Broken Secrets » Computers and Internet

Microsoft Invested in Apple in 1997

Chad Upton — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:00:53 +0000

By Chad Upton | Editor

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)

Desktop Snacking Without a Greasy Keyboard

Chad Upton — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 10:00:28 +0000

With more work and less help, it’s no surprise that nearly 70% of Americans eat lunch at their desks. At 61% the majority of people also snack at their desk throughout the day.

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

YouTube URL Secrets

Chad Upton — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:00:58 +0000

It used to be, when you wanted to share a video, you’d attach it to an email and send it out to your friends.

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

Arial is Not a Font

Chad Upton — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:01:37 +0000

Arial is a typeface (aka “font family”). In fact, what many people refer to as “fonts” are actually “typefaces.”

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

iPhone and iPod Tricks

Chad Upton — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:11:26 +0000

Apple has sold 50 million iPhones and 35 million iPod touch devices, so there are a lot of people who can benefit from these secrets.

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

Remove Farmville Updates from Your Facebook Feed

Chad Upton — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 05:01:41 +0000

Many of my friends play Facebook games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Although my Facebook news feed is littered with requests, I don’t have any interest in watering their crops or feeding their puppies. All that noise makes it difficult to get to the heart of Facebook productivity, making jokes and sending pokes.

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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Stop Cords from Falling Behind Your Desk

Chad Upton — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:01:15 +0000

At some point, everyone with a rechargeable gadget will curse gravity as the cord falls behind their desk. This is extremely annoying, mostly because you never want to go under your desk if you don’t have to; although, you’ll probably find some other lost treasures when you do.

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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Extend the Life of Printer Ink Cartridges

Chad Upton — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 05:28:21 +0000

If you’ve got an ink jet printer then you’re likely spending a lot of money on ink. Most of these printers use expensive and sophisticated ink cartridges. These cartridges monitor usage and estimate the amount of ink remaining. The estimate is usually conservative, meaning it indicates you are out of ink before you’re really out of ink.

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.

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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The Space Bar Scrolls Down in Your Browser

Chad Upton — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:59:29 +0000

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.

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Photo: jakebouma (creative commons)

Keeping Headphones Untangled

Chad Upton — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:32:25 +0000

Walking, flying, train and bus riding — these are some of the most inane, meaningless and repetitive activities that you may do. Many people do them everyday, even twice or more. Headphones, and the devices they’re connected to, make these activities more enjoyable, memorable and sometimes even meaningful.

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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Improve Monitor Picture Quality in 15 Seconds

Chad Upton — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:01:58 +0000

In a previous post, I wrote about properly cleaning LCD screens on televisions and monitors. That article will help you keep the screen clean, but what about the electronics inside?

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]

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Save Your Wet Electronics by Sticking Them in Rice

Chad Upton — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 05:01:18 +0000

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.

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Written By: Chad Upton

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Sources: All Recipes, Wiki How, Seattle Weekly

Caller ID Can Be Hacked

Chad Upton — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:46:21 +0000

If you rely on caller ID to screen calls, you should be aware that the number you see cannot always be trusted.

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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How to Get the Best Price When Shopping Online

Chad Upton — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:48:03 +0000

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.

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Rescue a Disc From Your CD Drive With a Paperclip

Chad Upton — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:39:06 +0000

Most CD/DVD drives in computers have a secret eject button. It allows you to open the CD drive when a disc gets stuck and cannot be ejected normally. It’s also helpful if you need to remove a disc and you don’t want (or have time) to power up the computer — the force eject works without power.

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.

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How To Make Your Laptop Battery Run Longer

Chad Upton — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:52:40 +0000

When your laptop is new, you can run on battery power for hours! But, as the battery gets older it doesn’t hold a charge like it used to. Ideally, you would just buy a new battery, but laptop batteries are expensive. From the manufacturer, they range from $80 to $150. Aftermarket batteries are often 50% – 70% of the manufacturer’s price. I’d recommend searching eBay or Amazon for new aftermarket batteries.

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

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Your Eyes Adapt to Darkness In 20-30 Minutes

Chad Upton — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:10:17 +0000

If you’ve shopped for an HDTV, you’ve probably seen something on the spec sheet called “contrast ratio.” Contrast ratio is the difference between the darkest and brightest picture a TV can produce. Contrast is important to a good picture.

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

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

Google Provides Free 411 Searches and Connections

Chad Upton — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:14:42 +0000

Google has a lot of cool services that most people don’t know about. One of my favorite Google secrets is Google 411.

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.

BrokenSecrets.com [available on kindle]

Photo: morrowplanet (cc) | Source: Google 411

Automatically Add WWW. and .COM to a Website Address

Chad Upton — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:12:34 +0000

Because I spend so much time on the internet, I have bookmarked hundreds of websites, maybe thousands. They’re neatly organized into folders by category, some of them 8 folders deep. But, I rarely see anyone else use bookmarks — I know that you’re typing in the address for many of the sites you visit.

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.

BrokenSecrets.com

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Web Browser Secrets

Chad Upton — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:18:57 +0000

Based on the results in the video below, I should start by clarifying that a web browser is a piece of software that you use to view web pages. The top three browsers are: Internet Explorer (Microsoft), Firefox (Mozilla) and Safari (Apple). Google’s browser (named “Chrome”) is a close fourth. There is a 98% chance that you’re using one of these browsers to view this page right now.

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.

BrokenSecrets.com