Month: February 2013

Messing with phone settings and configuration can sometimes cause problems, or even make your device outright unusable. In such cases, going back to default settings(also called factory setting) by performing a hard reset might be the only option. A hard reset is also a compromise between a firmware flash and having to suffer existing troubles, […]

YouTube videos start streaming automatically. However, there might be occasions when you want to disable this – if opening multiple videos, or on a slow internet connection. There is no way to disable auto play within YouTube, and going by the number of complaints in various forums (including the official Google one), it certainly is […]

Compiz is a popular compositing and window manager for Linux. It brings a host of improvements to the user interface. In some tutorials showing you how to install Compiz, the command to be entered in terminal is sudo apt-get install ccsm (for Ubuntu, in this case) but entering that command shows you an error “ccsm […]

The driver support for Macbook’s excellent multi-touch touchpads (2008 and beyond) are good – even multi touch scrolling works out of the box, unlike Windows (for me at least). However, one issue I discovered (and it took me some to discover that it was not a fault of my own), is that clicks are registered […]

Recent versions of Apple Macbook uses a Broadcom wireless ethernet (Wifi, called Airport in Apple terms) chipset that does not work out of the box on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx. Some versions of Macbook require installing new drivers, and some others require enabling proprietary drivers. Enable Airport in Ubuntu on Macbook Find your version […]

While slightly confusing for a first-time switcher from Windows/Mac, Ubuntu’s software install process is quite possibly the better than Windows and Mac. You can get trusted versions of most apps with just a couple of clicks, and updating is also single-click, unlike opening and checking for updates on each app in Windows/Mac. However, if you […]

Bookmarks are sorted by folder or categories in browsers by default. However, with downloadable extensions, you can browse your bookmarks by date of bookmarking. DSBMarks is a Firefox addon that creates bookmarks within folders organized by date. You have to use the specific icon at the bottom right of Firefox to create bookmarks within sorted […]

In Mozilla Firefox, backspace key functions as a keyboard shortcut for back button – to take you to previous page loaded in Firefox. This might be helpful for many, but I keep hitting the backspace button by accident, sometimes even leading to loss of data (although I have since found a Firefox addon to auto-save […]

Samsung has been developing the new Bada OS targeted at smartphones and feature phones. The first phone with Bada OS is the Wave GT-S8500. As with Symbian S40/S60 and other mobile OS, Bada has a few codes to turn on/off options and show advanced information that is not shown otherwise. *#0*# – Test LCD screen […]

Changing license key in Windows (Windows Vista/7 Home Premium/Business/Ultimate, Server 2008 etc.) is easy – a graphical interface is built-in to Windows for the purpose. You may want to edit the Windows license product key, for example, on a pirated copy to enter a new valid serial key you bought. You may also need to […]