“Fix It” collection
Master the art of household maintenance with practical DIY repair guides for appliances, electronics, and software systems. These tutorials focus on cost-saving troubleshooting techniques and hands-on solutions to keep your home and gadgets running at peak performance.
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →February 1, 2012
If Your Laptop is Jealous of your Ultrabook, Give it a Hybrid SSD from Seagate – the Momentus XT
I have an Ultrabook and a MacBook Air and my non-SSD traditional laptop is getting jealous. It told me that it wants to be more like them, faster booting up and able to launch applications more quickly. "Why can't I be like those super slim laptops you are always using?" it always asks me. Obviously there is no way for…
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January 10, 2012
Video: How To Wrap a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro MagSafe Power Adapter the NEW Way
I have been in search of a really good way to wrap up my MagSafe power adapter for both my MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. The reason being, if you simply wrap them up the "conventional" way, you run the risk of fraying the connections which increases the risks of electrical shocks or shorting out your power adapters. And to…
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November 29, 2011
How To Configure Location-Based Reminders on the iPhone with iOS5
I kept hearing about how with iOS 5, you could set up Reminders that would trigger when you arrived or left a particular location. It's a pretty neat concept. You can program in an address, like your work, and set up a series of to-dos that magically remind you when you are geographically near that location. Or perhaps, you are…
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October 28, 2011
How To Fix Applications Crashing After Upgrading to Apple iOS5 on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch
The upgrade to Apple's iOS 5 is a few weeks behind us now and most people are up and running on it. And, now the iPhone 4S is out in the market and more people are migrating over from older iPhones to the new iPhone 4S. I haven't heard of too many issues as part of the upgrade process, though…
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August 22, 2011
How To Easily Remove, Replace & Install an Apple iPhone 4 Battery
I have done quite a few installs and hardware replacements in my time, but never have I found an easier project than to replace the battery of an iPhone 4. As with many of my previous iPhones, I tend to blow through the batteries pretty quickly. Some of the signs that you have an aging battery are: battery drains faster…
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August 4, 2011
How to Get Hostnames to Resolve over a Mac OS X VPN Connection
Yesterday I ran into a little issue. I tried to use my Cisco VPN client on my Mac after having upgraded to Lion. For some reason, it was not working. I did find some ways to correct that (the Error 51 issue) and how to migrate your Cisco setting over to the native Mac OS VPN client, but that will…
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July 22, 2011
VIDEO – How to Re-Download Mac OS X Lion & Create Bootable Install DVD & USB Thumb Drive
Yesterday I wrote a post "How To Re-Download Mac OS X Lion & Create a Bootable Install DVD" and it seems to be helping a lot of people out there. So, sometimes it is even more helpful to create a video that explains the process, so I quickly put one together. Also, a few users were wondering how to create…
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July 21, 2011
How To Re-Download Mac OS X “Lion” & Create a Bootable Install DVD
In my excitement yesterday about the release of the new Macintosh operating system called "Lion", I downloaded and installed the new OS without thinking about creating a bootable DVD since Lion is the first Apple OS to NOT come on DVD but rather be distributed via the App Store. You will also be able to order a USB stick from…
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June 24, 2011
How To Use Chrome Instant Search to Test Twitter Status Updates & Use Reserved Characters via Web Intents
Back in May, I wrote a post on "How to Pre-Populate Twitter Status Update the NEW Way via Links & Web Intents". Essentially, Twitter updated the method for creating a link to "tweet" using their new Web Intents platform. Many developers (e.g., of WordPress plugins) and other designers are updating their code to support this new (and better) way of…
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June 9, 2011
How To Get the UDID/UUID of your iOS Device – Even In A Panic
Most iOS developers know that in order to "activate" your iOS device (e.g., iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) to use the latest beta of iOS 5, you need to have your UDID/UUID officially registered with Apple in their Development center. I learned this the hard way as I had not recorded it and had installed the iOS beta 1 and was…
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May 18, 2011
How to Pre-Populate Twitter Status Updates the NEW Way via Links & Web Intents
About a year and a half ago, I posted a "How To" article to teach people on how to tweet out messages from your website via a URL or web link. Unfortunately, that method no longer works as of a few days ago. Twitter has updated the process for doing this. However, I now have the NEW way to do…
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April 22, 2011
How To Fix “The Required File Cannot Be Found” Error When Syncing an iPhone or iPod Touch
Every since I had to restore my iPhone 4 from a backup, I have been having a pesky error message popping up each and every time I would sync my iPhone with iTunes on my Mac. It cryptically said "The iPhone [insert your iPhone name here] cannot be synced. The required file cannot be found." Nothing more. No error message…
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