Tutorials

If you think technical skill is all you need for a career in IT, think again. Expectations for IT employees are changing.

How often have you had to repeatedly copy files from one place to another either to create a backup or to synchronize two locations, and finally resorted to writing some dumb batch files to do the job? Of course, as your batch files have no real intelligence, you could well find your ad hoc solution has failed you.

Ignoring Facebook's privacy options--some of them fairly new and not well known--can trip up the social-networking site's users in a number of ways. Here are some that everyone who has a Facebook account should be aware of.

The use, and uses, of Twitter seems to grow daily. Its role as a source of news on Iran during that country's current unrest has been widely reported, for example. For most people, however, Twitter is simply a convenient social networking tool, but as such, it is even more open than Facebook--which is all the more reason to employ what safeguards you can on its network. (Note: This article doesn't cover such issues as the growing problem of spam on Twitter or reports of its use in phishing-like attacks.)

Much of the excitement about Windows 7 relates to an assortment of user-interface improvements: a little eye candy here, a few window-management tweaks there. Below are some of the highlights, along with the tools you'll need to get them for your current OS.

Informal speed tests show that Windows 7 boots faster than Vista, and many users have reported that it "feels" faster during everyday operation. (Maybe that's because the User Account Control is more restrained in Windows 7 than in Vista and doesn't pester them so often.) But you can take some practical steps to goose Vista so that it will acquire some of Windows 7's pep.

Vista received well-deserved criticism for bringing few noteworthy new features in its train when it arrived to take over from Windows XP. In contrast, Windows 7 offers plenty of new stuff to like. Fortunately, you can add many of these features to your Vista or XP machine by using downloads and Web services.

Any business of any size runs on information, whether it's keeping track of accounting data or managing the flow of proposals and orders. Over the past 25 years, computers have transformed the way that small businesses operate, making it possible to organize and manage information in ways that simply was not possible in the days of paper ledgers and index cards.

Want to resurrect an old PC that's collecting dust? Wish you could insta-boot your laptop or netbook for a quick peek at your e-mail or a Web page? Presto promises exactly that kind of convenience.

Losing your laptop can be expensive in three ways. First, you'll spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to replace the hardware. Second, you'll suffer the time and aggravation of restoring your data, all the while hoping you have everything backed up properly. But most expensive? Surviving the backlash and legal consequences of losing customer data, financial records and private company information.

Smartphones are intelligent, but with the 14 tips and tricks in this story, they could approach genius territory. We'll show you how to run seven separate devices from your iPhone, how to play Internet radio (mostly for free) on your BlackBerry, how to make free phone calls from an iPod Touch, and how to revive a dead cell phone battery (if it's detachable) while you're in winter weather.

When I give presentations, watch movies from the sofa in my office, or need to start a task away from my desk, I don't want to be within arm's length of my mouse. So I appreciate the freedom offered by Air Mouse Pro (US$6, buy-only), a full-featured remote control from R.P.A. Tech. The top half of the Air Mouse Pro Screen features a two-button trackpad, while the bottom half gives you a keyboard, along with controls for browsing the Web and playing movies and music.

Google Latitude is a useful--if slightly creepy--way to track your location on a mobile phone or GPS laptop. But you can get roughly the same sense of fleeting privacy on any old Wi-Fi PC; Google Latitude automatically pegged me within about 100 feet of my ground-floor office on GPS-free laptop.

Microsoft's highly capable email client Outlook is glitchy and has too many features for its own good.