Insider Secrets

DirecTV Guide mishap messes with March Madness

Saturday evening while folks were watching basketball, hockey, perhaps a showing of "Xanadu," DirecTV DVRs began losing guide data all across the U.S.

Subscribers at DBSTalk.com, and I experienced a blank program guide with a date of 7/14 and all shows noted as "To Be Announced." While channels continued to receive programming, any recordings were disrupted.

Callers to DirecTV report they were told the problem was fixed or being fixed and they would not lose any programming. A hard reset (or reboot) seemed to fix the problem temporarily, but eventually the guide data … Read more

Get started with Twitter

Twitter has been around for a couple of years, but with the presidential election and the arrival of people like Shaq, LeVar Burton, and Stephen Fry onto the site, it has moved into the mainstream. So, if you're new to Twitter or just a little lost by OH and RT, here's some help.

We'll assume you've been to Twitter.com and know it's a list of short postings, limited to 140 characters. You probably know you can follow people and their posts show up in your time line.

But what's it good for? At … Read more

Best backup methods

You buy MP3s, take photos, write long love letters to Cloris Leachman, and you keep it all on your hard drive. If that hard drive crashes, you're done for. Unless you backed up. But what's the best way to back up? There are several ways to do this. We're going to discuss three. You can see some of them in action in our video.

External Hard drive Network Attached Storage Online service

Let's start with the external hard drive. Obviously, you don't want to back up to the same hard drive where the original files are. That's just silly.

The simplest method is to buy an external hard drive and back up to that. Our favorite here at CNET is the ClickFree portable backup. It makes the process of backing up as simple as you can imagine. The software is stored on the drive, so you just plug it in and tell it what to back up.

You can also do it yourself. If you have an old hard drive lying around, say from upgrading a notebook, just put it in a case. We show how to do it in this video on upgrading your hard drive.… Read more

Use a flash drive as memory in Windows XP

Got a slower, older Windows XP machine? Got a USB flash drive you're not using? Then you have extra memory to speed up that computer and extend it's life a bit. I'm Tom Merritt from CNET.com, and I'll show you how in this Insider Secret.

We've shown you how Windows Vista's ReadyBoost feature will let you use a USB drive like this as extra cache memory to make your computer faster. Well there's a way to do the same trick in Windows XP. Thanks to Shawn in Quebec for sending along the … Read more

Replace your Wii sensor bar... romantically.

The cool thing about the Wii is the motion sensing. It works because of the sensor bar that sits on top of the TV. But because it's on top, it may fall off and break. We can show you a lot of easy and cheap ways to replace it in this Insider Secret.

The sensor bar is plugged into the Wii, but that's just for power. It's lighting up infrared LEDs. Those are picked up by the Wiimote, and it triangulates off them to determine its position, and then the Wiimote sends that information back to the … Read more

Secure your e-mail

Some say that if everyone in the world properly secured their e-mail, there would be no spam. Well that's one of many good reasons to do so. But isn't using PGP security really expensive and hard? Well it's actually free and after this Insider Secret, hopefully, it won't be so hard either.

If you just send an e-mail on the Internet, there's no way the recipient can be sure it really came from you, unless you digitally sign the e-mail. Also e-mail is unencrypted and anybody could intercept it and read it, unless you encrypt … Read more

Hack Apple TV

The Apple TV is an excellent little device, if you limit yourself to the Apple universe of music, video, and podcasts. Who wants to be limited? Watch our video on how to add DivX, AVI, and more to your Apple TV. Then return here for the written steps.

XBMC is free and open-source software for Windows, Linux, and OS X that many consider the best media-center software out there. It grew out of the mod chips used on the original Xbox. Because it can run on OS X, that means it'll run on the Apple TV, which runs OS … Read more

Supercharge your old router

I just bought a new router and have this old Linksys WRT54GS just lying around now. But rather than ditch it, I'm going to give it some new life with new third-party firmware. Watch our video then refer to this story for all the steps.

Every router has software that runs on it. We're going to change that software from the factory default to an open-source version. Whether you're replacing your old router or just frustrated with your new one, there are a few reasons you might want to do this.

My Linksys can only act as … Read more

Free TV shows online

Sometimes you don't find out about a good TV show until partway through its run, or maybe you don't get a certain channel, or even worse, for whatever reason, your DVR fails to record your favorite show. Thanks to the Internet, there are many ways to catch up, and maybe even ditch cable. Watch our Insider Secret video to see some of our favorite ways to get TV shows online, and then come back here for the links.

There are still many popular shows that don't put their content online. At least not legally. And this ain'… Read more