important

Adding a birthday calendar to Google Calendar

Remembering birthdays or other personal holidays can be difficult without use of a calendar or date book. If you're already using Gmail and Google Calendar these dates can kept on hand at all times. To take the pressure off yourself to remember important dates, just follow these steps:

1. Log into Gmail and choose Contacts from the menu in the upper left corner. It will look something like this:

2. Add birthdays to your individual contacts that the calendar will be able to use. Save the contact info and then open Google Calendar.

3. Save the contact and then … Read more

Obama calls for deep cuts in U.S. oil imports

President Barack Obama set an ambitious goal today to cut U.S. oil imports by a third over 10 years, focusing on a source of anxiety for Americans as high gasoline prices threaten economic recovery.

Obama outlined his strategy in a speech after spending days explaining U.S.-led military action in Libya, where fighting, accompanied by unrest elsewhere in the Arab world, has helped push U.S. gasoline prices toward $4 a gallon.

"There are no quick fixes. And we will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we get serious about a … Read more

Workaround for using camcorder movies in iMovie for iOS

Apple's release of iMovie for iOS was greatly welcomed and it has been a popular download for numerous iPad users; however, people have noticed that the program does have some limitations, one of them being movies not working if they were directly imported from camcorders and other video devices.

Recently Apple posted a short but to-the-point knowledge base article that acknowledges this limitation:

iMovie for iOS is designed to work with video recorded with iPad 2, iPhone 4, and iPod touch (4th generation). To ensure optimal performance, the app filters out certain non-Apple video clips from the Video browser. … Read more

How to solve Facebook import and export freezes in iPhoto '11

Uploading photos from iPhoto to Facebook via iPhoto's built-in exporter has taken a turn for the worse for some users, not allowing uploading or downloading and often freezing while trying to connect.

Several users have voiced their displeasure with the situation in one of the Apple Support Discussion forum threads. User ajrossnz writes:

Since I upgraded from iPhoto '09 to '11 I have been unable to upload to facebook, a feature that worked great in '09. I have done all the things that were suggested through various googling such as removing my facebook account in preferences and removing albums, … Read more

Transferring MS Word AutoCorrect entries

Back in May 2008, I described a macro that made it easy to copy custom AutoCorrect entries from a version of Microsoft Word on one PC to a Word installation on another machine. Unfortunately, the macro, written by Microsoft MVP Dave Rado, is no longer available.

I take no pleasure in criticizing Microsoft's inability to meet the needs of its customers, but some of us have been using Word for close to 20 years. Shouldn't we be able to transfer our handcrafted AutoCorrect entries and other customizations between PCs without having to drag system files between folders that … Read more

Sync up your drives daily

ChronoSync is a syncing and backup utility with high-powered features underneath a novice-friendly interface. Along with the ChronoAgent companion app, it's especially useful for anyone trying to sync folders and files between multiple computers.

At its most basic, ChronoSync lets you pick a target disk, folder, or file that you want to back up--the "left target" in ChronoSync's visual, left-right interface--and then another disk, folder, or file where you want the new backup located (the "right target"). But ChronoSync doesn't stop there: you can easily swap directions, do a "blind" backup (… Read more

Backup time machine

Regular system backups are a matter of emphasis for us, and we like them thorough and often. Windows' built-in system recovery and backup utilities do a pretty decent job, but like many built-in features, they have their limitations, and they can be confusing and even daunting for many users, especially those who need them the most. There are more third-party backup utilities than you can shake a Registry at, however, each offering a different combination of power, flexibility, and ease of use. MagiCure Professional 9 from AdvantEDGE Solutions is aimed at less-experienced users, since its goal is to simplify the … Read more

Toyota loses domain name trademark appeal

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday ruled that an authorized Lexus dealer can use the word "Lexus" in its Internet domain name. It also ruled that the Japanese automaker took advantage of two auto brokers who represented themselves in court.

Toyota sued Lisa and Farzad Tabari, the owners of Fast Imports, in a Los Angeles federal court in 2003 stating that consumers would be confused by the use of the name Lexus in the defendant's Web site domain name and the use of Lexus photos and the Lexus logo.

Toyota … Read more

Easy EXIF editing

Exchangeable Image File Format, or EXIF, is an image file specification that stores information about each image. This metadata, as it's commonly known, includes details about the camera's make and model, the artist's name and copyright, shooting information such as aperture, ISO, exposure, and much more. Although the camera generates much of this information automatically when the photo is taken, sometimes the information contained in the EXIF needs to be added to or edited. Exif Pilot is a simple program that allows users to do just that.

Exif Pilot's interface is plain, with a traditional three-pane … Read more