Social Network Demographics In 2012

source: pingdom.com

4 Best Linux PDF Viewers – And Adobe Reader Is Just One Of Them [Linux]

When it comes to distributing forms and other information over the Internet, the file type of choice tends to be PDF. This file type is popular because it has decent compression rates, can prevent editing, allows for interesting visual elements, and allows interactivity (especially when it comes to filling out forms on the computer).
Thankfully, there are plenty of applications all over the web which can read these files. However, they all have different feature sets as well as other pros and cons. So, what are the best Linux PDF viewers?

Evince

Evince is the default PDF viewer which comes with the Gnome desktop environment. Therefore, it is automatically included with distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE when Gnome is chosen over KDE. This PDF viewer excels in being extremely lightweight and quick to load. It is also very easy to navigate around in, as there is just a left panel which shows small snapshots of each page of the PDF or a small index listing of all sections in the PDF (if it has been formatted correctly to do so), and then the rest of the window goes towards displaying the actual document.
Besides very small features like bookmarks, it only has view control functions such as zoom and fit to window.

Okular

On the other side of the spectrum is Okular, the default PDF viewer for the KDE desktop environment. It is included in distributions which come with KDE, such as Kubuntu, Fedora’s KDE spin, and openSUSE when KDE is chosen over Gnome. While Evince may have specialized in being lightweight, Okular is much heavier but includes a good number of useful features.

Okular also boasts support for a number of other file types, including Postscript, DjVu, CHM, XPS, ePub, TIFF, DIV, FictionBook, ComicBook, and others.

Adobe Reader

If you want to use a PDF viewer which comes from the developers who defined the PDF format in the first place, then you should take a look at Adobe Reader. It is essentially what you’ve come to expect from the Windows version: feature-filled, but not as lightweight as the other available solutions. However, you do get plenty of features that you’ll definitely not see in other PDF viewers, such as the ability to sign and configure security preferences, have it read out loud, and more.
There are also some useful features which are included in some applications like FoxItReader (see below), such as automatic scrolling.

FoxIt Reader

Last but definitely not least of all Linux PDF viewers is FoxItReader. This PDF viewer is known for being quick, fairly feature-filled, and cross platform. It’s also the PDF viewer of choice for those who like to have portable apps on their flash drives. Thankfully there multiple options available for Linux, downloadable in a DEB, RPM, and Bz2 package, so it can be installed on most distributions.

Conclusion

You’re never out of options when it comes to PDF viewers. Of course, there are still others which you can choose from, but from Linux’s smaller list of viewers (when compared to Windows), these are definitely the most popular and outstanding choices available. Of course, it all depends on your own preferences as to which one is best for you, but you can’t go wrong with using any of these solutions.
What Linux PDF viewer do you use, and why do you like it the most? Let us know in the comments!

Pandamian: Type & Publish Books Online

Online blogging platforms do a wonderful job of letting you write an online diary. But what if you are an aspiring author looking for a way to write an entire book online? What you will need is a web service that organizes the chapters in your books and lets visitors comfortably go through them. This is precisely what Pandamian offers.

The first step in using the site is to create an account. Next you begin by starting your book. Add chapters by typing up new ones and saving them along the way. Like most blogging platforms, the text editor of the site supports special formatting, images, hyperlinks, and many other features. When you finalize a chapter, you can publish it – chapters can be edited after publishing as well.
Your book is published under a unique URL that you can share with others. Visitors to your book’s pages and chapters can leave their comments. The stats about your books, chapters, and comments appear under your Dashboard.

Features:

• A user-friendly web service.
• Lets you publish books online.
• Lets you separately write, edit, and publish each chapter.
• Book readers can leave comments.
• Similar tools: WEbook, Moglue and ePubBud.
• Also read related articles:
  How To Publish Your Own Book (In Print) Cheaply
  How to Publish a Children’s Book with StoryJumper
  4 Of The Best Online Print-On-Demand Book Publishers

Check out Pandamian @ www.pandamian.com (by MOin from Thumb Press)

Pygmyfoto: A Simple, Deployable Photo Roll Program For The Web

Are you looking for a way to show off photos on your website, but don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with sites like WordPress and other more advanced blogging platforms? Well, if so, Pygmyfoto might be right up your alley. It is an open-source, deployable web photo tool that allows you to share photos in a simple, bare bones photo roll. Sometimes, simple is all you need, and Pygmyfoto is just that.

With Pygmyfoto, you can share photos without any unnecessary extras. You can deploy it on even the simplest of hardware, so you don’t need a crazy machine to get it up and running. It’s open-source, so you can tweak it to meet your needs. Of course, it’s meant to be simple, but if there is something you feel is missing, you can always program it yourself.

The photo roll will display a smaller version of the pictures which is also a link to the full resolution picture. It also displays some important information about the photo such as the  exposure, aperture, focal length, and ISO. It also has a place for you to enter a little description of the photo. You can view a sample deployment of the program here.
Features:

• Open source photo roll sharing.
• Simple, no extras.
• Shows key data such as exposure, aperture, focal length, and ISO.
• Add photo description.

Find Pygmyfoto @ scribblesandsnaps.com/pygmyfoto

Do You Use uTorrent? Then Be The Master Of Your Preferences

click here to download

uTorrent is by far the most widely used BitTorrent client, and for very good reason. uTorrent is very small, very fast, and portable. It is packed with every feature you’d need to be a total download manager and this long list of features is complemented by a very configurable list of options and preferences.
In this post, I want to help everyone make sure that they’ve got their uTorrent client tweaked to their liking and to optimal performance. There’s a lot going on under the hood and uTorrent is in that elite class of software that many of us use every other day. Such software should be tweaked and played with until you’ve got it running just the way you like it.
If you don’t have uTorrent yet, get it. I’ve used plenty of other torrent handlers and no others compare. It’s simply the best out there.
So start up your client and go into the Preferences window, underneath the Options menu.

General

Most of you are probably familiar with tweaking this tab.
One suggestion I will make is that you uncheck the Check association on startup option. If you don’t use other download managers, it shouldn’t be necessary. It can also slightly speed up client start time.
Under the When Downloading table, I also recommend that you check Prevent standby if there are active torrents, especially if you like to download overnight. Doing so will keep your computer from going on standby, thus powering down your wireless card or other network interface and disconnecting you from the Internet.

Directories

If you, like me, store your downloads on an external drive then this is a pretty important section of the preferences.
Although you can see I’m not doing it in this screenshot, many would recommend that you store new downloads on your local drive and then move completed downloads to your external drive. Doing so will be less stressful on the external drive, as USB devices don’t have the same read and write capabilities as your internal drive.
The Automatically load torrents from setting is a good way to allow your uTorrent installation to be truly “portable” with an external drive, as you can seed and download from anywhere as long as you store your torrent files on that drive.

Bandwidth

This is a very important tab. Disregard my pathetic speed limits here, if you will.
My strongest suggestion is that you get a feel for your maximum upload and download rates through Speedtest and set your limitations accordingly. We all know how crazy ISPs are about torrent traffic, so I’d really always recommend throttling your upload and download speeds to something responsible.
The Maximum upload rate and Maximum download rate are global settings, not per torrent. They are in kB/sec. Many of you are on connections where you’re more familiar with megabytes, and there are 1024 kB in 1 MB.
The Number of Connections table also has very important numbers. Higher numbers here could actually cause your uTorrent client to require more CPU usage. Set them as you see fit.

Transfer Cap

I just mentioned those crazy, torrent-hating ISPs. If your ISP forces a monthly cap on your download and upload, you absolutely need to use this. It’s very self-explanatory and allows you to set limits at each level.

Scheduler

The scheduler is a very cool and thoughtful feature that a lot of you should be able to appreciate.
If you live with others and share a connection, don’t be that guy using up all of the bandwidth. Set up your scheduler to limit upload and download speeds during peak or home hours. Let your downloads go unthrottled overnight or when everyone is at work. Clicking on squares in the grid will allow you to change their color, and function, respective to the hour in the chart.
In the screenshot, I am throttling my speeds from 7 PM to midnight.
While I’ve covered a lot here, there are plenty more preferences that you need to look over yourself. The UI Settings tab is a good example. Set up your uTorrent so that it’s an enjoyable, smooth downloading experience, not a chore. Take five minutes out of your day to do this and it could improve your Internet and system performance in the future.
Make sure you check out our uTorrent Tips & Tricks guide, too! Let me know what you think of uTorrent and these tips in our comments.  Maybe you have some tips of your own?

4 Common Ways We Give Away Our Own Privacy

Privacy is one of the most valuable things that people have, and with every new wave of social media, we give another little bit of it away. I’m definitely not one to talk, though. I use Facebook and Twitter just like the lot of you, so don’t think I don’t fall victim to the online social world as well.
Below, I’ve revealed four very common ways that people give away their own privacy. More often than not, they do so without even realizing it. Granted, with as much information that is shared online anyway, I doubt most people would even care. Even still, I think it might be a good idea to keep these privacy concerns in mind whenever logging on to your favorite social media websites.

Leaving Google Search History On

I’m not one to judge, but occasionally, when browsing the Internet we search for things that we just don’t want people to know about. For instance, some of you out there may have a llamas-in-sneakers obsession and spend your many free hours searching away for images of the footwear-loving Peruvian mammals. In most parts of society, that would be considered relatively unusual. However, say that you let your nine-year-old nephew, Tucker, use your computer and you just happen to leave Gmail logged in.

Tucker, being the curious lad he is, may decide to look at your account information (because he’s nosey like that). Unfortunately, this could very well be the day that everyone finds out about your llama fetish. To make matters worse, Tucker may very well be llama-phobic and could go into cardiac arrest. How would you feel knowing that your careless search history deletion habits are the reason that poor Tucker suffered such a traumatic event?

Not Clearing Facebook Search History

Many of you Facebook stalkers out there may not be aware of a relatively new function that exists on the social networking site. If you decide to view your Activity Log, you’ll see a drop down menu in the top right hand corner of the screen. When you select “Search” from this menu, you will find that Facebook keeps a record of every single one of your searches on site. This begs the question, why would Facebook want to keep track of your search history? In this writer’s opinion, it really doesn’t make that much sense.
As in the case of young Tucker, it would be a real shame if somebody saw just how many times you visited your ex-boyfriend’s profile in the past 24 hours. If you would like to purge theses records, there is a nice “Clear History” button at the top of your Activity Log. However, there is currently no default option to prevent Facebook from recording this history, and honestly, that is a little strange. In the meantime, just keep hitting that button while stuffing yourself with Chunky Monkey ice cream and listening to “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers.

Leaving Social Media Accounts Logged In

We have all fallen victim to it. In fact, I’d say it’s the modern day equivalent to demon possession. It’s always frustrating when someone gets a hold of your social media account and starts posting colorful bits of false information. In this society that is apparently “so worried” about privacy, it is a little shocking that we’d do something so careless and so often. But alas, we do it over and over again whenever we use a public computer or even a friend’s laptop.
The issue with this is not the sudden gender identification changes or even the questionable status updates. It’s the fact that we’ve used “private” messaging on social media accounts as a means to share authentic private, detailed information, and when we leave them logged in publicly, we’ve basically invited people into our lives to take whatever they want and use it however they wish.

Using Someone’s Phone

In a similar fashion to leaving social media accounts logged in, using someone’s phone is a voluntary, yet typically unknown, invitation into one’s private life. Simply using someone’s phone and logging into your personal social media account is the first step into a potential identity disaster. Perhaps your friend actually has malicious feelings towards you and merely wants to ruin your life. Alternatively, and more realistically, there is always a possibility of the phone being stolen, and as always, this could have negative effects.
On the other hand, there is the issue of loaning your phone out to people. Sure, in most cases one would typically loan their phone to someone they already know. However, loaning your phone out to a stranger, even for a phone call, can open this person up to your private life. In the past, offering a phone to help someone make a call was common and highly accepted, but nowadays, with the advent of smartphones, this can be very risky if the phone gets stolen. As a word of warning, simply be careful with whoever you loan your phone out to.

Conclusion

Naturally, every single thing I’ve written here is common sense. However, we sometimes let things slip through the cracks unintentionally. If any of you have ever fallen victim to any of these situations, don’t feel bad. Hopefully, it was only a friend that got a hold of your private accounts.
What privacy concerns and tips do you have for protecting your social media accounts? Has anyone ever accessed or “hacked” your private accounts?
Image Credit: mconnors, typexnick

Make a Better Recycle Bin With These Great Tools & Tricks

Most of us are very familiar with the Recycle Bin. We use it regularly, and it seems like a feature we can’t do much to customize – deleted files go there, and we can permanently delete them later. But there’s a lot more you can do to customize and tweak your Recycle Bin, from placing it in your system tray and automatically clearing old files to changing its icon and name.
The tips here apply to Windows 7 and should work similarly on Windows 8 and Vista, too. If you’re still using Windows XP, check out our previous list of 10 Tips For the Recycle Bin on Windows XP.

Put The Recycle Bin In Your System Tray

Wish the Recycle Bin were more accessible? If you don’t like having a cluttered desktop, you can place the Recycle Bin in your system tray alongside the other Windows system noticiation icons. To do this, try MiniBin or MicroBin. MiniBin offers more configuration options, while MicroBin is a tiny system tray utility without any configuration options. These tools use very little memory and integrate perfectly with the default system icons – they look like something Microsoft themselves might have created.

To make this program automatically start with Windows, drag and drop its .exe file into the Startup folder in your Start menu.

Remove Only Old Files From The Bin

By default, the Recycle Bin only lets you empty all files inside it. RecycleBinEx adds some useful context menu entries – with RecycleBinEx installed, you can right-click your recycle bin and delete files from a certain date range. For example, you can remove all files that were deleted over a week ago, but keep files deleted within the last week in case you need them.

RecycleBinEx also has a few other useful features – for example, you can have it automatically run at startup to automatically delete older files from your Recycle Bin. Your Recycle Bin will always have recently deleted files in it, but older files will be removed automatically.

Skip The Recycle Bin

Want to permanently delete a file without sending it to the Recycle Bin? Select the file and press Shift+Delete. The file will be instantly removed from your hard drive without going to the Recycle Bin — you won’t be able to remove it unless you use a file-recovery program.

Disable The Confirmation Message

Do you dislike the “Are you sure you want to move this file to the Recycle Bin?” message that appears whenever you delete a file? I do (but maybe I’m just impatient). To disable the confirmation message, right-click the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop and select Properties. Uncheck the Display delete confirmation dialog option.

Configure Your Recycle Bin

From the Recycle Bin’s Properties dialog, you can also change the Recycle Bin’s maximum size.When the Recycle Bin files up – or if you delete files that are larger than its maximum size – the files will skip the Recycle Bin and be deleted immediately.
You can also disable the Recycle Bin from here to have Windows always delete files immediately instead of sending them to the Recycle Bin. We don’t recommend this – everyone occasionally deletes a file by accident, and using the Recycle Bin ensures you can easily undo any mistakes.

Hide The Recycle Bin

If you want an uncluttered desktop without a Recycle Bin, you can easily hide the Recycle Bin icon – no registry tweaks required.
To hide the Recycle Bin, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. Click the Change desktop icons link at the left side of the Personalization window that appears. Uncheck the Recycle Bin checkbox to hide the Recycle Bin from your desktop.

You can also hide the Recycle Bin and all other desktop icons on your Windows desktop by right-clicking the desktop, pointing to View, and unchecking the Show desktop icons checkbox.

Change The Recycle Bin’s Icon

From the Desktop Icon Settings window above, you can also change your Recycle Bin’s icons to personalize your Recycle Bin. Select the Recycle Bin icon, click the Change Icon button, and browse to an image file you want to use. You can set separate icons for an empty Recycle Bin and a full Recycle Bin.
To undo your change in the future, select the icon and use the Restore Default button. Note that your Recycle Bin icons will change if you select a different theme in Windows – to prevent this from happening, uncheck the Allow themes to change desktop icons option here.

Rename The Recycle Bin

In addition to the Recycle Bin’s icon, you can also change the Recycle Bin’s name. Just right-click the Recycle Bin on your desktop and select Rename. You can name the Recycle Bin anything you like.

Change The Recycle Bin’s Sound

If you don’t like the sound that plays when you empty your Recycle Bin, you can set a custom sound – or disable the sound entirely. To do so, click the Sounds icon at the bottom of the Personalization window. (Right-click the desktop and select Personalize to open it.)
Select the Empty Recycle Bin sound under Windows Explorer and select your preferred sound. You can choose from one of the sounds Windows includes or browse to your own sound file. You can also change entire sound schemes to select a preferred set of sounds for Windows – or disable all sounds entirely.

Investigate a Computer’s Recycle Bin

Rifiuti2 is a computer forensics tool for analyzing the contents of a computer’s Recycle Bin. Run it and it will dump information about the deleted files in the Recycle Bin – their names, deletion times, original paths, and sizes – to a file for analysis. Note that you’ll need Cygwin installed to use this command-line tool. This won’t be useful for most users, but if you’re interested in doing some forensic analysis of a computer’s Recycle Bin, it’s a useful tool.
How do you customize your Recycle Bin? Do you know any other tricks? Leave a comment and share your knowledge!

Saying Goodbye: 5 Alternatives To The Optical Disc

With computers growing smaller and lifestyles going mobile, less and less devices offer sufficient space for internal optical drives. Presently, the market is kept afloat by Blu-ray consumer home video sales, but in terms of data storage, optical discs are slowly becoming obsolete. Moreover, while most movie buyers still prefer to own a physical copy of their purchase, this market, much like the music market, will soon be taken over by streaming services. So are you still storing data on optical drives?
Optical discs have a storage capacity of up to 50GB (Blu-ray) and at around $0.08 per GB they remain one of the cheapest ways to store data. Under optimal conditions in terms of temperature, humidity, and handling, Blu-ray discs can last over 50 years, an impressive number. The problem is, optical discs require an optical drive to be used and such a device will likely break long before 50 years are up. The question then is whether those drives will still be available in a decade or two from now and at what point it is smart to switch to another storage medium.
The way you store your data should always be current. There is no point in chaining yourself to a specific method or medium. The key is that your data is easily accessible to you, now and in the future. Hence, the best way to store your data depends on your needs. How much data do you have? Do you want to store, transport, or share your data? Where do you need to access them? And for how long do you need to store your data safely?

To make potential alternatives to optical discs comparable, I have examined four different criteria: storage capacity , average price per GB, average or approximate lifetime in years or number of write/erase cycles, and compatibility with other devices and operating systems.

Option 1: USB Stick

Capacity: regularly up to 128GB (256GB available)
Price: from $0.60 to $0.80 per GB
Lifetime: 10 thousand to 5 million write/erase cycles, approx. 2 to 20 years
Compatibility: theoretically any device with USB port
Flash-based drives and particularly USB thumb drives are probably the best alternative to optical discs in terms of lifetime and portability. Since lifetime depends less on climate and storage conditions, but primarily on the amount of times data are written to or erased from the drive, flash drives theoretically could have a longer lifetime than DVDs or Blu-ray discs. With up to 128GB, thumb drives also offer more storage capacity (Blu-ray up to 50GB) and they do not depend on the availability of an optical drive. However, flash drives are significantly more expensive per GB.

Option 2: SD(HC) Card

Capacity: up to 128GB
Price: from $0.62 to $1 per GB
Lifetime: 100 thousand to 1 million write/erase cycles, approx. 1 to 10 years
Compatibility: adapter or SD card reader required
This is the most portable alternative to optical discs. With regular storage sizes between 16 and 64GB, SD cards are also comparable in size. Similar to USB sticks, the lifetime of SD cards depends on write/erase cycles and can thus be very short or rather long. Like all flash-based storage devices, the price per GB is significantly higher than that of optical discs. Moreover, SD / SDHC cards require an SD / SDHC card reader or an adapter.

Option 3: External Hard Drive (HDD)

Capacity: up to 3TB
Price: from $0.04 to $0.15 per GB
Lifetime: approx. 2-5 years
Compatibility: any device with USB port
External hard drives are the cheapest alternative to optical discs. They cost less, offer a much higher storage capacity, and are essentially compatible with any device that sports a USB port. In terms of connecting the hardware, compatibility is a non-issue. That said, keep in mind that the file system (typically FAT32 or NTFS) can potentially prevent recognition or full functionality of a HDD when connected to other devices (TV) or operating systems. The biggest issue, however, is the vulnerability of HDDs. They are easily damaged by physical shock, which makes them suboptimal for transporting data. Moreover, their operation relies on moving parts, meaning each use increases the likelihood of hardware failure.

Learn more about file systems from my article What A File System Is & How You Can Find Out What Runs On Your Drives, then find out How To Format A USB Drive & Why You Would Need To. And while we are on the topic of file systems, you might also want to know How To Reformat Your FAT32 Drive To NTFS – And The Advantages Of Doing It or How To Format A Large Hard Drive With Either FAT Or FAT32 .

Option 4: External Solid State Drive (SSD)

Capacity: up to 256GB
Price: from $0.80 to $1.78 per GB
Lifetime: 100 thousand to 5 million write/erase cycles, approx. 5 to 20 years
Compatibility: any device with USB port
In terms of price and durability, SSDs are similar to thumb drives or SD cards: expensive, but potentially long lifetime. SSDs are available with larger storage capacities than other flash-based storage devices, however, this also comes at a higher price.
Fancy an SSD? Be sure to look into my 3 Top Tips To Maintain Performance & Extend The Life Of Your SSD .

Option 5: Cloud Storage

Capacity: regularly up to 500GB with Dropbox (theoretically unlimited)
Price: from free to $1 per GB and year
Lifetime: theoretically unlimited, practically as long as service is available or as long as you pay
Compatibility: any device with internet access
Storing your data in the cloud is the most convenient way to backup, share, and keep your data with you, provided you have access to the internet. However, this is only practical for small amounts of data. If you have more than a few GB, it can get very expensive as fees are due monthly or yearly, for as long as the storage space is needed.

Before you make a decision on where to store your data in the cloud, browse our cloud storage articles for tips & tricks.

Conclusion

Many alternatives for optical drives exist, but few can compete with the price and theoretical lifetime of Blu-ray discs. On the other hand, many make for better long term investments. In the long run, you should always have your data stored in at least two future-proof locations. But for the moment, Blu-ray discs and DVDs are a viable storage method. Just make sure you move your data before your last way to access them disappears.
Do you still use optical discs to store or transfer data?
Image credits: CD DVD via Shutterstock, USB Stick via Shutterstock, HDD via Shutterstock, Cloud Storage via Shutterstock

How To Use Google+ As Your Social Media Dashboard To Cross-Post To Facebook, Twitter & More

If you’re active on several social networks and run your own blog as well, chances are you’re posting a lot of the same content in several different places. To make life a little easier for you, you could simply start to post everything from one place – Google+ – and automatically post that content to several different networks and sites.
Whether it’s your WordPress blog, Twitter profile, or Facebook wall, there are ways to get your Google+ posts to automatically appear so that even if your friends aren’t on Google+ they’ll still be able to keep up with all of your content. It will require a little bit of effort on your part to set up, but once it’s all up and running, you can leave it to work in the background, and you can simply post away from Google+ at your heart’s content.
Of course, a word of warning is in order. The key to any social network is just that – it’s social. You’ll still have to log into Facebook, Twitter or check out the comments on your blog, to interact with your followers and readers.

Post From Google+ To WordPress

If you want to automatically share your Google+ posts on your WordPress blog, you can use the free plugin, Google+Blog. A paid version of the plugin will cost you $10, but the functionality is identical. The only difference is that with the free version, a link to the plugin site will accompany each of your posts.

After installing the plugin, you can access its settings under the WordPress settings menu.

To set up the plugin, you’ll need your Google+ ID and a Google+ API Key. Your Google+ ID is a long string of numbers and can be found in your profile URL, while you can generate your personal Google+ API Key here. To get started, click on the Create Project button:



You’ll be presented with a long list of Google-related APIs. Scroll down to Google+ API and turn the setting on.

You’ll have to accept Google’s API Terms of Service, and the Google+ Platform Terms of Service. This will create your API Project, and you can find your API Key under API Access.

Once you’ve copied your API Key, go back to your WordPress dashboard, and paste the key into your Google+Blog plugin settings.
Here you can also put in your Google+ ID. You can also decide how many of your past posts will be pulled into your WordPress blog retroactively, and which tags and categories will be associated with your posts. Finally, you can also choose the status of your posts – Pending, Future, Private, Draft or Published.

From that point on, any Google+ post you share with the social network will be automatically posted to your WordPress blog. The plugin runs every hour to import these posts, but you can manually force an import by updating the plugin options in the settings.
The final product looks exactly the same on your blog as it did on Google+. The title of your WordPress blog post is pulled in from the first sentence of your Google+ post – so be sure to keep the first sentence short and sweet, or even start using titles for your Google+ posts. Images are imported as is, whether you’ve uploaded it directly to Google+ or it’s the automatically generated image that accompanies a link on the social network.  Any comments you receive on Google+ will also appear on your WordPress post.

Post from Google+ to Twitter

Automatically sharing your Google+ posts on Twitter is made extremely easy with ManageFlitter. You can sign up to use the site using your Twitter account. Once you’ve done that, just head over to the ‘Dashboard’ and click on ‘Turn on/off Google+ sharing”. All you’ll need to activate the feature is your Google+ profile URL. Once you enter it, you should know that your accounts are connected by the welcome message including a link to your profile.

If you want to toggle the feature on and off – you just head over to the same place to deactivate it.

Post from Google+ to Facebook

The easiest way to post from Google+ to Facebook is to find out what your secret Facebook email upload address is. You can find this by going to the mobile upload page. If you’re logged in – you’ll see what your address is straight away. When creating a new post on Google+, just add that address to the people you’re sharing the post with, and it will automatically show up on your Facebook page. The drawback to using this method is that any photos you upload or videos you share won’t be included in the post. This method is only useful for cross-posting text only updates.
To share all kinds of updates from Google+ to Facebook, you’ll have to put a little bit more effort into the process. First, you’ll need to be able to access your Google+ RSS feed. We’ve already shown you several ways to do that - so pick the method that suits you best. Once you have your RSS feed, you’ll need to use it with the Facebook app RSS Graffiti. After granting RSS Graffiti access to your Facebook profile (and pages you manage), you can ‘add a new publishing plan’.
You’ll then need to fill in two pieces of information – your Source and your Target. Your Source is your Google+ RSS feed. You can also choose how frequently the feed is updated and how many posts to include per update.

The next step will be choosing your Target – which Facebook profile or page you want the updates to appear on. If you don’t have any Facebook pages, only your profile will show up in the list. You can then choose from three different update types – but the best option will probably be Standard which will include any images, videos or audio files you share.
Do you have any tips or tricks on how to turn Google+ into the ultimate social media dashboard? Let us know in the comments.

What Are The Differences Between Capacitive & Resistive Touchscreens?

It might not fully register, but we all know there are two types of touchscreens. There are those we find on expensive smartphones and tablets, which respond to the slightest touch, allow multi-touch and are generally highly responsive (unless you’re wearing gloves); and then there are those that have slightly longer response time, that require some pressure or a stylus, that don’t have multi-touch abilities but work no matter what you touch them with.
Whether you know what the difference is or not, you’ve probably experienced these differences yourself. When that happened, you might have wondered what causes them; why doesn’t your iPhone work when you’re wearing gloves? Why do touchscreens on feature phones behave differently from those of high-end smartphones? Why can’t you use just any old stylus on your iPad?
All these questions can be answered by two words: resistive and capacitive. The difference between these two touchscreen technologies answers all the above questions. Curious? Read on to find out exactly how it works. Note, however, that this is a simple explanation, and is not meant for engineers. Don’t expect to be able to build one of these by the end of the article!

Touchscreens In A Nutshell

Although touchscreens are becoming increasingly popular, they are by no means a new invention. The first touchscreen was invented back in the 1960s, and has gone through many changes and iterations to become the touchscreen we use today.

Touchscreens are not limited to smartphones and tablets, they are literally everywhere; from ATM machines, point-of-sale terminals, and navigation systems, to game consoles and even touchpads on laptops. Touchscreens are popping up everywhere, and are slowly taking over our lives, so the least we can do is know a bit more about how they work!

Resistive Touchscreens

The resistive touchscreen is the most common type of touchscreen. Except for modern smartphones, tablets and trackpads, most touchscreens we come in contact with are actually resistive touchscreens. As you’ve probably guessed, the resistive touchscreen relies on resistance. In that respect, it’s pretty intuitive to understand – the pressure you apply causes the screen to respond.
A resistive touchscreen is made out of two thin layers separated by a thin gap. These are not the only layers in the resistive touchscreen, but we’ll focus on them for simplicity. These two layers both have a coating on one side, with the coated sides facing each other inside the gap, just like two pieces of bread in a sandwich. When these two layers of coating touch each other, a voltage is passed, which is in turn processed as a touch in that location.

So when your finger, stylus, or any other instrument touches a resistive screen, it creates a slight pressure on the top layer, which is then transferred to the adjacent layer, thus starting the cascade of signals. Because of this, you can use anything you want on a resistive touchscreen to make the touch interface work; a gloved finger, a wooden rod, a fingernail – anything that creates enough pressure on the point of impact will activate the mechanism and the touch will be registered.
For this very same reason, resistive touchscreen require slight pressure in order to register the touch, and are not always as quick to respond as capacitive touchscreens such as the iPhone’s. In addition, the resistive touchscreen’s multiple layers cause the display to be less sharp, with lower contrast than we might see on capacitive screens. While most resistive screens don’t allow for multi-touch gestures such as pinch to zoom, they can register a touch by one finger when another finger is already touching a different location on the screen.

Resistive screens have been improving greatly over the years, and today many lower-end smartphones boast a resistive screen which is no less accurate than high-end devices. Some recent devices using resistive touchscreens are the Nokia N800, the Nokia N97, the HTC Tattoo and the Samsung Jet. Another well-known device using resistive technology is the Nintendo DS, which was the first popular game console to make use of it.

Capacitive Touchscreens

Surprisingly, it was actually the capacitive touchscreen that was invented first; the first one was built almost 10 years before the first resistive touchscreen. Nevertheless, today’s capacitive touchscreens are highly accurate and respond instantly when lightly touched by a human finger. So how does it work?
As opposed to the resistive touchscreen, which relies on the mechanical pressure made by the finger or stylus, the capacitive touchscreen makes use of the electrical properties of the human body. A capacitive screen is usually made of one insulating layer, such as glass, which is coated by a transparent conductive material on the inside. Since the human body is conductive, which means electricity can pass through it, the capacitive screen can use this conductivity as input. When you touch a capacitive touchscreen with your finger, you cause a change in the screen’s electrical field.

This change is registered, and the location of the touch is determined by a processor. This can be done by several different technologies , but they all rely on the electrical change caused by a light touch of a finger. This is the reason you cannot use a capacitive screen while wearing gloves – the gloves are not conductive, and the touch does not cause any change in the electrostatic field. Same goes for non-capacitive styluses.

Since capacitive screens are made of one main layer, which is constantly getting thinner as technology advances, these screens are not only more sensitive and accurate, the display itself can be much sharper, as seen on devices such as the iPhone 4S. And of course, capacitive touchscreens can also make use of multi-touch gestures, but only by using several fingers at the same time. If one finger is touching one part of the screen, it won’t be able to sense another touch accurately.
Which type of screen do you prefer? Do you like being able to use your touchscreen with any type of stylus or instrument, or do you value speed and accuracy over anything else? Share your opinions in the comments.
Image credit: Touch number pad image via Shutterstock, Finger on touchscreen image via Shutterstock, Hand image via Shutterstock

Don’t Believe The Hype: Registry Cleaners Don’t Make Windows Faster

Much advice has been given on how to keep your computer running smoothly, as well as how to fix it when it has become slow. We have even published a Windows on Speed guide, written by yours truly. One thing that hardly ever makes Windows faster, however, is cleaning the registry.
The often repeated tale, that registry cleaners can improve a computer’s performance, is a myth. The unfortunate truth is that registry cleaning can cause serious issues. The potential damange can range from money wasted on a registry cleaner, time wasted on cleaning the registry, an issue caused by ‘cleaning’ registry files that were actually important, and in the very worst case to a corrupted registry and a computer that will take forever to boot. None of this is worth a theoretical and in the best of cases minimal performance increase.
In a similar article, Chris has elaborated on what the registry is and what registry cleaners do. He has done an excellent job at showing you why registry cleaners by design cannot hold up to what they promise.
I am going to look at the hype around registry cleaners from a slightly different angle. What is it that actually does slow down a Windows computer and how does the registry play into this, if at all?

 
Let’s look at three of the key causes for a slow computer that could theoretically be improved by cleaning or otherwise optimizing the registry.

1. Disk Fragmentation

When your hard drive fills up with data, and when files are edited and deleted, disk fragmentation cannot be avoided. While the NTFS file system does give priority to storing data contiguously, i.e. in one single piece, it sometimes has to make exceptions. For example if you start editing a file that is tightly embedded within other files with no space between them, Windows has no choice but to write whatever you add to the file to another location on your hard drive, i.e. the file gets fragmented.
Fragmentation slows down your computer because Windows has to fetch all the different parts of a file from multiple locations on the hard drive and stick them back together while loading them into RAM. Only when this process is completed, you can see the respective file.

So does fragmentation affect the registry? Yes, but not really. Even if registry files are fragmented, reading them doesn’t cause a significant loss in performance because the registry is loaded into the RAM when Windows boots and can be accessed instantly while Windows is running.
This brings us to the next point…

2. Maxed Out RAM

By far the biggest factor in slowing down the computer is lack of free RAM. What takes up most of the precious RAM space, is running software. When all RAM space is exhausted, Windows removes inactive RAM data and writes them to virtual RAM, i.e. storage space on your hard drive.
Now when this data is needed, it is copied back to the RAM, but only after something else was removed. These operations cause a significant delay.

So we just established that the registry takes up RAM space. Wouldn’t it thus make sense to clean it up and keep it smaller, so it doesn’t take up so much RAM? Theoretically, yes. In practice, however, the amount of space you can save by removing a few hundred registry entries is minimal, so it won’t make a difference.
You can, however, achieve significant improvements by either upgrading your RAM (if possible) or by closing software you don’t need and preventing it from launching along with Windows.

3. Bad Registry Entries

So finally, we have reached the registry itself. Yes, bad registry entries can cause performance issues. However, under normal circumstances this should not happen. Moreover, newer versions of Windows protect the registry from fatal events, such as a crash during a database update, by keeping two levels of log files. During system boot, the registry can be repaired or reinitialized in case serious damage occurred.
General use issues, such as occasionally installing bad software, can of course not be avoided. If you want to do your registry good, remove and don’t install crapware, set up a sandbox to test software before installing properly, and if you do have to uninstall, use a tool like Revo Uninstaller to properly remove program files from your computer, including the registry.

Recommended Registry Cleaner

So what if you are 100% sure that you have an issue that can be addressed by cleaning the registry? Well, at least use a trusted tool and don’t waste any money on it. A PC maintenance tool we highly recommend is CCleaner and it contains a registry cleaner. Although we endorse this tool, we do not recommend to use its registry cleaner on a regular basis. Be sure to use it with care!

Did registry cleaners ever cause you issues or have you seen them improve your computer’s performance? We would love to hear about your experience!

Further Reading on How to Make Windows Faster

• Top 8 Programs That Can Make Your Computer Run Faster
• A Spring Cleaning Checklist For Your PC Part 2: Delete Junk & Free Wasted Space [Windows]
• A Simple Checklist To Safely Installing Free Software Without All The Junk

Image credits: Binary Vortex via Shutterstock, Snail on Keyboard, Snail on RAM via Shutterstock, Snail on RAM via Shutterstock