Computers and hardware

Print your own giant posters

Anyone who's ever shopped for a piece of art to hang behind the living room sofa knows that big art typically comes at a big price. Even if you pick up some mass-produced Ikea canvas, you still have to contend with fitting it in the car, or paying someone to deliver it to your doorstep.

If you have more time on your hands than money, there are some easy solutions for printing infinitely large posters from even the most modest printer.

The first step is the image. Whether you're going to print in black and white or full … Read more

How to compress PNG images with PNGGauntlet

PNG, a lossless image format, works well for text and graphics, like screenshots. The one drawback to PNG is that the resulting file size can be larger than JPEG files. PNGGauntlet, a free Windows program, can help reduce the size of PNG files and since PNG is lossless, compressing it will have no impact on its quality.

To use PNGGauntlet, first make sure you have Microsoft .NET framework 4.0 installed. When you're ready to start, add the PNG files you want to compress by dragging them over to the screen or clicking on the Add Images button. Next, … Read more

How to print e-book pages

New e-reading converts might be surprised to find out that despite the fact that e-books can be read on computers, there's no real way to print out a page for reference. In the olden days, you could just put a paperback facedown on a copier, but with e-books, it's a little trickier.

Just in time for school bells and syllabi, here are some go-to ways for printing out pages from an e-book.

Remember, though, that policies for the many book publishers vary, so review those policies and move forward at your own risk. Distributing copyrighted material without authorization … Read more

AirPlay only the audio from your Mac using OS X Mountain Lion

One of the new features in OS X Mountain Lion is the new AirPlay Mirroring feature. AirPlay Mirroring makes it easy to give presentations, watch Flash videos (Hulu, anyone?) or show off photos from your recent vacation on a TV. If you want to see AirPlay Mirroring on OS X in action, make sure to check out Jason Parker's video demonstration.

One thing that isn't really advertised about the new AirPlay feature on your Mac is the capability to send only the audio from your Mac to any AirPlay compatible device. Meaning, you don't have to mirror … Read more

How to enable Web Sharing in OS X Mountain Lion

The Sharing services in OS X allow for a number of connectivity options, including screen sharing, file sharing, printer sharing, and the capability to use your computer as an Internet router. In past versions of OS X, Apple has also included a full Web sharing service using the open-source Apache server that allows you to host Web pages on your computer, but this option has been removed from the system preferences in Mountain Lion.

Despite its relative lack of popularity, the presence of the full Apache Web server in OS X has been useful for testing Web development projects, or … Read more

The past week's unbeatable tech reviewed

Two little birds, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. One's name is Wayne Cunningham, the others is 2013 BMW 640i Gran Coupe. You can read all about their 4.5-star love affair, which resulted in the highest rating we've given to anything this week. But please know that unless you're rolling in cash, this is a recreational read only. This tech-friendly beauty (with built-in chair massage) costs $76,000.

For real, live, normal people, we've reviewed plenty more exciting and affordable tech, including Apple's latest OS X release, Mountain Lion. Jason Parker took a deep dive … Read more

How to extract images from Office documents

Including images in an Office document can ensure that all relevant data is located in one spot for everyone's convenience. Maybe you need to include a schematic or blueprint diagram to help illustrate a point, or feel photos documenting a problem or demonstration could give your work a bit more power. In any case, the easy part is putting the images into the document, but what if you need to pull the images out of a file?

Sure you could use a screen grabber for small files, but what about large, high-quality images that don't fit into one … Read more

How to automatically delete Chrome browsing data

Chrome is one of the most popular Web browsers, but sometimes a missing feature can be rather shocking. Automatically deleting things like your browsing and download history, cache, cookies, and even saved form data is missing from Chrome! You could do it manually every time you browse the Web, remember, or get paranoid, but you shouldn't have to.

That's why Click&Clean, a Chrome extension, exists. Not only does it offer more features than the standard check boxes built into Chrome, it also performs actions automatically. That's right, no remembering, lots of being lazy... I mean, … Read more

Create password-protected docs on Mac and iOS with Password Pad

If you'd like to keep some of your files from prying eyes, Password Pad lets you create text documents and protect them with either XOR encryption or Triple DES encryption and share them via e-mail, iCloud, Dropbox, or iTunes file sharing.

There are free and paid versions of Password Pad in the Mac App Store. Password Pad Lite is free and supports XOR encryption, which the app itself admits "might be easily cracked." The $4.99 Password Pad app supplies stronger Triple DES encryption. I tried out the Lite version because all I am trying to do … Read more

Save storage space by compressing your media files in Windows

Streaming can only take you so far. It's nice to carry at least some of our tunes and videos with us in our mobile devices, but most of us have run into space limitations. SD cards can only hold so much, but compressing your files can help you cram more onto your device. Note that higher levels of compression almost always mean lower levels of quality, but most of us won't notice much difference.

First, clear off extraneous files. You may have old pictures, videos, and other detritus that can be better stored on your computer or … Read more