volumes

Have you ever adjusted the volume on your phone's ringer then forgot to set it back to normal? Subsequently, you either missed calls because it was too quiet or got startled because it was too loud. A new Android app called Intelligent Ringer aims to do away with the constant volume adjustments by setting the ringer volume automatically, based on ambient noise levels.

Launching the Intelligent Ringer app gives you the option of starting or stopping the app. When it's running, you'll see the icon in the notification bar. If you go to Menu > Settings, there … Read more

One of the primary uses of computers is, of course, for media, whether you're watching movies, listening to music, playing a game, or running through a feature-packed slideshow. In the middle of the fun, it can be incrediby frustrating to get interrupted by a loud swoosh as you receive a new e-mail, or a speech alert telling you some other program needs attention.

To avoid such interruptions, of course you can quit the various applications like Mail and instant-messaging clients that may cause them, but this will not guarantee silence, as alerts can still crop up from other sources.… Read more

CoreStorage is Apple's volume manager that provides an interface between the OS and physical volumes on the drive. It was introduced in OS X Lion for its full-disk encryption options with FileVault 2, but in addition allows for volume spanning, where multiple drives in the system can be combined into one logical volume for the OS to use.

The CoreStorage volume-spanning feature not only increases a single volume's storage beyond the capacity of a single drive, it also prioritizes storage to the primary drive in its logical volume. This means that if you use an SSD as the … Read more

Secondary volumes such as external USB and FireWire hard drives are often used with multiple computers, and if the drive contains a permissions-aware filesystem such as Apple's HFS+ (the default Mac filesystem) then it can inherit various permissions settings from the systems it's used with. While that's not usually an issue, these permissions can sometimes block access to parts of the hard drive so it can't be read from or written to.

To deal with this problem, Apple includes an option to ignore permissions on secondary drives, which can be invoked by selecting the drive and … Read more

OS X will automatically attempt to mount an attached volume when the system is started, and if successful the volume will appear in the Finder either in the sidebar or on your desktop if you have these options enabled. However, there may be instances such as in multi-boot environments when you might want a specific volume to remain unmounted.

With multiple boot volumes in a system, when loaded in one operating system it is relatively easy to access and edit important files on the boot disk of other operating systems. Therefore, keeping the unused boot drive unmounted may be a … Read more

The CBM Calculator is used to calculate your consignment volume and weight based on the container size. It is a useful utility for any business that involves shipping.

This CBM Calculator has a very simple look, but it is effective. Make sure you have a valid e-mail address, as this is required to use it. It has an Excel layout in which information such as the Product/Container, Length, Height, and Breadth -- which can be listed in a number of different units -- is used to calculate the Pack Weight, Volume, or other weight measurements. This information can be … Read more

When you add a new hard drive or SSD to your system, you must format and partition it before you can use it. The best tool for the job is a full-featured disk partition manager, which can not only format and partition drives but repartition them, too, or change the partition type when your needs change; for instance, if you should move your C drive to an SSD, you can repartition the old drive for media storage. EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition is just such a tool. Unlike some so-called free disk partition managers, EaseUS Partition Master is a full-featured … Read more

There's a lot of widget apps, so for one to stand out it has to offer something others don't. Slider Widget - Volumes & more is definitely one of the best-looking volume widgets, and if you need your volume controls at your fingertips, this app is for you.

Instead of offering a simple toggle for each volume setting on your Android device, Slider Widget gives you a pop-up sliding bar that lets you adjust notification, alarm, phone, and system volumes. There's also an option for brightness, which is always better adjusted with a sliding bar.… Read more

Admit it: you'd love to watch movies at home that never get too loud or too quiet. You'd never have to lunge for the remote when the villain's plane crashes, to turn the sound down. We want movies that always have the same volume, like music, where the volume never changes. We like it that way, right? Why should movies be any more dynamic than music?

Now, sure, most receivers and sound bars have some sort of "Night Mode" scheme to compress movies' soft-to-loud volume shifts. Some receivers include more sophisticated volume-leveling processors such as … Read more