Dropped your phone in water? Next is What?

Accidents happen with phones and water but it doesn’t always mean that all hope is lost. Below is a brief guide as to what you should do if your phone has been totally immersed in water.
1. Take the phone out of the water as quickly as possible.
2. Do not attempt to switch it on as this may cause further damage.
3. Remove the battery as quickly as you can, also remove the memory and sim cards.
4. If dropped in fresh water dry it off with a towel. If dropped in salt water rinse it thoroughly with fresh water. I know it sounds crazy getting it wet again but salt can cause a lot of internal damage such as corrosion. Again dry with a towel. You may also want to rinse it if you dropped it in a toilet.
5. Place the phone, battery and it’s wet accessories in a plastic container (like a lunch box) and completely cover it with uncooked rice, use plenty of it. Again this sounds crazy but rice has desiccating properties that help draw the water out of the phone. Do not place a lid on the container.
6. Place the container somewhere very warm and dry for at least 3 days. An airing cupboard is often the ideal place.
7. Do not use a hair dryer directly on the phone to speed up the process. Too much heat can cause even more damage.
This isn’t guaranteed to work but many people have successfully revived their phones and retrieved their data using this method.
Keep in mind that your phone is on borrowed time after you do this. Make it your first priority to retrieve any data that you would like to keep. It may only work for a few minutes, days, weeks, months or it may even last years.
You should monitor the phone carefully during charging. If it gets very hot the battery may be damaged and should be replaced.
After any exposure to water you no longer have a warranty as water damage is not covered. Any insurance policies on the phone may also be voided unless you are covered for accidental damage.
A more efficient alternative to rice is silica gel. You most likely won’t have enough of the stuff to hand when the accident happens but it is good to use. Silica gel can be bought from electronic wholesalers like this example.
Thanks to shuntfield for this information.

RUNNING SKYPE FROM A FLASH DRIVE

Using Skype could keep your phone bill down, but it isn’t portable—or is it? Mark O’Neill from Makeuseof.com explains how to run Skype from a USB flash drive so you can connect with your contacts anywhere. He outlines 7 steps. Here are the first 3:

1. The first step is to make the folder on your USB stick where it will all stay. So call it whatever you want. Let’s call it “Portable Skype” for example. But you can give it whatever name you want.

2. Now go to the installed Skype app on your computer (normally located at C:\Program Files\Skype) and look for a file called Skype.exe. Right-click and copy that file. Do not move it anywhere. Just right-click and copy.

3. Now go to the “Portable Skype” folder and insert that copied “Skype.exe” file into the “Portable Skype” folder.

4. In the “Portable Skype” folder, make a new sub-folder called data

5. Inside the “data” folder, make a new text document using Notepad or something similar.   Name the file skype.bat

6. Open this file up and insert the following line: skype.exe /datapath:”Data” /removable

7. Save and close the file. That’s it. You’re done. You now have a portable version of Skype.

I tested this by moving the whole lot onto a USB stick and then launching it from there. It launched immediately but the firewall asked me if I wanted to let it pass. So you would need to configure the firewall of the computer you would be using the portable Skype on to allow the app through.

There is an interesting thread on PortableApps about what should be put on the skype.bat file. If you want to fine-tune the file, you might want to read the thread.

This is just a “rough and ready” hack to put Skype on your USB stick and how to make skype portable app. Please note, future releases of Skype may cause this hack to stop working. I am hoping that Skype will eventually bring out an official portable version that works for ALL portable USB sticks, not just the U3.

How To Connect A Laptop To A TV

There are many times when I would like to share pictures, video, or games from my laptop or PC with my friends and family. The problem is that its quite hard to get everyone around a small computer screen let alone keep them interested for very long. Wouldn’t it be much better if you could connect your computer to your TV so everyone could view your media with ease and comfort?

It is indeed a much better solution and can be a lot of fun for everyone. So I will explain everything you need to do in order to connect your laptop or PC to your television.

There are a variety of different ways you can connect your computer to your TV. All will involve the use of different types of cables. Which cable you use will depend on a couple of different factors:

1.What type of connections your laptop/PC has

2.What type of connections your television has

The following is a list of the different types of cables/connections you will have to choose from with picture quality ranging from highest to lowest:

1.HDMI
2.DVI
3.VGA
4.S-Video
5.Composite/RCA

1. “High Definition Multimedia Interface” or HDMI is the highest quality connection now. All HDTVs will have this connection though chances are your laptop or computer will not. If you do happen to have an HDMI connection on your computer then by all means, use this connection. If you do not have HDMI on your computer you can use an adapter to convert HDMI to DVI.

2. DVI stands for “Digital Video Interface” and has pretty much been the standard for connecting computer monitors since about 2003. Your computer will most likely have this connection. HDTVs should also have this connection. If you wish to use audio with a DVI connection you must use a seperate audio cable. A cable from phones output connected to red and white audio in on your TV will work great!

3. VGA or “Video Graphics Array” connections are the most common video connections found on laptops and PC’s. HDTVs may have a VGA connection which means you simply need to connect the cable between your computer and televsion. However, older televisions will not have a VGA connection and will require a PC to television converter. There are USB converters that allow you to use this method. Just like DVI, VGA does not carry a audio signal. Just use the same method from above for connecting audio from your phones output.

4. S-Video or “Super Video” has been around for quite some time now. Some laptops and computer graphics cards will have a S-Video connection. Most televisions will also have a S-Video connection. This isn’t the best quality connection but its also not the lowest quality. S-video has the same audio limitation as the above two examples. Again, just use your phones output and a phones to RCA cable or adapter.

5. Composite connections, sometimes referred to as RCA connections, are the yellow, red, and white connections that most people will be familiar with. Red is right analog audio, and white is left analog audio. Yellow is composite video. This will be the lowest quality connection to use. If your computer has no RCA connections, you can use an RCA to S-Video cable.

Connecting your laptop or PC to your television is pretty simple. Just check both your computer and television to find out what connections they have in common. If by some chance you have no connections matching up, you can always buy adapters to make your connection types match.

Once you’ve passed the stage of physically connecting your computer to your television you’ll have to select the correct input on your TV. Just like when using your DVD player, select the input that your computer is connected to using your remote. This input might be called something like AV1 or AV2. You should see this on the television screen.

If your picture seems distorted, play around with the pixel settings on your TV or change the resolution. New HDTVs will have a few different resolution settings. Older TVs may only have one resolution setting. In this case, adjust your computer resolution until the picture looks good.

Following the steps above will have you sharing media on your TV in no time. There’s nothing better than a 50″ plasma picture frame in the middle of your living room

6 Things You Should Never Reveal on Facebook

By Kathy Kristof | Jun 23, 2010 |

• facebook

The whole social networking phenomenon has millions of Americans sharing their photos, favorite songs and details about their class reunions on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and dozens of similar sites.  But there are a handful of personal details that you should never say if you don’t want criminals — cyber or otherwise — to rob you blind, according to Beth Givens, executive director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
The folks at Insure.com also say that ill-advised Facebook postings increasingly can get your insurance cancelled or cause you to pay dramatically more for everything from auto to life insurance coverage. By now almost everybody knows that those drunken party photos could cost you a job, too.
You can certainly enjoy networking and sharing photos, but you should know that sharing some information puts you at risk. What should you never say on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site?

• Your birth date and place. Sure, you can say what day you were born, but if you provide the year and where you were born too, you’ve just given identity thieves a key to stealing your financial life, said Givens. A study done by Carnegie Mellon showed that a date and place of birth could be used to predict most — and sometimes all — of the numbers in your Social Security number, she said.

• Vacation plans. There may be a better way to say “Rob me, please” than posting something along the lines of: “Count-down to Maui! Two days and Ritz Carlton, here we come!” on Twitter. But it’s hard to think of one. Post the photos on Facebook when you return, if you like. But don’t invite criminals in by telling them specifically when you’ll be gone.

• Home address. Do I have to elaborate? A study recently released by the Ponemon Institute found that users of Social Media sites were at greater risk of physical and identity theft because of the information they were sharing. Some 40% listed their home address on the sites; 65% didn’t even attempt to block out strangers with privacy settings. And 60% said they weren’t confident that their “friends” were really just people they know.

• Confessionals. You may hate your job; lie on your taxes; or be a recreational user of illicit drugs, but this is no place to confess. Employers commonly peruse social networking sites to determine who to hire — and, sometimes, who to fire. Need proof? In just the past few weeks, an emergency dispatcher was fired in Wisconsin for revealing drug use; a waitress got canned for complaining about customers and the Pittsburgh Pirate’s mascot was dumped for bashing the team on Facebook. One study done last year estimated that 8% of companies fired someone for “misuse” of social media.

• Password clues. If you’ve got online accounts, you’ve probably answered a dozen different security questions, telling your bank or brokerage firm your Mom’s maiden name; the church you were married in; or the name of your favorite song. Got that same stuff on the information page of your Facebook profile? You’re giving crooks an easy way to guess your passwords.

• Risky behaviors. You take your classic Camaro out for street racing, soar above the hills in a hang glider, or smoke like a chimney? Insurers are increasingly turning to the web to figure out whether their applicants and customers are putting their lives or property at risk, according to Insure.com. So far, there’s no efficient way to collect the data, so cancellations and rate hikes are rare. But the technology is fast evolving, according to a paper written by Celent, a financial services research and consulting firm.

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Seven tips for staying safe on Facebook

The virtual world can be a dangerous one. Follow our seven simple steps to ensure you stay safe on Facebook.Skip related content

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Seven ways to stay safe on FacebookEnlarge photo

1. Hide yourself from the public

This isn’t as straightforward as you might think and many people are under the impression that they are already hidden. But if you don’t apply these settings in multiple categories, other people will still be able to see your information. This is especially important for children’s Facebook accounts.

To protect yourself, click Account > Privacy settings > Profile information. Adjust your privacy settings for all 12 categories. Then click Back to Privacy > Contact information. Adjust your privacy settings for all 9 categories.

2. Don't let search engines find you

To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to Account > Privacy settings > Search. Select ‘Only friends’ for Facebook search results. Make sure the box for public search results isn't checked either.

3. Don’t allow Facebook to hand over your details to other companies

Unless you tell them not to, Facebook will give companies access to your profiles for research and advertising purposes. They can even use your details in the adverts themselves.

To stop Facebook from handing over your details, click Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and websites. Next to ‘Instant Personalisation Pilot Program’ click ‘Edit setting’. Make sure the box is not ticked at the bottom of the screen. To make sure you don’t appear in any adverts, go to Account > Account Settings > Facebook Adverts. Select ‘no one’ on ‘Allow ads on platform pages to show my information to’ and ‘Show my social actions in Facebook ads to’.

4. Make sure nobody else is using your account

This is a new feature which was rolled out by Facebook last week. It allows you to monitor which devices are being used to access your account.

Go to Account > Account settings > Account security. Click ‘Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?’ and then click ‘Yes’ below.

Log out and log back in. You will be asked to name the device you are using. Then it will send you an email. Do this with each device you use to access your Facebook account. From now on, if anyone logs in to your account from a device you don’t use, you’ll receive an email telling you. If this happens, change your password straight away and report it to Facebook via the Help Centre.

5. Don’t put your full date of birth in your profile

It's an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you've already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the ‘Info’ tab, then on ‘Edit Information’. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.

6. Protect yourself from your friends

When your Facebook friends use applications they may be inadvertently sharing your details with third parties.

To protect yourself, click Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and websites > What your friends can share about you. Untick all of the boxes and then save your changes.

7. Don’t advertise your home

You should make sure you never post your full address on Facebook and certainly don’t put it under your ‘Info’ section.

If you’re going away on holiday, although tempting, it’s best not to advertise it on your Facebook page, or even to mention it on your friends’ pages. This is especially crucial if you or your friends’ profiles can be accessed by people not listed as friends. There have been numerous instances where people have gone away and returned to an empty home, just because they shared too much information on social media

Download Music for Free at Jamendo

If someone had told me a couple years ago you can legally download music for free, I’d wink twice and give him an elbow nudge. Times, they have a changed!

Simon Slangen from MakeUseOf.com—which is quickly becoming one of my favourite sites—recently reviewed four sites where you can download free music. Here’s what he had to say about Jamendo:

“All the music available on Jamendo is released under the Creative Commons license. This means that it can be freely listened to and used and redistributed under the same license.

The artists then get rewarded via user donations and revenues from the Jamendo’s commercial programs and partnerships.

You can browse through over 150,000 tracks by artist, album and genre, or you can use the tags for quick navigation.

All of the tracks and albums are available for download without any needed registration and can be shared over the internet using widgets.”

Learn about more sites to download free music here.

Boost Computer Performance with This Easy Check

There’s little in life more frustrating than a painfully slow computer. I know—I’m currently using one. If you’re using Windows, you can improve your machine’s performance by ensuring your IDE drives aren’t operating in a slow, ineffective transfer mode.

From MakeUseOf.com via Lifehacker:

“When fresh from the box—or your workbench— your computer should have had all it's IDE drives set in Direct Memory Access mode. This is a far speedier method of disk access than Programmed Input/Output mode. The technical side of the two modes is dense but let it suffice: DMA is a the fast and preferred method and PIO mode is the slower method Windows defaults to after having six redundancy checks fail. Things like power outages, doing a hard reset and other disk interruptions can cause these errors. Your Windows box may be operating in the slower transfer mode because mistakenly thinks that your system is unstable or that there is something wrong with your disks. The fix for your computer downshifting into PIO mode is simple. Go to your Control Panel, click on the System icon, open up your Device Manager and pull up the properties for your Primary and Secondary IDE channels. Under the Advanced settings tab you'll be able to set the Transfer Mode to "DMA if available". Reboot and you should be in business. MakeUseOf has a full step by step guide with screenshots if you'd like a visual reference.”

3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files

Until now I never even considered making MP3 files from streaming music. My life is forever changed. If you’d like in on this action, check out these three tools (step-by-step instructions on the source site):

1. ClipInc 4

ClipInc is available for Windows. It comes with hundreds of preset internet radio stations, and with the free version you can record up to three audio streams simultaneously.

2. Streamripper

Streamripper is a plugin for Winamp and as such it is platform independent.

3. TheLastRipper

TheLastRipper is available for Windows, Linux, and in a beta version for OSX. What really makes this tool a winner is that you don’t have to deal with commercials, badly cut tracks or alternating quality.

Speed Up Your Computer’s Performance

In today’s super fast paced world, we expect everything to work instantly. Can you imagine how much patience a dialup connection once took, let alone life before the Internet?

A slow computer is enough to drive one bonkers.

There are a few simple ways to optimize your computer’s performance. Basically, it’s about getting rid of things you thought you already got rid of.

The blog Computer Tips n Tricks offers the following suggestions:

1) Check registry files to make sure they are properly installed and in good working order (you can use what is called a registry scanner to do this).

2) Remove icons you don’t need or use from your desktop. This will free up memory and increase the speed of your computer.

3) Deleting a program alone is not enough. Use a program uninstaller to remove all traces of unwanted programs.

4) Make sure to remove all unwanted programs from the taskbar as well.