Help my phone is in the toilet!! Guide to replacing your phone without getting fleeced by a carrier

How to Do It Yourself!

Help my phone is in the toilet!! Guide to replacing your phone without getting fleeced by a carrier

Hey, it happens. You’re sitting to answer nature’s call and without warning or provocation the phone you thought was securely clipped to your hip goes for a swim. Sometimes you’re lucky and can fish it out of the water fast enough and there will be minimal damage. Other times you’re not so lucky and the water shuts your phone down – forever. Unless you’re signed up with an extended warranty company such as Squaretrade – you are out-of-luck because water damage is not covered under most carrier insurance plans (this is the first thing they check – and they know…

OSX and Windows 7 - Dual Booting the Wind

How to Do It Yourself!

OSX and Windows 7 – Dual Booting the Wind

Not being the type that can leave well enough alone, I installed Windows 7 to my Wind as planned on 1/18/09. Windows 7 is interesting. I’m still exploring… However, after I installed 7, I really wanted to see if I could put OSX back on. Having the dual boot is really cool; and the dual boot with Windows 7..? Oh yeah. I’d be the king of my local Geekdom. I had to try… The following is not sanctioned by Gear Diary, and is an advanced piece of hackery. However, once you master dual booting XP and OSX, I found this…

How to Do It Yourself!

Update on Windows 7: Blowin’ in the Breeze, Part 4

This is just a short note, kids to let you know where I am with my Wind after this weekend’s article. I’ve completely blown the box, so XP is OFF the Wind. I took a couple of hours and put Windows 7 on it, and find it very interesting. I’m not completely sold on it yet, as its very Vista like, and I’ve really just got Vista Ultimate working the way I want it to on my MBP. However, I’m playing with it; and yes, there is indeed a great deal to like about Win7 that you’re going to hear…

Dual Booting the MSI Wind: How To

How to Do It Yourself!

Dual Booting the MSI Wind: How To

Over the past few months, I’ve seen a lot of people talk about netbook computers and how hackable they are. Sites like JKontheRun, The Gadgeteer, and even Gear Diary have all posted articles on hacking this particular netbook. While none of these sites recommends hacking ANY device, it does go a long way to showing everyone just how versatile this device truly, truly is. Honestly, I wasn’t really interested in any kind of netbook computer until Dan posted his article on the creation of a “hackintosh,” or non-Apple PC running OSX. Before then, I really didn’t seen any real value…

How to Do It Yourself!

Dual Booting the MSI Wind: Blowing in the Breeze, Part 3

This is an update to my earlier post regarding the Wind and OSX; and is just a quick update, kids… It took a bit of doing, AND I gave up on trying to figure out how to create a bootable, Windows based USB stick. I pulled down 2 different tools, and neither could make the 8GB SanDisk Cruzer I have bootable. I’m guessing it was an issue with Vista Ultimate (running that on my MacBook Pro) and not the tools themselves; but with my Gateway desktop OFFICIALLY belly up, I had no other XP box to work from… I am…

How to Do It Yourself!

Blowing in the Breeze Part 2 – OSX 10.5.6 & the MSI Wind

Before I get started, I wanted to say special thanks go out to Dan Cohen, who stayed up with me until 3am Eastern/2am Central working on the Flash drive needed to get this all done. So… OSX 10.5.6 and the MSI Wind… Yah ok… maybe not so much. Quick update – I’ve got OSX installed on my Wind (calling it miniMBP); and I’ve learned some interesting things as of this morning. 1. I can still survive and be human on as little as 2.5 hours of sleep as long as there’s good, strong coffee around…somewhere. 2. You have to find…

Tricking Out The MSI WindOSX - Adding an SSD

How to Do It Yourself!

Tricking Out The MSI WindOSX – Adding an SSD

A little over a week ago I installed Mac OS Leopard on the MSI Wind I had picked up at Best Buy. I’m pleased to report that after a week of use, it is still going strong. I’m amazed at how well the Mac OS runs on the device; I am grateful to everyone who figured out how to get Mac OS X running perfectly on a Wind and were then kind enough to share their work. Well, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and so I decided that I need to trick out the diminutive Mac just a bit….

« 1 … 6 7 8 9 »