How-Tos

Are you the new owner of an LG Optimus G on AT&T? Now that you've taken your toy home, it's time to hook it up to Wi-Fi and start customizing. But wait, the Wi-Fi keeps disconnecting randomly when you enter the information for your home network. Or worse, it won't even let you save your home network to try reconnecting.

Luckily, there's an easy fix that will let you stay connected and keep information for Wi-Fi networks of your choosing. Here's how to fix it:

First you'll want to open the app … Read more

If you need to adjust network settings on your Mac, the quickest route is to do so through the OS X system preferences and menu extras. However, you can also make these changes -- adding and removing ports, creating new locations, switching to DHCP from manual configurations, changing MTU sizes, and managing 802.1x profiles, among others -- via the command line.

The utility for doing this is the command "networksetup," which can be used to quickly apply a change to a specific network property. This tool covers every aspect of the Mac's network setup and you … Read more

Apple's Mac systems come with a basic audio controller for playing through the system's internal speakers or through the audio ports to headphones or a stereo system. However, if you would like to use a different controller such as a multi-channel USB interface for recording with GarageBand, Logic, or other use, then you can add it to the system and set it up to be used instead of Apple's controllers.

While useful to have, if you configure your system with multiple interfaces then you might run into an issue where the system could revert to its internal … Read more

Many programs, such as Microsoft Office, support their own interfaces for various fonts you may have installed on your Mac; however, many other programs like TextEdit and Apple's Pages use Apple's central Font panel to provide font management. This panel can usually be invoked by pressing Command-T in programs that support it, where you will be presented with a column-oriented view of font collections that you can navigate through, select, and set the size for.

While convenient for quickly selecting and setting font sizes, the Font panel also contains a number of additional features that can be applied … Read more

Talk about an inconvenient truth: right around the 12-month mark, your iPhone battery will start to wear out. You'll notice that it doesn't last quite so long between charges, a problem that just gets worse as more time passes. By 18 months or two years, you'll be lucky to get half a day of run time.

Apple famously (make that infamously) engineers iPhones without a battery door, so you can't just swap in a new power pack. However, you can indeed replace your iPhone's battery, and it's cheaper and easier than you might think.… Read more

As a social network built on keeping things short and sweet, it's no surprise that Twitter released today a secondary app that lets users (Twitter and otherwise) shoot and upload 6-second videos.

Of course, no later than a few hours after its launch, Vine was already being called the "Instagram for video," as users began sharing short clips of kids, stop-motion drawings, food, and, of course, puppies.

Currently, Vine is only available for iOS, but Twitter assures users that its app will be coming to other platforms "soon."

The app is pretty simple … Read more

Separate user accounts in OS X allow the system to sequester data, settings, and other details for individual users. To identify user account, there are of course the long and short usernames for it, but in addition OS X includes an account picture that while not functional is aesthetically useful at the login window, in Mail and chat messages, among other aspects of the system.

The generic account picture in OS X is a gray silhouette on a darker gray background, that can be seen by enabling the Guest user account in the system, but other accounts are randomly assigned … Read more

One of the features that OS X supports is the creation of URL links in the Finder, which much like aliases for files and folders provide a means of loading a particular Web page or other Web resource. Browser bookmarks and favorites are perhaps a more thorough and convenient way to manage your frequently accessed URLs, but the ability to access links via the Finder is still an option that might be useful to some.

To create a URL link, simply select the URL (or the favicon next to the URL) in the address field for your Web browser and … Read more

Gatekeeper is a new security measure introduced in OS X Mountain Lion that allows the system to prevent the execution of code that does not meet certain criteria, such as possessing a valid digital signature from Apple's developer community. When setting up GateKeeper in the Security system preferences, you can set it so that only approved applications from the Mac App Store are allowed to run, additionally allow programs from approved developers to run, or you can set no restrictions and allow everything to run.

When the restrictions are set, you can still run unapproved programs by right-clicking them … Read more