Technology Guides

I have yet to order my Apple MacBook Pro but I have already ordered all the accessories that I could possibly want. This post is all about my recommended products that you should get for your Apple MacBook.

1. MacBook Skins

If you buy a Mac, it looks exactly the same as anyone else who bought a Mac. On the other hand, if you buy a PC, there’s a much better chance that your PC will not be the same as the PC next to you. That is why I highly recommend getting some sort of skin for your MacBook/Pro. I went to MacStyles for one reason, and one reason only, because it had skins that left the Apple sign alone. They also offer MacTatts which is what I bought (pictured below) that offers more intricate designs than MacStyles. MacStyles are $20 and MacTatts are $30 and can be bought at MacStyles.

2. InvisibleSHIELDS

I usually end up scratching or doing something to ruin my gadgets so I’m glad I found this site earlier rather than later because these clear shields as mentioned above can help preserve your gadget. Zagg offers invisibleSHIELDS that protect the bottom, front and side of your laptop. It has a lifetime warranty so if it does wear or scratch you can get a free replacement. You can also customize the front part of the laptop with one of their designs or one of your own. For a non-customized clear version, it costs $55 but to customize it you’ll have to fork over $65. Luckily at the time of this writing they were offering a 50% off coupon if you entered their contest and considering they’ve sold over 7 million of these for various gadgets like the iPhone 4, it was definitely worth the shot.

3. Cooling Pad/Laptop Stand

I own both and they both do serve slightly different purposes but in the end the main reason you buy it, is so your laptop doesn’t overheat. The extra use for the laptop stand is so you can have your keyboard at an ergonomic angle. I bought  a cooling stand from Targus costing me $25. Unlike most cooling pads that just suck out the hot air, this actually forces cool air into the MacBook.

4. USB Hub

One of the big drawbacks of a MacBook is there are very few USB hubs, 2, and most of my friends find they need more. So I purchased a 4 USB Hub from Targus ($10) so I can now use my cooling pad, mouse, external hard drive and a friends USB key for exchanging files all at once.

5. Keyboard Protector

I know all of you once in your lifetime have eaten or drunk with your laptop or desktop within reach so each and every one of you has taken the risk of ruining your laptop keyboard, me included. That’s why I looked around for a keyboard protector and the best deal I found was at iSkin. They have various designs including the basic clear design. For $25 it’s a huge asset because any muck in your keyboard can ruin it for your life.

Popularity: 2% [?]

While many of you looking here on Technology Guides might be used to the usual and typical posts of how to improve the efficiency and performance of your computer, I thought I’d write a post about what digital DJ sets consist of and what all the different components do.

My name is BMO and I’m doing a guest post from Early Mixologists. I am part of a group of DJ’s who have recently been spending quite a while building up our own DJ sets.  If you’re anything like me, you probably have the stereotypical perception of what a DJ set consists of (i.e. turntables, mixer, amplifier, and speakers).  While this is not really incorrect; today there are a wide variety of options for DJ equipment.  In this post I’m going to be talking about all the DJ setups that revolve around the use of a laptop or desktop.

Before I begin talking about the setups I want to explain that in all of these setups the mixer is used as a medium from which DJs will transition from a song on one deck to the song playing on the opposite deck to create a continuous flow of music.  In almost all cases the mixer is from which the main music output is sent to an amplifier or powered speaker.  You can use an amplifier to send amplified signals of music to non-amplified speakers, or you can send non-amplified music signals directly to powered speakers and altogether skip on using an amplifier, but for information on this it is recommended you do some research on the internet.

The Turntable Setup:

2 turntables

1 Mixer

1 USB soundcard

1 Laptop/ Desktop

*headphones recommended.

Turntables are the original DJ music players.  From Grand Wizard Theodore to Grandmaster Flash, turntables are the preferred choice for hip-hop DJs.  They offer a very nice feel since all the buttons and music tables are very large and easy to control.  Using a laptop has even made turntable Djing portable since now music can all be stored on one, instead of having to bring crates upon crates of vinyl just to dig through them to get at the song you want to play.

The turntables can be connected to a USB soundcard such as the Native Instruments Audio 8 DJ, combined with special time coded vinyl and RCA jacks it is possible to manipulate music on your computer as if it was being played directly on your turntable as a vinyl.  Programs that are recommendable for this are: Serato Scratch Live (this is the one that started it all), and Traktor Scratch Pro (My personal favourite).  Just to note, all the equipment needed for this such as the time coded vinyl, soundcard, and cables come packaged together with both of the programs mentioned above.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Everyone has dealt with this problem sometime or another and I know I have dealt with it more than once. The question is, how do you deal with it? I’ve also been on both sides where a citizen has taken their anger out on me, a helpless servant to the town. There are two general ways you can deal with the situation as a consumer: get really angry which is the natural option or you can try and negotiate a compromise of some sort. I’ve tried both and found that the latter is the best option.

Getting Angry

Many people, including me, like to take this approach because it’s the most natural thing to do. You receive poor customer service and by taking that anger out on someone in the company you feel that you are getting something accomplished. In my experience what happens is the customer service rep shuts down and is taught to try and mediate it by calming you down and if that doesn’t work they’ll hang up. Therefore nothing is accomplished on both sides; you don’t benefit and the company just logs another angry caller.  Occasionally, something will come out of it but it’s too rare to be noticeable.

My experience came back in 2009 when I had problems with my Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptop and so I went to their online help as it is much quicker. They gave me advice, I was supposedly happy and then after rebooting my computer wouldn’t start up. Since I couldn’t log onto the internet I couldn’t receive more help on the issue, I decided to call them up. Turns out they wouldn’t help me because my phone support had expired. I got really angry because they gave me advice and wouldn’t take responsibility for it. I eventually hung up on the representative even after I asked to speak to the manager and nothing got resolved.

Be Calm and Come to a Compromise

This is the approach I highly recommend if you want something out of the poor customer service. The keys to this approach is be calm, explain your side and in the back of your mind realize that sometimes it’s not the fault of the customer service representative. Many good things can come from this and I’ve only had success while using this approach.

My experience came on Canadian Thanksgiving 2009 when I lost my SIM card (don’t ask why ) and so I went and replaced it. I phoned up Fido, registered my new card and cycled down my phone. As soon as I got it up and running I had a different account. Not only that but someone else had my account. Obviously I was ticked off as the representative told me to get a new SIM card on them. When I went to get it at the store they said they weren’t authorized to do it. So I called them back and they changed their story saying I had to get it shipped and wait another week and I couldn’t switch back to my old account but I could use this account all I wanted to. The next day rolls around and I go to make a call, lo and behold, I can’t because my account has been canceled. Now this is where I get really pissed but luckily my brother was there to give me advice. Here I put the second approach into action. I called them up again and they told me to go to the nearest Fido store and register a new SIM card and it would be credited (don’t know why they didn’t suggest this before). Once I was up and running I called them up and followed these steps.

1. Explain your situation and in my case highlight the fact that you’ve lost x number of hours (or days),
2. Be calm and never blame or take your anger out on the representative because it’s not their fault, and;
3. Tell them you deserve better and want something in return for your inconvenience.

In my case I got a $12 add-on for my inconvenience and at the end of the day, just making them realize they screwed up and needed to make things right was all I needed.

Hopefully these tips help you next time you receive poor customer service or get a product that stops working.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Many people know how to make your own ringtone for the Apple iPhone when you have a Mac. You just use GarageBand by adding a song and clicking Share–>Share as Ringtone and voila, your done, but for Windows users it’s a little harder but still very simple. This little tutorial will help you create a free ringtone in less than 2 minutes.

Step 1

Firstly, open iTunes and select the song (preferably mp3) you want to use as your ring tone. Pick your favourite part because the ring tone is only allowed to be a max of 30 seconds. Once you’ve found the part you like, right-click the song and click Get Info. For this tutorial I have used Ghosts N Stuff by Deadmau5 featuring Rob Swire.

Step 2

Now hit the Options tab and check off “Start” and “Finish” and enter the section you want the ringtone to be.

Step 3

Once that’s done, you can go ahead and start converting the file. Right-click the song and select Create AAC Version. If you can’t see this option, go to Edit–>Preferences–>Import Settings and make sure AAC Encoder is chosen.

Step 4

iTunes will now start converting the song, but only the snippet that you selected for your ringtone. Next step is to go to the file location of this new file. It usually will be in My Music–>iTunes–>iTunes Media–>Music. Once there you’ll want to rename your file so iTunes recognizes it as a ringtone. Right-click the file and hit rename, changing the file extension to m4r. If you can’t see the file extension, you’ll want to go to Tools–>Folder Options–>View (tab) and scroll down to Advanced Settings. Uncheck, Hide extensions for known file types.

Step 5

Once it’s renamed, you can import it your iTunes library and then sync it to your iPhone. Just remember when you sync it to check off Ringtones and you’re good to go.

Popularity: 17% [?]

I was sitting in my dorm room watching the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother, which by the way was amazing, when my friend came in and asked if I could help him install a third-party Windows 7 Theme. Now I have never actually done it myself but it seemed easy enough. My friend explained the instructions seemed complicated but here’s a dumb downed version that should be easy for the everyday computer to understand.

Step 1

Download Universal Theme Patcher and run the application that matches up with your operating system, either x86 (32 bit) or  x64 (64 bit). To check this go to Computer–>System Properties. Under the System heading will be your system type.

Once you run the correct version, you’ll see a screen like this. Now manually patch all three files. A backup of each file will be made so don’t worry if something goes wrong, you’ll have the original files.

After you’ve done this you’ll be asked to reboot. Once you have rebooted, you’ll be ready to move on to Step 2.

Step 2

The reason you’ve decided to load a new theme is most likely that you saw a crazy theme that you just loved and wanted to embark on the journey of installing it. If not, there are some great sites that offer like the ones at Addictive Tips (Remember to save it and not open it). Once you’ve got your new theme saved on your computer, extract it to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

Step 3

Now make your way to Control Panel–>Personalization and select your newly installed theme. Voila, you’re done.

Update: Some people have made it easy to install Windows 7 Themes and one of those happens to be one of my favourite themes. Smashing Magazine makes a post of desktop wallpapers for the current month. Someone else just took those wallpapers and made a theme. Check it out, Smashing Magazine January 2010 Windows 7 Theme because I am loving it.

Popularity: 18% [?]

With the year coming to a close I thought it would be good to update the my list of some of the top apps you can get for free at the Apple App Store.

Productivity

For productivity there are a ton of different apps you can get for free that would be useful. There are three that I’d point out and one that is under productivity but not as useful as you may think (still it’s a neat app so it’s worth a mention).

Expense2Go

This app is great because I can easily enter a few of my expenses as I pick them up and easily track it. I find it comes in even more use for students like me who have to borrow money and keep track of how they spend their own money. All you do is create different reports for various things and enter each expense including the date, type of expense, amount of expense and any notes that may accompany that expense.

Evernote

After registering on the site, Evernote, you can easily add notes that can be viewed on your device, your desktop or the internet. You are allowed to create text, camera, or voice notes that can be emailed as well. It is a very versatile application and I highly recommend it.

Awesome Note Lite

This app is also a note taker but it also has other features that make it a good download. It separates your notes into: My Ideas, Study, Shopping and To-Do List. I like this because it combines a to-do list and a note taking device that also includes a shopping list because I always forget to stop and buy the milk.

Writepad

If you can master this app it may be a savior if you have bad handwriting like me. It is like a small tablet PC as you just write with your finger and it translates it into text but you only write one word at a time and there is a bit of a lag so it’s not really the most practical thing.

Games

I like strategy games so I chose a couple other than Sudoku.

Airline USA

This game involves directing the different forms of aviation from their origin to their destination and making sure each of their routes don’t crash. So at the beginning you have regular planes, then you get jumbo jets which travel slightly slower, and then blimps and then jets. It’s harder than it sounds . Let me know if you beat my high score of 69.

Traffic Rush

If you can’t tell by now my love for all things transportation then this will solidify it for you. This game also involves trying to make sure the cars don’t crash. The games setting is an intersection and the cars come from all sides and you speed up and stop them to make sure they don’t crash with one another. My high score for that is 129.

I don’t spend too much time on these games so I wouldn’t at all be surprised if you beat me.

Utilities

Flashlight

By far the best app in this department is the flashlight app. It is just as bright, if not brighter than the flashlight that comes on the Sony Ericsson phones and just as good as a regular flashlight. It’s very handy and has helped me in numerous situations.

Communication

Ping

This would be my favourite app if I knew more people in my area with Apple iPod Touch’s or Apple iPhone’s. Regardless I know many people will find pinging other Apple users for free very useful.

Popularity: 37% [?]

I have been on various trips and many of them involve the airplane. I have heard of horror stories where people lose their baggage and either don’t get it until a lot later or never get it all. I remember watching the movie, Meet the Parents, and Ben Stiller loses his luggage for most of the trip. Well I too worry about that very same thing happening to me every time I go on a plane trip, those painful moments waiting to see whether your luggage is going to enter the conveyor belt. ReboundTag approached me to do a product placement and I graciously accepted because I wanted to see how it would work and if it would solve my problems. They sent me their featured product, the Microchip Bag Tag accompanied with a 3 year membership.

Now I haven’t been able to use it yet because I have yet to be on a plane trip just yet and so this is just an initial review. Now whatever the company may say, airport security in various airports across the world have a mind of their own and so when they see this tag, they may just snip it just like they did to one of our pieces of luggage because they didn’t recognize our lock. They also snipped the zippers which makes no sense but that’s airport security for you.

The basic overview of this product is you receive the tag, register it on their website and change the description of your luggage that it will be attached to and your travel itinerary and this can be updated on the go on their website. You can also choose to be anonymous which means that airlines or other people can only send you messages about where your luggage is.

Later I will update you on how this product fairs when I put it through its paces.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Google seems to be continually redefining markets time after time just like Apple obliterates the competition with its mind blowing gadgets such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and Magic Mouse. Google has GMail (best mail app out there by far for its continuous innovation), Talk and Maps Navigation (I know there’s much more Google has to offer but that’s a good summary for now).

Mark this day on your calendar, November 4, 2009, as a day the big navigation providers took a huge hit in their stock price because a lot of people realize that Google Maps Navigation could destroy their business. Sadly it’s only offered in the U.S. for now on phones with Android 1.6 or higher but there’s a bright end to the tunnel for Canadian consumers. DAVE Wireless, one of the three new wireless companies set to hit the market in the next 6 months, is planning to release Google’s phone with Android pre-installed. Now for the features of Google Maps Navigations.

• Search in plain ‘ol English (watch video). Much like searching on Google Maps, you don’t need to know the address of where you are going (unless it’s a house and then you may have trouble). All you have to do is type the name of the business (i.e. Best Buy) or the type (i.e. electronics)
• Search by voice (watch video). This is not a new feature as a Magellan GPS offers it, but now Google Maps Navigation does as well. Just speak your destination such as “Navigate to Air Canada Centre in Toronto”
• Traffic view (watch video). If your area is supported by Google Traffic then this feature is golden. On-screen you will see either green,yellow or red depending on the current traffic conditions on your route.
• Search along route (watch video). What I hate about some GPS’s (or at least mine) is that you can’t look at the map and see common things such as gas stations. Google fixes that allowing you to turn on layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.
• Satellite view (watch video). A small feature but still cool is you are able to see a 3D satellite view of your route with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.
• Street View (watch video). This to me is the best feature. Just as you’re about to turn, Google Street View imagery is overlaid and navigation automatically turns on to Street View when you approach your destination. Pure genius!
• Car dock mode (watch video). Simply place your device on the car dock and it will activate a special mode that will make it easier for you to use your device at arm’s length.

Popularity: 15% [?]