Computers are just like anything else, they need attention and maintenance. Even though Mac’s are known the world over to be reliable and quality computers, they still need some pretty routine things done. Just like a car, you can’t perpetually ignore it and expect that it will run forever. Here’s a list of some of the routine operations you should be doing regularly to your Mac so you can make it run better and longer:
Disk Space
Checking your disk space is the first thing you should do. Every model comes with a different hard drive size. You can go online and look up your model and see how big your hard drive is. You can check this simply by double clicking on your HD icon on your desktop. In the bottom bar of the window that pops up, you’ll be able to see how much is left. If you have less than half of your space left, then you should probably start cleaning up your hard drive. Go through all of your files and applications and see what you don’t use or programs that you just don’t need anymore. Rarely does anyone do this and all that extra junk is cluttering up your computer and making it run slower. You should be doing this on a regular basis.
Programs
If you’re noticing slow performance, look at how many programs you run at any one time. Some people set their computer to automatically start programs when the computer is turning on. Though this feature is handy for those who need specific programs all the time, the majority of users simply have too many programs running at once. If you only open up the programs that you need at the time, then you’ll see a noticeable difference in the way your computer runs.
Widgets
Widgets are the little icons that rest below the screen. They’re quick links to the applications and the sit in your dock. If you’ve ever seen someone with practically every application on their computer just resting in their doc, then you should realize that these widgets consume critical power from the processor and memory. You might have thought that it’s harmless to keep all of those applications resting in your dock, but in actuality, it’s taking up a lot of your computer’s resources, even when they’re not active.
Disk Utility
This is another way to speed up your Mac’s performance. You can go to the disk utility and select your computer’s internal hard drive and then click Repair Permission. This will take some time, but the results will be substantial. Doing this every month will check and fix your Mac’s internal hard disk space and do wonders for its operations optimization.
All of these steps are good to do regularly in order to keep things running smoothly. If you ever have an issue with performing any of these tasks, then you can go online for some Technical Support. Not everyone is computer savvy and there’s nothing wrong with that. You could also look online for other ways that you can optimize your computer’s performance.
It seems as though Grooveshark is now offering anyone to embed full length song streams into their websites. Grooveshark has an embed tool that users can customize and add to their sites.
Regardless, all of this puts Grooveshark at a serious advantage over rivals like Spotify and Rdio. For example, Spotify requires playlist recipients to access shared playlists within the Spotify application – that is, where available. Rdio even has an incredible in-app Twitter-sharing feature, though songs can only be accessed by fellow subscribers.
Music artists are finding new ways to distribute their content that completely goes against the traditional models of releasing new albums and tracks. In the past we’ve seen artists like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead offer their music for free, suggesting that users pay what they think the album is worth. While a novel idea, it did show traditional publishing models that they were not necessary. Both albums did very well online and opened doors for more modernized methods.
Recently Soundcloud struck a deal with The Hype Machine and already the benefits are showing as the service has reached a million users and will quickly surpass that at a global level. The audio sharing site is becoming very popular with musicians to share their new music, collaborations and pet projects to the world. Seen as the “Flickr” or “Vimeo for audio” artists are posting up and users are able to interact with those posts seeking the audio they want.
It’s a well-known fact that employers tend to Google prospective job candidates’ names before they hire them. This is in an effort to weed out people who they may no want affiliated with their company. For instance, say you tweet all the time about how you’re out getting wasted and you’re hung-over every Monday. Do you think you’ll get the job then? No. So many professionally (especially web workers) are pimping out their online presence to make themselves look better. One of the most basic ways to do this is to spice up you blog and combine it with other areas of your social media.
Here are three widgets every professional should have on their blog:
1. A Twitter Feed. A real-time widget featuring your personal twitter account is definitely a good idea; it shows employers that you lead a good, lawful life (if you only tweet the good things, that is!). You can download one here.
2. A Summary Widget. These can be created using the text input features. While they’re not the most flashy – employers always read them. Details listed in a casual manner such as your previous employment, interests and personality are all great topics to summarize here.
3. LinkedInABox. LinkedIn is the professional social networking site which many use to house the best-of-the-best of their portfolios. So why not spread some of that love to your blog? Here is a link to the widget.
So do you think it’s time you gave your online presence a makeover?
Windows sidebar in Windows Vista has its limitations. The size and functionality are basic as with most windows standard programs. You have your sticky notes, weather RSS feeds and downloadable extras. None the less, it’s all very basic. You can’t get the greatest of extras and the news feeds can really get annoying as they all seem to come from Wall Street. Numerous companies have introduced alternatives however few have succeeded to the extent that Sobees have.
The company based in Switzerland has launched a new desktop program that allows you view just about everything that you can think of in the form of handy little desktop widgets. One of the best things I noticed about Sobees is the Sync feature. You sign in when you first launch the program on you PC and then it stays open for good until you close it. But, if you go on another PC that has Sobees and sign in it will sync all of your feeds, widgets and sticky notes to that PC until you sign out. This is great if you’re away from the office but need your news feeds, e-mails and widgets in one place. It’s also a feature the other companies have overlooked completely.
Another thing that I liked was how customizable it all was. As you can see from the screenshot it’s very attractive to the eye and you can shift and shape things to suite your needs. The colours and the themes are great. However, if you go extreme on this front it will slow down considerably.
The widgets are extensive in number. I enjoyed reading news whilst twittering about it without ever opening a browser. There are tons for download but many of these are very specific so don’t expect a library of useful widgets.
In total, it’s much better than Windows Sidebar and the other alternatives out there.
When you have an urge (we all get it), or a task that requires you to go sifting through blogs, what is the first place that comes to mind? Technorati of course. It is an established player in a fairly open market which has seen their superiority fairly untroubled. Until now?
Enter, stage left, Twingly.com, a Swedish blog search engine founded by Martin Källström.
According to Twingly.com’s ‘about‘ section, the philosophy behind their search system is to produce “a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere”. Nice, but aren’t Technorati and URLFan doing the same thing? Twingly uses relationships, ie how well linked each blog and article is, to work out how relevant to your search they are. Key to the service is a blog’s ‘approval’. If a blog is not approved by the Twingly team (meet them here), it could potentially be spam. If you are the owner of a blog that comes up as not being approved, you can of course resolve that little issue by sending the Twingly team a swift e-mail.
You can express your opinion on the blogs Twingly finds via a fluorescent green ‘links/likes’ tab. This shows you how many people are linking to the page and it allows you, once you’ve signed up to the service, to vote on if the post is relevant or useful – it’s the equivalent of Technorati Favourites.
Where it gets really interesting though is the blog profile page. With some nifty “research”, we can compare Crenk’s ranking on Twingly, Technorati and URLFan.
Crenk is ranked 3/10 (10 being the highest) with 43 blogs registering as being linked to various articles on Twingly. Technorati claims 80 and URLFan says 45, with 199 other mentions. These are vastly differing numbers, and you have to wonder if Technorati is brilliantly accurate or if it’s not omitting that nasty spam.
Some other nice touches from Twingly include the ability to search within a certain timeframe, <em>as mentioned</em> you can search by one of the 12 supported languages, and you can also look for blogs that have been officially approved, thus weeding out any other possible spam.
Twingly have also released their top 100 blogs by ranking, and if you are proud of where your blog sits in their 1-10 scale, you can of course throw on that all important badge to show it off. One rather large omission however, is the Huffington Post.
With this in mind it is safe to say that Twingly isn’t the most accurate blog search engine, yet. However, the layout is simple and practical, and although the ‘likes/links’ updating isn’t instantaneous (it took about ten minutes to register), the future looks very bright for the Twingly team who are currently overseeing about 25 million searches per month.
Twingly has the potential to be a very good blog search engine. It looks good, is quick when pulling together results and the blog profiles, in relation to each other, are very useful; it even has some pleasant widgets to pop alongside your page ranking.
They are very much into their feedback in Sweden, and you can vote for your most wanted features at the Twingly Tech Plan page.
Try Twingly.com out for yourself and let us know what you think.
It’s a well-known fact that employers tend to Google prospective job candidates’ names before they hire them. This is in an effort to weed out people who they may no want affiliated with their company. For instance, say you tweet all the time about how you’re out getting wasted and you’re hung-over every Monday. Do you think you’ll get the job then? No. So many professionally (especially web workers) are pimping out their online presence to make themselves look better. One of the most basic ways to do this is to spice up you blog and combine it with other areas of your social media.
Windows sidebar in Windows Vista has its limitations. The size and functionality are basic as with most windows standard programs. You have your sticky notes, weather RSS feeds and downloadable extras. None the less, it’s all very basic. You can’t get the greatest of extras and the news feeds can really get annoying as they all seem to come from Wall Street. Numerous companies have introduced alternatives however few have succeeded to the extent that 
When you have an urge (we all get it), or a task that requires you to go sifting through blogs, what is the first place that comes to mind? Technorati of course. It is an established player in a fairly open market which has seen their superiority fairly untroubled. Until now?
