cleaning

Spring has sprung, and while your neglected garage might be beckoning, the tech you use in your daily life could also use a little cleaning love.

Over the last week, our How To superheroes put together spring cleaning guides for all the tech in your life. From clearing up space on your hard drive to sprucing up your Android or iPhone, we've got you covered. Take a stab at the guides that suit you best, and waltz through spring with a revived collection of gadgetry.

Six ways to breathe life into your slow PC Your once-new Windows PC can … Read more

Spring cleaning is about more than actual cleaning -- it's about getting a fresh start. The latter of these can simply mean changing things around so that the experience feels new. Here are some of the cleaning basics for your Android device, and also some tips on how to make other parts you can't change feel a bit of that spring rejuvenation.

We all have too much "stuff," as the famous comedian George Carlin told us, and chances are that you can afford to get rid of some of it.… Read more

Nearly a billion of us earthlings log into Facebook daily, and spend about 8 hours per month on the free social networking site.

From stalking catching up with friends, to sharing daily activity through status updates and apps, and customizing the look of our Timelines, many of us have invested hours in our online personas.

But how often do you review your account to adjust settings, throw out unused apps, and make necessary changes to reflect the way you presently use Facebook? It's probably been a while since you did a little cleanup.

In the spirit of spring, follow … Read more

Every spring, households around America partake in some form of spring cleaning. Traditionally, the honey-do list is usually only limited to getting junk out of the garage, and getting the cobwebs off the house. This year, add tidying up your iOS device to the list-- it's worth the extra work.

Device storage space As time goes on, it's really easy to accumulate apps. I'm talking about the apps you have downloaded, placed in a folder, and completely forgotten about. Those single-serving apps take up precious space on your device, and over time they can add up to … Read more

If your home media center feels fragmented and frustrating, there's good news: with a weekend or two of spring cleaning, you can make it all much easier to keep track of and enjoy. I've tried to keep this hardware-independent, though some tips assume you have networked storage or a particular operating system. Here are a few tricks and tips to get you started:

Music This is usually the toughest library for most people to manage. Depending on the tools you use, it can be hard to effectively manage more than 10,000 individual music files, and while some … Read more

My wife and I cleaned out our attic and basement last week, throwing out and donating six years' worth of accumulated clutter. We celebrated each run to the dump as we literally lightened our load. Now our attic isn't as overwhelming, and our basement is less creepy.

I wanted to continue our spring cleaning momentum so I turned to my MacBook Pro, which just surpassed its one-year anniversary. Sure, the amount of garbage I've put on it in the past year can't match the amount of crap I found in my attic and basement, but it is slowing down some. I see the spinning beach ball more than I care to. If your Mac struggles to keep pace from time to time, the following are some ways you can clean and speed it up.… Read more

It's always exciting when you bring home a new computer. It feels so powerful and fast; you can't imagine ever needing to buy another one again. Unfortunately, neither your excitement nor your PC's performance lasts.

Whether your hard drive is running out of space or your system takes forever to run simple tasks, it might be worth your time to try and revive it before replacing it. Here are some spring cleaning tips to revive your Windows PC:

Free up disk space The enormous size of modern multimedia files can eat up your hard-drive storage quickly. What … Read more

How do you feel when you're tossing food into the garbage or the waste disposal?

Do tinges of guilt bubble in your throat? Does a soupcon of self-loathing slither around your brain, as you pour that curried cauliflower soup into an unknown beyond?

I bring you news that might assist your psychological health. For just this week, some British people from a clean-tech company called SeaB have been sliding around the Bay Area, trying to get our eco-princes to invest in MuckBusters.

These artfully named objects are containers into which you can shove your leftover spaghetti, tacos, or duck a l'orange and expect, after a little technical machination, to get electricity.

If you believe the estimates, all you need is half a ton of unwanted food to run about 150 computers. Which presents a sobering counterpoint to the impression one has that 150 people sitting at computers in the average office consume at least 150 tons of food.

Some will be wondering how this machine busts your meatballs. Well, you shove your food in at one end and it gets chewed up by bacteria. As often with chewing, a lot of gas emerges. Your friendly MuckBuster does a little filtering, gets itself a methane stream and then slips that gas through a heat and power system. … Read more

The Internet, as a tool, has been largely beneficial for people and businesses, but it has also exposed us to new security threats like never before. If you happen to be a Google Chrome user, then Mixesoft's Click & Clean is specially made to make your Internet surfing experience a little bit safer.

While it is possible to manually clean out traces of online activity with currently available programs, Click & Clean is an extension that is designed to automate this process, saving the user a little bit of that very precious commodity, time. The tool is available for … Read more