“How To” collection
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →September 14, 2012
7 Unique Ways my Kids Use the iPhone
The Apple iPhone is a necessity in our household, at least my kids tell me it is. It seems that the iPhone is practically grafted to the hands of my children as they walk around the house. I almost think that they are going to grow another appendage for them to simply carry it and use their other two hands…
Read more →August 30, 2012
10 Tips on How to Avoid Losing your Digital Identity
Our society is made up of all types of information. And the amount of "stuff" that is known about us is growing as speeds never before seen. Think back 50 or 100 years. What identified a person? Their names, their ancestry, their address and their bank. Eventually phone numbers and a few other bits of personally identifiable information made it…
Read more →July 25, 2012
How To Create a Bootable Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) Installation DVD or USB Drive [Updated]
As many people know, Apple's new Operating System, OS 10.8 - a.k.a. "Mountain Lion," is officially available for purchase and download. Just head over to the Apple App Store on your supported Mac and purchase and install Mountain Lion now! As part of the upgrade process, your Emergency Recovery Boot Partition will be upgraded to support re-installs of Mountain Lion…
Read more →July 13, 2012
How to Use Olympic Gymnastics Scoring to Get Your Kids to do their Chores
There is a lot of excitement in my house with the coming 2012 Olympics in London, mainly because my 10-year-old daughter is a competitive gymnast. We watched the women's gymnastics trials a few weeks ago, and my daughter has some clear favorites and has been critiquing how each of the gymnasts are doing. But as we sat around watching the…
Read more →June 28, 2012
How To Set the Default Address Book in Microsoft Outlook 2010
I recently got a new computer at my work and got Microsoft Outlook 2010 installed on it. However, I kept running into problems as I was trying to send emails to people within my organization. I would type in their name and Outlook wouldn't find it. I would then click the "To:" button and no names would show. This is…
Read more →May 30, 2012
5 Reasons Why You Should Repurpose Old Content from your Blog
I have often been asked: why the heck do you have those automated tweets of old content coming from your blog? What is the reasoning? They are outdated and might not be topical, could be viewed as out of context and, in my case, might be talking about technology, products or services that are over a year old. Think about it,…
Read more →May 4, 2012
How To Create a “Work” Menu Like Office 2004/2008 in Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac
While I truly like Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac (you can see my review of it here on the Microsoft Office for Mac Blog), there are some folks who have complained about a feature being removed from previous versions, specifically, the “Work” menu that was present in previous versions of Word in Office for Mac (2004 & 2008). Personally, I…
Read more →April 24, 2012
Get Those Cleaning Supplies Out & Roll Up Your Sleeves – How to Clean Your Digital Home!
It's Springtime! Leaves are appearing on the trees, the sun is starting to gain dominance over the rain, and my eyes are teary, not only from the pollen in the air, but also from the fact that I need to start doing my spring cleaning around the house! It's time to put away the winter clothes, coats and blankets, throw…
Read more →April 23, 2012
How To Fix Adobe Fireworks Hanging After Launch on MacOS
Adobe Fireworks is the lifeblood of many web developers, artists and bloggers so when it stops running, I envision all of these groups running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Recently, I ran into an issue where when I launched Fireworks, it would run through the splash screen, loading extensions and the like but then hang, once it…
Read more →April 18, 2012
CEO & Co-Founder, Brad Jefferson, Discusses Animoto & Lets Out a Mother’s Day Secret in this Exclusive Interview
Animoto was created to complement the emergence of rich media and video within the consumer marketplace. Back when it was founded in 2005, consumers didn't have smart phones nor HD camcorder and high video production quality was something to envied, only coming from studios. When Animoto brought their product to market, it was revolutionary. Started by a bunch of friends,…
Read more →April 17, 2012
10 Ways Brands Can Work More Effectively with Top-Tier Bloggers
Bloggers are not second class citizens. At least not all of them. I do have to draw a bit of a line here between those "bloggers" who simply post sales, coupons, contents and giveaways, and those who produce content in the form of reviews, how-to articles, social commentary, experiences, analysis and the like. In my mind, there is a clear…
Read more →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…
Read more →