No matter which mobile phone carrier you use, you’ll eventually drop a call with somebody. Even if you don’t have a cellphone, you still have to deal with dropped calls when you’re talking with people who do.

Sometimes you both try to call each other at the same time and get each other’s voicemail. Other times, you try to call the other person and they’re still talking away, oblivious to the fact that the call was dropped.

Rule #1: Whoever initiated the call, initiates the call back after a dropped call.

To some, this rule is obvious. But, it needs to be stated to remove any confusion and prevent the double voicemail dilemma.

Rule #2: Whoever was listening when the call was dropped, remembers the last sentence the other person said.

This is less obvious, but since the listener is the only one who knows exactly when the call was dropped; they need to remember the last sentence or at least the topic — this may be the same person who needs to call the other person back.

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Photo: addicted eyes (cc)

If you’ve created a website account with Facebook, TicketMaster, Twitter, CNN, Craigslist or thousands of other sites, then you have helped translate text from old books and newspapers.

Websites that offer free accounts try to ensure that every account is created by a real human being instead of a computer “bot” — computer programs written to automatically create accounts and then spam those websites with ads. One way to protect against bots is to have people do something that is easy for a human but difficult for a computer: read distorted text.

That’s why you are frequently asked to solve these simple word puzzles. Although it’s a bit annoying, it helps make the website better by reducing spam and other abuse. There are many variants of these puzzles, called captchas, and if the website uses the reCAPTCHA system, your work can also benefit society.

You see, the unclear words in a reCAPTCHA are scanned from old books and newspapers for the google books project. After scanning the books, they run the scans through a computer to translate the images into text, but computer programs aren’t very good at reading blurry words. That’s exactly why this is a perfect way to test if someone is human, because a computer already tried to solve it and failed.

The solution you enter is compared to the solution that other people have entered for the same word. When the program gets a number of consistent answers from multiple people then that word is fixed in the digital copy of the book or newspaper.

This effort might sound futile, but approximately 200 million of these little puzzles are solved each day. Although it only takes you a few seconds, it adds up to around 150,000 hours of work per week. This is called “crowd-sourcing” — a small contribution from a lot of people that collectively make a significant contribution to something grand.

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Sources: wikipedia (recaptcha), recaptcha.com

Sometimes you have to temporarily disconnect your home electronics. It can be difficult to find a device you can spare or remember which cables to put back later. Use bread expiration tags as labels.

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In almost seven years, Facebook has captured over 600 million users and that number continues to grow. The ‘powers that be’ are constantly changing, updating and tweaking Facebook. While most people wait to see the new and exciting features from each update, you can read on for a few features you can try the next time you log in.

Bold Characters

Surround your text with stars to get bold text in the chat box. For example: *Hi! How are you?* will show up as Hi! How are you?

Underlined Characters

Surround your text with underscores to get underlined text in the chat box. For example: _I’m doing well. How are you doing?_ will show up as I’m doing well. How are you doing

Shapes

There are several different shapes you can use when chatting.

<(“) = penguin

(^^^) = shark

<3 = heart

:putnam:  = man’s head/face

The list of smiley faces you can use in chat is lengthy, but here are a few unique options:

8-) = glasses

:-* = lips

8-| = sunglasses

O:) = angel

:|] = robot

Use alt + any combination of numbers on the number pad to add characters to your status, chat and posts. For example:

Alt+14 = ♫

Alt+13 = ♪

Alt+3 = ♥

Alt+5 = ♣

Alt+36 = $

Privacy

When you’re friends with co-workers or family members, there may come a time when your one-of-a-kind status might not be something that one of these ‘friends’ would appreciate. Here’s how to select who gets to read your status and who doesn’t.

1. On your profile page click in the ‘status box.’
2. Click on the pad lock icon so a drop down menu appears.
3. Choose ‘customize.’
4. In the ‘These People’ box select ‘specific people’ and type in who you would like to be able to see your status. Or, if there are just a few people you’d like it hidden from, simply fill in the ‘Hide this from these people’ box and click ‘Save Setting.’

Linking to Other Profiles

Interested in linking to someone’s name in your status? Simply type @Joe Smith and a drop down menu will appear. Once Joe’s name appears and you click on it, it will show up as a blue hyperlink in your status, but the @ sign will disappear.

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Sources: XOMBA.com,fbsmileys.com, Mashable

Photo: marcopako (cc)

It’s no secret that you will probably spend a significant chunk of your lifetime prodding at a keyboard, but have you ever considered why keyboards are designed the way they are? Logic would dictate that the layout of the keys should increase typing efficiency and maximize your output. Reality, however, is not always logical, and the vast majority of modern keyboards are actually designed to make you type slower.

The basic QWERTY layout – the default keyboard layout you’re probably using right now – is a remnant of the very first typewriters. As a kid I used to play with my mother’s typewriter and I would frequently jam the machine by pressing too many keys at once. The same thing could happen if a proficient typist hit two or more keys in rapid succession. Due to the mechanical nature of the typebars, jams were increasingly likely with faster typing speeds. The QWERTY layout (named for the six letters at the left side of the top row) was specifically designed to space out the most common letter combinations, thereby reducing jams by stunting the user’s output. By the time newer devices made typebars obsolete, QWERTY had already cemented itself as the primary standard layout. So if you’re using this archaic configuration today (which I admit, I am), you’re actually making yourself less efficient and potentially increasing your risk of a repetitive strain injury like carpal tunnel. Fortunately, there are other options available.

In 1963, Dr. Augustus Dvorak and his brother-in-law patented the (you guessed it) “Dvorak Simplified Keyboard,” which is one of the more commonly used keyboard alternatives. And no, it’s not just for engineers or computer scientists (or at least, it shouldn’t be). Take a look at the Dvorak layout below and compare it to your QWERTY keys. Note how many of the most common letters in the English language – T, N, S, vowels, etc. – are located in the “home row” where your fingers normally rest. This allows you to type the majority of letters with minimal hand movement. Less common letters like Q, X, and Z reside in the bottom row where keys are the most difficult to reach. On a Dvorak keyboard, approximately 70% of the keystrokes will occur in the home row compared to only 32% on a QWERTY layout.

Other alternative configurations are also available, including one-handed keyboards for people who like to type and use a mouse (or other peripheral) simultaneously, but Dvorak is probably the place to start if you’re looking for a quick way to increase your word-processing efficiency. Yes, it will take some vigilance to re-learn how to type on a completely different layout, but the results could very well be worth it. Besides, doesn’t it feel a little funny to willingly use a device designed to handicap you?

If you do decide to make the switch, the software to run Dvorak is already included with all major operating systems and can typically be activated with a with a simple change of preferences. You won’t even need to buy a new keyboard – Dvorak decal sets are available online (usually for a couple bucks) or if you’re ready to scrap QWERTY altogether you can manually remove and rearrange the keys yourself.

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Source: Wikipedia

Image: josue salazar

I use both Mac and Windows computers and I appreciate some attributes of each. For example, I really like the home and end keys on Windows keyboards. These guys make it a breeze to select a single line of text or jump to the end of the line to keep writing after an edit.

Because Apple market share is at an all time high, I’m sure a lot of people are going to notice the absence of these keys when they switch. Unless you’ve got the full-size apple keyboard, the “home” and “end” keys are absent on your desktop or macbook keyboard. But, if you hold down the fn (or control) key, you can use the left and right arrow keys as home and end keys respectively. Hold shift while doing this to select the characters between cursor positions.

Speaking of the Mac keyboard, the delete key is equivalent to the backspace key on a Windows computer — it deletes characters to the left of the cursor. But, you can make Mac’s delete key function like the Windows delete key if you hold the fn key while pressing it — deleting characters to the right. Another favorite keyboard shortcut on Mac OS is fn + F11 which will temporarily hide your windows to expose your desktop, allowing you to easily select files without going to the finder or minimizing all of your windows. Then press fn+F11 to bring all your windows back to their original positions.

By the way, you can plug a Windows USB keyboard into a Mac, although not all of the task keys function the way they do on a PC.

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Google is an amazing search engine. Most of us use it to find websites with information, but it can do so much more than show you websites with answers. There are hundreds of built in features that can give you the information directly, without having to go to another site.

Movies Times

Enter “movies” followed by your town/city/postal or zip code and you’ll see some movie times for a couple popular movies along with a link to get the full list of movie times for your area.

Track Packages

Just type in a FedEx, UPS or USPS tracking number and Google will give you a link to see the shipping details.

Track Flights

Enter the airline and flight number and search. No more clicks, the info will be right there.

Find the Best Price

Enter the model name or number of a product you’d like to buy. Then click the “shopping” link at the top and Google will show prices at online retailers. To ensure you get the lowest price, you can sort by price (including shipping). There will likely be some retailers that you’ve never heard of, so you can read retailer reviews and sort by their rating as well.

Define a Word

Lets say some fancy pants uses the word “noetic” and you don’t know what it means. You could go to your favorite dictionary site, or you could type “define:noetic” into Google search. It’ll give you a list of definitions from various sites.

Unit Conversion

Whether you need to convert cups to gallons or go between metric and imperial units, Google’s conversion engine can help.

Currency Conversion

Just type in the value and the currency to convert from and to, example: 100 Euros in Australian dollars

Time

You think you’re doing a nice thing, calling somebody far away to make sure they’re well and give them a familiar voice to talk to. Then they answer the phone as if you woke them up in the middle of the afternoon, but you forgot that’s 4am in Tokyo. You can easily avoid this by checking the local time before calling.

Weather

Should you pack shorts or pants for your weekend getaway? Get a 5 day forecast in seconds (and easily switch between F/C).

Stock Quotes

Just enter the stock symbol and search.

There are many more of these features and I’ll be sure to share more later.

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The internet is a great place to catch TV shows and clips that you or your PVR missed.

Unfortunately, a lot of websites only allow their video content to be viewed in their service area. Some content is only available directly from cable distributor or certain directtv packages. It’s not because they’re mean, it’s for legal and cost savings reasons.

That’s right, it’s expensive to stream video over the internet to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in a reliable way. You need a lot of servers and bandwidth, both of which are expensive, especially in large quantities. If a broadcaster only services one country, they’re not likely going to speed money to reach customers outside of their service area, although they may allow it if there are no legal restrictions and the advertisers are willing to pay to reach those users.

Secondly, they may not be legally allowed to broadcast outside of their broadcast area. Broadcasters buy distribution rights for the shows and other content that they air. These distribution rights are usually sold by country. That means a broadcaster who airs a show in the US is not allowed to distribute that show over the internet to another country since they have not bought the distribution rights required to broadcast in that country. In fact, another broadcaster in that country likely has paid for the rights to broadcast that same show there.

There are also legal agreements with members of various guilds and unions that may prevent content from being distributed in certain areas or for a finite time after the original air date.

Broadcasters can identify which country you’re in when you access their website. They use various methods to determine your location, but the most popular is something called Geo-IP look up. Basically, when you navigate to their website, the network address of your computer is sent to the web server. They can look up that address in a database to see the country that address is registered to. This method is accurate most of the time and in some cases they can actually narrow down the part the city that you live in.

Although there may be legal and ethical issues with it, there are ways to circumvent some of the methods that are used, potentially allowing you to view content from outside their intended region of distribution. These methods may be illegal in your country, so verify the legality of doing this before attempting them.

I think there is at least one ethical use for circumventing regional lockouts. For example, I was in Canada a couple weeks ago and I wanted to catch up on one of my favorite shows. I normally watch the show on network TV and all of the advertising is relevant to me. I wasn’t able to watch videos on the broadcaster’s website from Canada, so I employed the following method to make it work:

1. Install this Firefox plugin: http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967 (requires Firefox browser)
2. In Firefox, Go to “tools” > “modify headers”
3. From the drop down box on the left select add
4. Then enter: “X-Forwarded-For” in the first input box without the quotation marks
5. Enter one of the following IP addresses in the second input box without the quotation marks (choose the country where the content is accessible from)
   USA – 12.13.14.15
   Canada – 207.245.252.27
   UK – 193.35.131.194
6. Leave the last input box empty, save the filter, and enable it (should look like this: http://imgur.com/Feb4.png )
7. Click the “Configuration” button on the bottom right then proceed to check the “always on” button.
8. Close the Modify Headers box, restart the Firefox browser and visit the intended website.

I should note some websites that the above method does not work for:

• cbs.com
• cwtv.com (the CW)
• hulu.com
• sho.com (showtime)
• tnt.tv

There are at least four times that many sites that DO work, although I’d rather not single them out for legal reasons. There are also a few other methods, but this is by far the easiest to setup and use. If you have IP addresses for other countries, let me know and I’ll add them.

Also, it takes a lot of people and money to make these great shows, be sure to support them by purchasing them when they come out on disc and renting them from iTunes, Netflix, etc.

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Sources: Hulu, Spike

Microsoft and Apple are mortal enemies, at least, that’s what their TV commercials will have you believe.

They’ve always been competitors, originally trying to dominate our preference in computers, and now music players and mobile phones. Apple has a strong lead in music player and mobile phone segments, but Microsoft has a big lead as the dominant operating system. That said, Apple has become much more competitive in that space, especially in the past few years.

Their competition is most visible during commercial breaks, when they take jabs at each others potential flaws. Forget on court trash talk, when you’ve got as much money as these guys, you can trash talk in the form of multi-year, multi-million dollar ad campaigns — it’s so much more fun.

You see, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have a long history as friends. In the early days, they used to take their girlfriends on double dates with each other. They didn’t see a lot of each other after Bill moved to Washington State, but they’ve remained friends.

In fact, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1996, the company needed help. To be a serious player, Apple also needed competitive office software.

Mac fans and developers were shocked on August 6th, 1997 when Bill Gates appeared via teleconference during Steve Job’s presentation at Macworld.

Steve and Bill announced that Microsoft would invest $150 million in Apple. Today, it sounds crazy, and at the time it sounded pretty crazy too. Jobs was booed when he announced the partnership and Bill was booed when he appeared on screen. But, it actually made a lot of sense for both companies. Steve said it best, “We have to let go of a few notions here. We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft needs to lose.”

Microsoft got Internet Explorer installed as the default browser on Macs and Apple dropped their long standing lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft copied the look and feel of the Mac operating system with Windows.

Apple got the cash they needed and they also got a pledge that Microsoft would support MS Office on the Mac for another 5 years.

Microsoft still dominates Apple in computer operating system market share: 91.32% for Windows and 5.06% for Mac OS (as of July 2010).

But, Apple is way ahead of Microsoft in smartphone market share at 14% while Windows Mobile only has a 5%. However, Google is ahead of them both at 17% and RIM has a slight lead over Google at 18%, due to their longstanding BlackBerry products.

The next place the Microsoft/Apple rivalry will play out is right in your living room as both companies are stepping up their television and movie entertainment systems.

Stay tuned.

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Sources: The Guardian, Wired, CNET, Information Week, Hits Link, Wikipedia (Smartphone)

Photo: David Geller (cc)

All that food is one reason keyboards and mice are have more bacteria than most toilet seats. Also, office toilet seats are usually sanitized daily, when was the last time your keyboard or mouse were?

This tip is helpful because your hands never touch your food. This prevents your keyboard from getting dirtier and it keeps your hands from passing bacteria to your mouth.

1. Pour bite-size snacks into a cup or glass.

2. Angle cup into your mouth so bite-size snacks fall into your mouth.

3. Chew, swallow and repeat from step 2.

Broken Secrets | By: Chad Upton

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Sources: Home Food Safety Org, ABC News

Now when you want to share a video, you find the video on youtube and send a link — that keeps everybody’s inbox from filling up.

Change the Starting Position

Sometimes, you’ll want to make sure your friends see exactly what you’re talking about. To start the video at a specific spot, you can append “#t=MMmSSs” to the end of the url (link). You’ll replace the uppercase Ms with the number of minutes and the uppercase Ss with the number of seconds in the video where you want playback to begin.

For example, if I want to jump to the 2 minute, 39 second point in a video, then I would add “#t2m39s” to the end of the URL (example:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_HkH8huuzA#t=2m39s)

This trick also works for embedding a video. Although, when embedding use “&start” instead of “#t” and it’s in seconds only. (example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_HkH8huuzA&start=159). Try playing the following video, it will start near the end.

High Definition

Many YouTube videos are now available in HD. To ensure you link to the HD version, append “&fmt=22″ to the end of the url. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_HkH8huuzA&fmt=22)

Download Video

Maybe you want to transfer a video to your iPod or laptop for offline playback. If you load a video in youtube, you can swap out “youtube” for “keephd” in the URL. If there is a forward slash “/” after “watch” then you may want to remove that as well. This new url will take you to keephd.com and it will give you links to download the youtube video.

Broken Secrets | By: Chad Upton

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Sources: Make Use Of, Ampercent

The meaning of the word “font” has been butchered since the introduction of desktop publishing in the mid 1980s.

What is the true meaning? Directly from Wikipedia, “… a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface.”

In other words, a font is a specific version of a typeface. Arial is a typeface, and 12-point Arial Italic is a font. 14-point Arial Italic is a different font in the Arial font family.

Changing the size of text on a computer is not a significant amount of work, so it might seem silly to think that you’re actually changing the font when you do this. Especially since we think of the font as just the typeface and not its size or style. But, this terminology made a lot of sense before desktop publishing.

The first printing presses used characters that were carved from wood and arranged in order to form a complete sentence, although they were glyphs rather than Latin characters.

This evolved into more modern systems that used metal characters that were more durable. At that time, changing the size of a typeface was a lot of work — it meant you had to pull all of the letters out and reassemble the words with a different set of metal pieces.

It was very expensive for a printer to have multiple styles and sizes of characters available for their press. When a printer bought a new font they would specifically order the typeface (Times, Arial…etc), size (10-point, 12-point…etc) and style (bold, italic…etc).

There was two drawer case for storing each font. The capital letters were in the upper drawer and the other characters were in the lower drawer. That’s why we call them “upper case” and “lower case” letters.

Broken Secrets | By: Chad Upton

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Sources (Wikipedia links): Typeface, Font, Desktop Publishing, Movable Type,

Image: Wikipedia

This is by no means a complete list, but I wanted to provide some of the most useful and least well known iPhone tricks. Most of this list also applies to the iPod touch; if you know someone with one of these, be sure to send them a link to this article.

Double Click the Home Button

The button on the front of the phone is called the “home” button. You can choose what happens when you double click it. Mine is set to go to my phone favorites, making it quicker to dial my people. You can get to this screen by going to Settings > General > Home.

As you can see on the option screen above, there is an option for “iPod Controls.” When those are on and the phone is in standby mode (blank screen), you can double click the home button to see the current song/artist/album cover and show audio controls (volume/forward/back/play/pause) — see below for example. If you want to fast forward or rewind, hold the forward/back buttons respectively.

Add a Phone Number Pause

When you enter a phone number in contacts, you can choose an alternate keyboard and click the “pause” button, but when you’re on the dialing keypad, there is no such button. If you hold down * a comma will appear. This is a pause, which tells the phone to wait before dialing the numbers that follow. This allows you to enter your voice mail password or other automated phone system entry before the call. I discovered this one last night and I haven’t seen it documented anywhere else.

Snap Screen Shot

This is extremely useful if you want to write a post on your blog about iPhone secrets and you need screen captures. It’s also great if you want to make wallpaper based on a written note or a anything you display on your phone. Basically, hold down the home (front) button and then press the standby (top) button. You’ll know it worked because the screen will flash white. The image will be added to your camera roll.

Power Down and Reset

Your iPhone is a small computer and like a computer, it sometimes requires a restart when it’s behaving poorly. Occasionally it freezes or it can’t find the network after resuming from airplane mode, remedy this by holding the home and standby buttons for about 10 seconds, until you see a slider to shutdown or an apple icon appears on the screen.

Word and Paragraph Selection

Double-tap a word to select it for cut/copy/delete. Quadruple-tap a word to select the entire paragraph for cut/copy/delete.

Easy Period

At the end of a sentence, double tap the space bar to get a period and a space. Apple stole this one from Blackberry and I’m glad they did.

Quick Punctuation

When typing on the iPhone’s qwerty keyboard, you obviously need to press the “.?123″ button to get the punctuation keyboard. After you type a punctuation mark, you have to press the “ABC” button to get the qwerty keyboard back. But, if you press the “.?123″ button and keep your finger down while you slide over to your punctuation mark, and then lift up on that mark, it will add that punctuation mark and switch back to the qwerty keyboard, saving you a couple taps in the process.

Tap title bar to scroll up

When you want to navigate to a new web page, refresh the current one or perform a new search, you have to get back to the top of the page. The fastest way to do that is tap the title bar, it’ll take you up.

Fit to Screen

If you liked the space bar secret, you’ll love this. Double tap a block of text in Safari to zoom in on that column and fit it to the screen. This makes it much easier to read text in web pages.

Two finger scrolling

Some web pages have scrollable objects embedded in them, such as large text fields. If you want to scroll that item without scrolling the whole page, use two fingers on that item to scroll it.

Thanks to Ryan Harper for suggesting some of the tips.

Broken Secrets | By: Chad Upton

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Sources: tap tap tap, ismashphone, iphonetoolbox, engadget

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is a lot of fun and a great way to stay in the loop, but I wish there were fewer FarmVille updates.

Thankfully, Facebook has made it very easy to hide these updates. If you put your mouse over an update, a “hide” button will appear in the top right corner (figure 1).

Figure 1

Click the hide button and you’ll have the option to hide all updates from that person or hide the updates from that application (figure 2).

Figure 2

Click “Hide FarmVille” and you’ll never see another FarmVille update. The same technique works for other applications (“apps”) such as Mafia Wars, Cafe World and others. On that note, if you’re not already a fan, join Broken Secrets on Facebook — I won’t spam your feed, I promise.

Broken Secrets | Written By: Chad Upton

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A friend shared this secret with me recently and it blew my mind: use binder clips to catch the cables.

I bought a pack of Medium Binder Clips at Staples (24 @ $2.79) and I weaved my cables through — they work perfectly. If your cable slides through easily, you may need to tie a very loose knot in the cable or even better, put a couple zip-ties around the cable to stop it from falling through.

Broken Secrets | Written By: Chad Upton

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If you reset this memory then you can keep printing until the cartridge is actually empty. Depending on the brand and model of cartridge, this reset is actually really easy. If you look above the small circuit board on the cartridge, there is sometimes a pinhole reset button, kind of like the paperclip eject hole on most cd rom drives.

Check out the following video to see a demonstration.

I should also note that not all cartridges can be reset in this way. Here are a couple of sites that show other methods of resetting some cartridges.

• HP
• Canon
• Epson

Doing a cartridge reset is also useful if you refill your own cartridges, since the cartridge may report that it’s empty even after you refill it.

I should also mention that laser printers have become extremely cheap. I rarely print in color, so a black and white laser printer is very cost effective for me. When I need to print photos, there are lots of drug stores or department stores that do a great job for a low price. If I need to print color documents, there are many great places to get that done at a reasonable price too. With a $100 laser printer, you’re often able to print thousands of pages of text on the toner cartridge that is included.

Big thanks to Derek Santos for sending the video and inspiring this post.

Broken Secrets | Written By: Chad Upton

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]]> http://brokensecrets.com/2010/04/16/extend-the-life-of-printer-ink-cartridges/feed/ 7 Broken Secrets http://brokensecrets.com/2010/04/11/space-bar-scrolls-down-in-your-browser/ http://brokensecrets.com/2010/04/11/space-bar-scrolls-down-in-your-browser/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:59:29 +0000 Chad Upton http://brokensecrets.com/?p=1985 ]]> This is an awesome week and I mean that figuratively. The Book of Awesome arrives in stores this Wednesday and I wanted to celebrate by sharing some broken secrets from the website 1000AwesomeThings.com.

One of my favorite “Awesome Things” is “Learning a new keyboard shortcut.” Since I’m talking favorites, I want to share one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts: the space bar.

If you’re reading this in a web browser or you do a lot of reading on the web, this is one shortcut you should learn before all others. To scroll your browser down exactly one page, press the space bar.  To scroll up one page, hold shift while you press the space bar.

It’s that simple, happy reading.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

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Photo: jakebouma (creative commons)

I’ve spent my fair share of time commuting in planes, trains and automobiles, but few of these experiences were memorable. Even fewer were memorable in a good way. But, I’ll never forget the bus ride when I first listened to the song, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie. I had played the song dozens of times before, but this was the first time I really listened to it.

You see, there was a problem on the commuter rail line and buses were being organized to take us to our destination train stations. I usually caught a much earlier train, but I stayed downtown after work to visit with some friends. It was late, I was really tired and it was way past my usual bedtime. I was stuck on that bus for a very long time, but it actually wasn’t that bad.

I’ve talked about this phenomenon with other commuters and many of them agree that a short commute can be therapeutic. Whether it’s by car, train or bus, that time alone between work and home lets you gather your thoughts for whatever comes next.

Music relaxes me, which helps me organize my thoughts. Of course, headphones are the polite way to listen in public, although there’s always some guy playing brick breaker on his blackberry at volume level 10. Beep, Beeeep, Beep Beep, Beeeep (times infinity).

Most ear-bud and in-ear style headphones have a clip or sliding collar that holds the wires from the two earphones together. If you position that clip or collar at the end of the wires that is nearest the earphones, it will prevent the two wires from getting tangled with each other. This will save you a lot of time and frustration the next time you listen.

When you wind the cord around your device, hand or whatever else you do with it, keep in mind that cables should be cared for and you should not force the cable to bend in someway that it does not want to bend — doing this with any sort of electric cord will shorten its life.

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Written By: Chad Upton

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You may already defragment your hard drive to keep it tidy and reduce its workload, but there is a secret the LCD manufacturers don’t want you to know about — your monitor needs similar treatment to perform its best.

There are a few websites that can run scan patterns across your screen to achieve 100% pixel defragmentation. It takes about 15 seconds to complete and you’ll have a noticeably better picture on your screen.

Bookmark the following site because you should do this about once a month: click here to use it.

[THIS POST WAS THE 2010 APRIL FOOLS' POST]

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

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]]> http://brokensecrets.com/2010/04/01/computer-screen-pixel-defragmenting/feed/ 2 Broken Secrets LCD Monitor http://brokensecrets.com/2010/03/24/save-your-wet-electronics-by-sticking-them-in-rice/ http://brokensecrets.com/2010/03/24/save-your-wet-electronics-by-sticking-them-in-rice/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 05:01:18 +0000 Chad Upton http://brokensecrets.com/?p=1745 ]]> Simply put, when you make rice, you take 1 cup of rice and pour at least a cup and a half of water into it. Then you put it on the stove for a while and when you’re done, there’s no more water — it’s in the rice!

The point is, rice is really good at absorbing water.

So if you drop your cell phone in a bucket of water, toilet or swimming pool: get it quickly; turn it off; dry it and immediately put it into a bag of uncooked rice.

If you can access the battery, you should take it out too since some devices, especially cell phones, are still consuming power on standby, even when they appear to be off.

If you’ve got a wet vacuum, like a shop-vac, you should use it to suck some of the water out. A friend of mine (you know who you are) spilled water on my laptop keyboard once. I flipped the laptop upside down immediately, turned it off and pulled out the battery. It set it down and ran to get the shop-vac. While keeping it upside-down, I sucked all the water out of the keyboard.

If you try this, be careful of loose pieces. Some of these vacuums are really powerful — mine sucked up a couple keys from the keyboard, but I was able to retrieve them from the vacuum canister and reattach them. I left the laptop powered off overnight and it worked flawlessly in the morning.

Do not use a hair dryer or any other type of blower, you will only push the water deeper — gravity is much more productive at sucking water out than trying blowing it out with a hair dryer.

If your basement is stacked with boxes from every piece of electronics you’ve ever purchased, like me, have a look inside those boxes. Electronics often ship with silica gel packets. You know, those little condiment sized packets that say, “DO NOT EAT” on them? Those absorb moisture even better than rice and that’s why they’re there in the first place. If you can find any of those, put them against the electronics when you put it in rice.

After you’ve placed it in rice, you want to leave it there as long as possible. Although some people have reported success after only a few hours, you want to leave it off and in rice for as long as possible, 24 hours or longer if possible.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

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Sources: All Recipes, Wiki How, Seattle Weekly

There are a few services available that let people choose the caller id number that appears when they make a phone call.

Telemarketers and collections agencies are not allowed to change their number, but some still do.

I share this secret because caller id spoofing is becoming popular among fraudsters. You should be weary of any caller asking you for something, especially money or personal information. If a caller claims to be from your financial institution or another company that requires personal information, ask them some information that confirms they are who they say they are. For example, if it’s your cell phone company, ask them which calling plan you’re on.

Here are some of the caller id spoofing services:

• Telespoof
• Spoofcard
• Phone Gangster
• Spooftel
• Spoofapp (for iPhone, BlackBerry or Android)

Due to potential abuse of these services, the state of Florida outlawed caller id spoofing services for a couple years, but that decision was recently overturned. Others states are working on laws to make them illegal, but for now, they are legal in all states.

There are some legitimate uses for this service. If your profession requires that you make calls from home or cell, this service could be used to show your office number instead of your personal number.

There is a cheaper option called *67. Dial that before you dial a phone number and it blocks your number from being displayed for that call — it’s free in most places.

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Written By: Chad Upton

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]]> http://brokensecrets.com/2010/03/08/caller-id-can-be-hacked/feed/ 3 Broken Secrets caller id http://brokensecrets.com/2010/02/26/how-to-get-the-best-price-when-shopping-online/ http://brokensecrets.com/2010/02/26/how-to-get-the-best-price-when-shopping-online/#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:48:03 +0000 Chad Upton http://brokensecrets.com/?p=1474 ]]> The internet has completely changed bargain hunting and finding the best price couldn’t be any easier.

I like to use Google products (formerly known as “Froogle”). It compares prices at thousands of retailers and show you the best deals along with ratings for each retailer.

Google products also searches sites like ebay. Although, it’s worthwhile checking ebay independently, there are lots of auctions for new products or if you’re willing to take a used one then you’ll get a great deal. If you’ve looking for something that doesn’t ship well, such as appliances, be sure to check craigslist.org or kijiji.com (owned by ebay). They let you search for products in your area so shipping is not necessary.

Sometimes the best price is at a website you’ve never heard of. This is when customer ratings and common sense are really helpful. If you’ve never heard of the retailer and can’t find a phone number for the office on the site, then I probably wouldn’t order from them. Amazon might be the only exception to this and in fact they’re one of my favorite online retailers, they frequently have the best price and their shipping and customer service are great.

If you’re searching for cameras, be weary of small companies based in New York City. They usually have the best price on camera equipment, but there are lots of online horror stories about some of these companies.

If you’re searching for travel products (hotels, flights, car rentals) then I suggest an aggregator such as kayak.com. It goes out to all of the other travel sites and pulls in the best options from each, then it provides tools to filter those results.

If you’re specifically looking for a hotel, I like hotels.com. Every ten nights you stay, you get one free. It’s similar to having a hotel loyalty program but this gives you the freedom to stay at any brand of hotel. Another tool I like for hotel searching, is Map Channels. Just type in an address and it will plot nearby hotels with vacancy on a map — hover over the hotels to see the price. This really helps if you’re trying to get a hotel in a very specific part of a city or near an event or address. Also, be sure to read my previous post, “You Can Request a Mini Fridge in Your Hotel Room.”

After you’ve found the best price, swing by a coupon sharing site to see if you can save even more, or at least get free shipping. RetailMeNot.com or CouponCabin.com (and others) will let you search by retailer and provide you with coupon codes you can enter at those sites. I tried entering a few popular retailers (Amazon, Home depot, Sears, American Eagle, Target) and they all had coupon codes. DO NOT make an online purchase without checking these sites first, otherwise you’re just giving away your money.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

Available on Kindle

You’ll need a thin sturdy object to operate the manual eject, a straightened paperclip works well. In rare cases, the hole will be slightly smaller than a paperclip and a sewing needle will be required.

Look for a round hole on the face of the CD drive that is just large enough to feed a paperclip through. The following photos show the manual eject hole on a desktop and laptop CD drive.

Once you have found the hole, push a straightened paperclip through the hole and when you feel it stop, push a little harder and it should push open the motorized drive tray (desktop) or release the drive lock (laptop).

If you’ve got a Mac, most new models have a slot load drive (there is no tray that the disc sits on, similar to most car CD players). Some of these drives are particularly bad at ejecting CDs with uneven edges (if yours does this then you’ll know what I’m talking about) and there is a paperclip method for these drives too. There is an Apple support document for this issue; you’ll have to click here to view it since I can’t use their material.

Maybe you’ve seen that hole and wondered what it was for, maybe not. Frankly, it doesn’t matter, because you know now and that’s what we do here.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

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If you buy a new battery, keep your old one. I used to travel almost every week for work and I always had a second laptop battery with me. At times, the second battery was old, and only ran for 45 minutes, but that was a lifesaver on an airplane when you’re trying to finish some work (or watch the end of a movie you brought).

I usually buy the aftermarket batteries and never have problems with them. I did have a problem with an aftermarket power supply cord once; it died after three months. But, even with that $13 loss, buying aftermarket laptop accessories has saved me a lot of money over the years.

If you travel a lot, a second power cord is paramount. You should have one that you always leave in your computer bag, that way it’s impossible to leave behind when you travel. Have you ever tried to find a computer power cord at a retail store? If you are lucky enough to find one, it’s going to cost at least $60. If you can’t find one, and you need one for work — it’s a disaster.

In the meantime, you want your existing battery to run on its charge for as long as possible. It really comes down to energy consumption. Think about your computer the way you think about your car. You use less gas when you’re going down hill and more gas when you’re going up hill because your engine needs to work harder going up hill (which requires more energy/fuel). To make your laptop battery last the longest, you don’t want your computer to work hard. Here are some ways to do this:

Keep it clean. While your laptop is turned off, use canned air to blow the dust out of the fan on your computer. Dust is a really good insulator and your computer needs to stay cool. When dust builds up in the heat-sink, the fan has to work harder to keep the computer cool, which drains your battery more quickly.

Avoid peripherals. Don’t use your CD/DVD/Bluray drive if you can avoid it. Spinning the disc and running the laser both require extra power. Also, USB drives with lights on them should be unplugged when not in use.

Dim the lights. You computer screen is one of the worst culprits for sucking battery juice. Unless you’re outside or in a really bright room, you should be able to dim the screen and still see what you’re doing just fine. Look for a set of icons on the keyboard with a shining sun on them — they’re for changing the brightness of your screen.

Drive downhill. If your computer is clean and you hear the fan get louder, that means the computer is working hard (and the fan is trying to cool it down). If what you’re doing can wait until you’re plugged in, save it until then. Watching movies and playing graphically intense games are two examples of activity that can drain your battery more quickly.

Adjust your power settings. Most laptops have power profiles/rules that are used when running on battery power. You can set your screen to shut off within a few minutes of inactivity, you don’t lose any data but your screen stops using power. If you’re not moving the mouse then you probably don’t need the screen on (unless you’re doing a presentation or watching a movie).

Disable wireless functions like wifi and bluetooth if possible. These use a lot of power and should be off if you’re not using them (like on an airplane).

Disable scheduled tasks. If you have a virus scan that runs at a specific time every day, disable that when you’re on battery (but don’t disable constant protection).

Close programs you’re not using. Programs you’re not using may be working in the background, you don’t want your computer to work any harder than it has to.

One final thing. If you are going to buy a new battery, get the highest mAh (milliamp hour) battery you can afford. This indicates how much energy can be stored in that battery, and they vary widely, so look closely.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

[available on Kindle]

That’s because our eyes can recognize a contrast difference of 1,000,000,000:1. That means, the brightest thing our eyes can see is a billion times brighter than the darkest thing. Good contrast to your eyes is like a gourmet meal for your taste buds. Contrast adds a lot of detail to the picture and ultimately immerses you in the action.

Unfortunately, when shopping for TVs, contrast ratio is almost meaningless. It could be really useful, but all of the manufacturers measure this number differently and then call it the same thing — it’s really only useful when comparing two TVs from the same manufacturer.

Imagine you want to buy a new car: you are cross shopping three manufacturers who measure fuel economy in three different ways. The first one, measures fuel economy while driving down a hill, while the other two measure it on flat land and while driving up a hill. Obviously, you can’t compare the results of those tests. But, if you’re looking at two cars from the same manufacturer then there is some comparative value to those numbers, even though they may not be accurate in a typical situation.

Thankfully, our eyes are extremely sensitive to contrast. Turn both TVs on and look at a flat black image for a while. A flat black image makes it easy to spot variations in darkness (aka “banding”), no banding should be present in a good TV. If you still can’t tell the difference and they both look good, then the difference is too small to worry about. Trust your eyes, they are incredible instruments.

It takes 20-30 minutes for your eyes to adjust from one extreme to the other because the contrast ratio is so high. If you’re in bright sunlight and then walk into a very dark room, it will take 20-30 minutes before you can see your best in that room. If you are in a moderately bright room and go into a very dark room, it is often closer to 15 minutes.

The rods and cones in your eye are tested during dark adaptation. Rods are more sensitive to light and take longer to adjust. Cones are much faster to adjust, often in approximately 9 minutes. People over the age of 50 need twice as much light to see as well in the dark as a 30 year old. So, if you need more light, consider my CF light secret.

Frequent fliers will eventually notice that the aircrew dims the airplane’s interior lights on final approach during night landings . They want your eyes to be adjusted to the darkness outside in case the landing does not go as expected and you have to evacuate the plane.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

Available on Kindle

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Sources: Why Planes Dim Interior Lights, Adaptation (Eye), Contrast Ratio, Growing Older

Just dial: 1-800-GOOG-411

It is just like your local telephone company’s 411 service, except it’s free and it automatically connects you to the number for free. It works from US or Canadian phones and can be used to find US and Canadian business listings.

It also has some cool features. When you find a listing, you can say “text message” and Google will instantly text you the phone number, address and a map link for the address that opens in Google maps on a capable phone.

There are even cordless phones available with a dedicated button for Google 411.

Remember goog-411 the next time you need to make dinner reservations or order takeout — it couldn’t be easier or cheaper.

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Photo: morrowplanet (cc) | Source: Google 411

This secret will save you some keystrokes.

Instead of typing “www.BrokenSecrets.com” and then hitting enter, just type “BrokenSecrets” and press CTRL+ENTER (Mac users use COMMAND + RETURN). That will automatically add “www.” to the beginning and “.com” to the end.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, look at the top of your web browser (the program you’re using to view this site).  You’ll see a text input area that starts with, “http://brokensecrets.com”.  That is where you can type web addresses that you’d like to visit.  For most sites, you need to at least type the address and the extension (ex: brokensecrets.com).

In Windows, this works with: FireFox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. On Mac, this works with FireFox and Chrome, but use CTRL + RETURN for Chrome. It does not work in Safari for Mac or Windows.

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Browsers are commonly confused with search engines, which are just web pages that you view using your web browser software. That’s obviously not a surprise to some of you, but like it says in the Google video below, it is a secret to almost 90% of people.

Knowing some browser tricks will make this tool work much better for you.

Modern browsers have tabs, which promote easier multitasking. There are a few ways to perform the tasks listed below, but here are a few of the best (and least used) tricks for managing tabs in the top three browsers mentioned above.

Managing Tabs

• Open new tab: double click on empty area of tab bar
• Close tab: middle click anywhere on the tab (does not work in Safari)
• Open link in new tab instead of replacing current page: middle click on link (instead of left click)

Because we spend a lot of time reading text in our browser, there are a couple of features built in to make reading easier. Try these keyboard shortcuts right now.

Reading

• Scroll browser down exactly one page: spacebar
• Scroll browser up exactly one page: shift + spacebar
• Full Screen Toggle: F11
• Zoom In (make text larger): ctrl + scroll mouse wheel up
• Zoom Out: ctrl + scroll mouse wheel down

If you know other really useful browser secrets, leave a comment so everyone can enjoy.

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