CHRISdotTODD

Recently my Apple TV remote quit working. When I pressed the buttons, the light on the Apple TV lit, but nothing happened. I've since learned, similar to "pairing" your wireless key for your car, the Apple TV remote needs to be "paired" with your Apple TV. It's an easy process: Hold the Menu and Previous buttons for 6 seconds. You should see a new graphic appear, a remote and a broken chain. Then, Hold the Menu and Next buttons for 6 seconds. The graphic will go away, as you have just "paired" your remote with your Apple TV.

I got a new external hard drive to use for backups. Before starting, I wanted to format the drive as NTFS, instead of the default FAT32. When I tried though, the system always gave me an error message,"volume is in use by another process." Of course I checked and checked, and was certain nothing else was using the drive. It turns out that the drive when initial setup was added to the System Restore Monitoring; I needed to remove it to format the drive. Here's how to do that: Go to Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> System Restore Click the System Restore Settings in the right pane Highlight the drive Click Settings Check "Turn off System Restore" on this drive Click OK Click OK again Click Cancel (to close the Welcome to System Restore dialog) For a drive that I am using as a backup drive (a data only drive), there is no reason to use System restore, so after formatting, I did not re-enable. Note that if you are a Win

I recently discovered a very helpful search tip for Amazon. When I shop, I like to sort by price, low to high. What usually happens though is I then have to go through all the match but irrelevant items before I get to what I really want. What I learned is that if I use a minus (-) for the items I don't want to see, then I no longer have this issue. Here's an example: Searched for "upconverting DVD players" Sort by price: low to high First thing I get is a bunch of cables Change search to " upconverting DVD players -cables " Sort by price: low to high Now the first results are the low-end upconverting DVD players You can also add multiple items to exclude. For example: " upconverting DVD players -cables -progressive ". BONUS Tip: Use this URL to find all Electronic items that are 85% or greater off of list price: http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?node=172282&pct-off=85- . Change 85 to any number to get the percentage you are looking for. Thanks

Many stores have plans to close some or all locations after the Christmas holiday. Before you buy that gift card for little Johnny, better check out whether they'll still be around.

When I get data from the screen view in Salesforce.com, the results have an empty row between each row of data. With a little VBA help to create a macro, it's easy to clean it up. Here's how to do this: Go to Tools >> Macros >> Visual Basic Editor OR press Alt-F11. The Project Explorer should be open in the upper-left corner. If not press Ctrl-R. In the Project Explorer, double-click the worksheet name to add the macro only to a single worksheet. Double-click ThisWorkbook to have it available to all worksheets. Paste the code (option 1 or option 2) into the worksheet. Go to View >> Microsoft Excel OR press Alt-F11. Select column A. Go to Tools >> Macros >> Macros OR press Alt-F8. Highlight the DeleteRows macro and click Run. Wait as it process through each row. To make it faster, only highlight the rows you want checked. OPTION 1 Sub DeleteRows() RowCount = Selection.Rows.Count ActiveCell.Offset(0, 0).Select Application.ScreenUpdating = F

Forbes reports on recent work that has identified many airport hotspots not being secure. This is a good reminder to all of us who use hotspots that we need extra security. First, if you can get on the hotspot, so can anyone else. With a little work and help from programs such as Cane and Abel, anyone can intercept everything you send and receive. Other people may just set up their laptop to look like a hotspot, so when you connect, you are actually connecting to their laptop. Again programs are readily available to make this work with relative ease. Your job, if you're going to use hotspots, is to only communicate with VPN on. VPN will encrypt data as it is sent and received between your laptop and the VPN server. If your company does not provide you with VPN or you need it for private use, try services such as PublicVPN or HotSpotVPN . For a small fee, these services will protect you . The same rule also applies to any public network that you physically connect to such as from

Ars technica reported yesterday that a recent Microsoft update, with its Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), removed nearly 1 million fake anti-virus programs from users' machines. This is a good reminder to us all -- make sure you're keeping up with the Microsoft patches, which are typically released the second Tuesday of every month. Unless you're technically astute enough to critically review each and every patch, I would recommend you set it for auto-update. Here's how to do it. Go to Control Panel Click on Security Center If not already set to "ON", click on "OFF" next to Automatic Updates to change it In the "Manage security settings for category" click on "Automatic Updates" Click on the radio button next to Automatic (recommended) and set the frequency to every day at an hour when you rarely or never use your computer This is a great example to why security protection is the number one reason you should be running a

Excel provides an easy formula to set text values in cells to the correct or proper case. This is very helpful when cleaning up data before entering into a database. If the source was from a third-party -- perhaps from user registrations, it's not unusual to have users not capitalize proper names. Here's an example: You want st. paul to read St. Paul You want project manager to read Project Manager Here's the formula: =PROPER(A1) where A1 is the cell of the value you want to convert If you are going to reference the value later, remember you can use the Text command too. =TEXT(PROPER(A1),"#") If you want to convert the entire value to upper case, use the UPPER function. =UPPER(A1)

TIME has put together a great list of innovations for 2008 . Here are just of few of the 50 that TIME lists. #4, Hulu.com . The TV and movie site from NBC and Fox. A good site, but not worthy of making it to #4. In fact, I'm not sure it's even worthy of being on the list. #9, the Internet in space. Though it can't operate the same way; it requires confirmation of each packet being sent from every router. #20, Spore, the "Everything Game." A disappointment for many users, both in game play and in the DRM used. #30, the Internet of things. Now your toaster and refrigerator can have their own social network. #32, Facebook for Spies. So that spies (CIA, FBI, NSA, and others) are no longer left out. #36, a new ping-pong server from German Dimitrij Ovtcharov -- yep, a ping-pong serve made the top 50. #38, Instant replay for baseball. You think I kid... these actually made the list. Intermixed with these innovations are some really valuable innovations too, such as: #6,

I ran across a nice program that makes it very easy to tweak many Windows settings that normally could only be done by manually making changes to the Registry. TweakNow WinSecret is a free Windows XP and Vista application that has tweaks in 12 categories. The categories are as follows: Applications Control Panel Desktop Miscellaneous Network & Internet OEM Info Special Folder Start Menu User Accounts Windows Core Windows Explorer Windows Startup Here are just a few of the many tweaks you can make. Enable or disable Desktop icons such as Internet Explorer and Printers and Faxes Disable the Desktop Cleanup Wizard prompt from showing every 60 days Move special folders such as the location of My Music or Internet Explorer Cookies Change the menu display speed, i.e. length of pause before a menu expands Hide submenus Add context menu ites such as Copy to Folder and Move to Folder Disable Startup programs Add text to the message box that appears before log on This is just a small list o