Category: Technology

Review: Jitterbug Plus Cell Phone Simple Design, Lifesaving Technology

The GreatCall Jitterbug Plus ($119, no contract required; price as of July 2, 2012), designed for seniors and anyone else who needs access to health or safety services, looks and functions like a simple, no-frills feature phone, but it has lifesaving technology behind it. The Jitterbug Plus improves on the previous Jitterbug model with photo-sharing capabilities, preloaded text messages, and a more sleek design. It also supports GreatCall’s 5Star Urgent Response personal emergency-response service.
GreatCall CEO David Inns says that the company obtained feedback from customers on ways to improve the previous Jitterbug. One feature request that kept coming up was picture sharing. Jitterbug Plus owners can now share photos on Facebook, Picasa, and Shutterfly. It is easy to set up, too: You simply go to your Jitterbug.com account and fill out your profile credentials. Afterward, you can share photos with your social networks directly from the
camera gallery.
The 2-megapixel camera isn’t the highest quality; in my tests, photos looked a bit hazy and washed out. For social networking purposes, however, the Jitterbug Plus’s camera works just fine. The camera has no flash, so taking photos in dark environments might not turn out so well.
The Jitterbug’s design is a bit of a throwback to older phones, with its clamshell shape and internal and external displays. The Samsung-built phone is smaller and lighter than previous iterations, though, and comes in an attractive red or silver color.
On the Jitterbug Plus, you’ll find a few preinstalled text messages, such as “How are you?” and “On my way.” The alphanumeric keyboard offers large, easy-to-press keys with a clear font to make texting painless. Large ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ keys help you navigate the simple menu; for example, if you want to read a text message, you press ‘Yes’ to open it. As somebody who is constantly using advanced smartphones, I found that this extremely basic navigation system took some getting used to–I kept looking for ‘Back’ and ‘Home’ keys instead. But when I showed the Jitterbug Plus to a person who has never even attempted to use a smartphone, he loved the design, and said that it was much easier to use than the feature phone he already owned. He did not like how long it took to browse through the main menu, however. I also noticed that the navigation was a bit slow in that regard.
The Jitterbug Plus has insanely long battery life, which is an important feature for its demographic. GreatCall claims that the phone has 25 days of standby time. Although I haven’t had the phone for 25 days, I haven’t needed to charge it since I received it about a week ago. One drawback is that the display has no battery-life indicator; you have to go to ‘Phone Info’ from the main menu, which is a bit unintuitive. For customers who are hard of hearing, the Jitterbug Plus has a very loud ringtone and audio speaker. Call quality overall was quite clean on my test calls. My friends on the other end of the line were similarly pleased with how clear I sounded.

Pricing and Additional Services

GreatCall offers a pay-as-you-go plan that starts at $15 per month for 50 minutes, and runs up to $80 per month for unlimited minutes and text messages. If you choose to go à la carte, text messages cost 10 cents each. Voicemail costs an extra $3 per month.
Jitterbug Plus owners can add a number of wellness services to their plans, including 5Star Urgent Response ($15 per month), which gives you direct contact with a certified emergency-response agent, performs GPS tracking, and provides free 24-hour access to unlimited health advice from registered nurses. You can tack on other helpful services, too, such as automated check-in calls ($5 per month) and medication reminders ($10 per month). These services add up, but are invaluable to anyone who needs them.
The Jitterbug Plus is meant for a very specific audience–one that I’m not yet a member of–so reviewing a product like this can be difficult. But I’ve seen other products that try to make an interface too simple, and end up leaving out some important features. GreatCall has done an excellent job of creating a phone that is both easy to use and full-featured, packed into a modern design.

July 3, 2012
Google Reaction To Adobe Dropping Flash Player for Android

Adobe announced Thursday that it would not provide a version of Flash for Android 4.1, dubbed Jelly Bean, or any updates thereafter. Google introduced version 4.1 this week at its I/O conference in San Francisco. The OS will be available in July.
The Flash Player has never posed much of a security risk, because hackers have not used it as a pathway to Android. “There hasn’t been a piece of malware using the Flash Player technology as a vector,” Tim Armstrong, malware researcher for Kaspersky Lab, said.

Adobe’s decision to wind down Flash on Android is not surprising. The company said in November that it would switch to Adobe AIR as the cross-platform runtime environment for mobile applications. Adobe believes AIR is the better option as Web developers move to HTML5, the latest version of the markup language used for presenting content on the Web. The company will continue to develop the Flash Player for PCs.
Whether the technologies replacing the Flash Player will pose a greater security risk is not yet known, Armstrong said. “We can’t say yet whether these technologies could be leveraged for malicious purposes,” he said.
In general, dropping Flash with Jelly Bean is not expected to have much of an impact on Android users, because almost 90 percent are running versions 2.1 to 2.3.7. By the time they upgrade to version 4.1, Flash alternatives are expected to be firmly in place.
Adobe has also decided to limit access of the Flash Player on Google Play, the official Android app store. Beginning Aug. 15, only Android phones already running Flash will be able to get newer versions in the store. “Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install if from the Google Play Store,” the company said in its blog.
Adobe’s latest announcement only involves Android, because Apple doesn’t use Flash in the iPhone or iPad. In 2010, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who died in October of complications from cancer, bashed Flash as too slow and a battery hog, arguing that HTML5 would become the better platform for showing video and other multimedia content. Adobe initially fought back, but later realized development trends for mobile apps were against Flash.

July 3, 2012
Total Freedom From iTunes With ‘Amazing’ Spotify Premium

Spotify’s desktop application is a fantastic music manager and a good replacement for our itune. Here’s is a complete walkthrough on how to make spotify you default music application.

Are you tired of your current music-management software? Invest in a Spotify membership and declare independence from iTunes, Google Music, or any other music app you’re fed up with. iTunes in particular is becoming pretty bloated, especially for Windows users–but I’ve barely seen it over the past few months thanks to Spotify and the new ability to upgrade my iOS software on my iPhone itself.

As long as you’re already paying for Spotify Premium, make Spotify’s mobile app your phone’s default music player. Spotify’s hybrid approach–storing your most-played tunes on disk while letting you stream anything from its massive song library–gives you a much larger musical selection on the go. If you’re buying more than an album or two every month, it’ll also save you money.
Here’s the fastest method to make Spotify your default music manager. Since iTunes is the thorniest music-management app to get rid of, I’ll use it as my example, but these methods should be just as easy (or even easier) on Android phones running other music-management apps.

Initial Housecleaning

The first step is to make room for Spotify to start managing your tunes by commanding your current music-management app to stop syncing your smartphone with your music collection. iTunes at least makes this process fairly easy: While your phone is synced to your PC, switch to the Music tab in the device management options, and uncheck Sync Your Music. iTunes will warn you that this action will delete all the music off your phone, but since that’s exactly what you want, click OK. Now you should have plenty of room to start syncing with Spotify.
Next, set up Spotify as an iTunes replacement. This step is simple, since Spotify asks whether you want to automatically import your iTunes library the first time you open it. This procedure will not only bring all your local files into the application (as long as you’ve linked them with your iTunes library) but also import all your iTunes playlists.

If you declined this option when you first started Spotify but want to import your iTunes library now, or if you merely want to import a library from another music manager, that’s simple enough. Open Spotify, navigate to File > Import Playlists, and then choose iTunes, Windows Media Player, or whatever other supported music application Spotify can find on your PC. Keep in mind that Spotify playlist imports sometimes require a bit of cleaning up; in my case, for example, Spotify attempted to sync the iTunes library of each of my computers separately, which resulted in quite a lot of copies of the same material. However, even with a manual check and some deletions, getting your Spotify application set up with all your iTunes music and playlists shouldn’t take more than 5 to 10 minutes.

Syncing

Once Spotify is set up on your computer, it’s time to start syncing your files onto your phone. Again, Spotify makes this step fairly straightforward, but the process involves quite a few more pitfalls that you need to be ready for. First, the good news: All you have to do is connect your phone to the same wireless network as your computer, open Spotify on your PC, and then select your phone under the Devices tab in Spotify’s left navigation pane. Click the big Sync this device with Spotify button, and select the playlists you want to download to your phone.

The bad news is that Spotify syncing suffers from a few irritating hiccups. Since it syncs wirelessly, it’s much slower than iTunes syncing by USB. Syncing 3000 or so songs to the Spotify app on my phone took me almost 10 hours. By itself, that wouldn’t be a huge issue, since I could just leave my phone on overnight, but Spotify also stops syncing when you leave your smartphone inactive for too long. Here’s hoping that Spotify will patch this glaring error in a future update. For now, though, this limitation makes it difficult to have Spotify sync your whole library in the background. If you’re thinking of using Spotify as a straight replacement for your music app, and if you have a gigantic music library, syncing everything will be a time-consuming process.
Instead, consider being more selective as to which playlists you listen to. Spotify syncing works much more elegantly if you don’t try to make it emulate iTunes exactly, so I suggest adding local files to Spotify gradually. Find 300 to 500 songs you know you’ll want to listen to regularly, and sync those first. Then, when you’re out and about, you can choose to save the music you find yourself streaming too often as an offline mode playlist. You probably won’t find more than 100 songs or so on any given day that you’ll want to add like this, so syncing them should be a fairly quick affair.
Don’t worry about the syncing process eating up your bandwidth. Unless you explicitly tell it to sync over 3G, the Spotify mobile app will wait until you’re on a wireless network. You can just tell it what you want to have permanently downloaded, and it will add those items to your local library the next time you’re near a stable Internet connection.

A Few More Obstacles

You should keep some other small roadblocks in mind as you declare your phone’s independence from iTunes. Many of these obstacles are relatively minor and easily solved; you can’t delete the iOS default Music app, for instance, even if you don’t have any music synced with it. I suggest hiding it in a folder and ignoring it. Other issues, however, are slightly more serious.
For the most part Spotify should import all of your music and give you access to Spotify’s library of millions of streaming songs, but if you’ve downloaded a lot of DRM-protected music from iTunes or another music store, things get more complicated. Since Spotify won’t be able to play your DRM-protected files, the service automatically matches those tracks with songs that reside in the global Spotify library. Thus, if you’ve bought, say, a Ratatat album with DRM on iTunes (as I did while writing this article), you should still be able to play it in Spotify by streaming it from Spotify’s library.
On rare occasions, Spotify won’t be able to find a match for your DRM-protected music in its online library.
At times, however, Spotify won’t find a match for one of your DRM-protected songs, and you’ll be unable to play your music. This occurrence should be fairly uncommon (in my library of 7000 songs, I had a grand total of five unplayable tracks, three of which were free iTunes “Song of the Day” selections I haven’t listened to in years), and you can fairly easily resolve the problem by stripping the DRM off of your iTunes track. You’ll need to go through your library and look for tracks listed in red; these are the songs on which you’ll have to remove the DRM.
Also, as much as this method frees you from iTunes for everything but backing up your data, it ties you heavily to Spotify. If you ever stop paying for Spotify Premium, you’ll lose access to offline mode, which means that any music you haven’t synced from your local computer–including Spotify copies of your DRM-protected music–won’t be available on your phone any longer.
Nevertheless, as an iTunes replacement, Spotify Premium is a great choice. Spotify comes with its own set of inconveniences and annoyances, but once you get past the basic setup it’s hard to argue with on-demand access to Spotify’s music library on the go. Happy listening!

July 3, 2012
Top 6 Tips For Driving Traffic To Your Blog | 3rd Planet Techies
Blogging is very effective in attracting large volumes of traffic. However, if you really want to drive huge volumes of traffic to your blog, you will need to do more than just blogging. This article outlines the top seven secrets for driving traffic to your blog.
1. Create high quality content that is rich with your keywords and phrases. This brings two main benefits. First, high quality and useful content will keep your website’s visitors interested and they will visit your blog on a regular basis and will buy the products you sell on your website. Second, fresh content with your key words will improve your search engine ranking which brings traffic to your blog and website.
2. Optimizing your titles for search engines is also an effective way of driving traffic to your website. You will need to optimize your blogs titles and use all the keywords or phrases which people use while looking for information on the internet. This will make your website visible on search engines, and your website will also rank high for all your keywords, driving traffic to your website.
3. Use email marketing with your blog. This is an effective way of bringing readers back to your blog as well as to create a list. Having your own list is important because you can sell your products and services to your list. By using an auto responder, you can send emails to your list about updates to your blog, hence driving traffic to your blog.
4. Social book marking is yet another powerful way to drive traffic to your blog. If you rank high on some of the most popular social book marking sites, you can drive large volumes of traffic to your website.
5. RSS feed for blog traffic. RSS feed is another way you can use to keep people coming back to your blog because after people subscribe to read your RSS feed, they will get updates continuously. This means that you will be bringing readers back to your blog every time you make a new blog post.
6. You can use some of your blog posts and covert them into articles. All you have to do is to add more content to your blog posts if necessary, add a catchy article heading and convert it into an article. Writing and submitting articles is one of the most excellent strategies for traffic generation.
These six strategies can significantly increase the volume of traffic to your website and blog.

Read more http://obasimvilla.com/top-6-tips-for-driving-traffic-to-your-blog/
June 29, 2012
Keyword Search Optimization Advice For Bloggers

If you’re blogging then you will almost certainly have heard about keyword search optimization. There are many ways to get traffic to your blog, but the best free method is to appear in the search engines for relevant keywords. Searchers will then click through to your blog to find what you’re looking for. Although the search engines may include your site in results when you take advantage of keyword search optimization or not, you can give them a helping hand. By doing keyword research, finding highly searched keywords, and then using them appropriately in your content, you can make sure that the search engines rank you higher for these terms. Keyword Density When writing using keywords, the number of times you include a given keyword throughout the content is known as “keyword density”. For example, if your blog post is 400 words long and contains 4 instances of the keyword, this means that you’ve got a 1% keyword density (one instance of the keyword per 100 words). There is debate about how much you should use the keywords, but it’s often recommended you use them at least once per 100 words. Where you use the keywords is also important. You should include them: * At the beginning of the title, * Within the first sentence, * Within the last sentence, * And spread through the article body. Keep It Natural Although keyword search optimization is an important strategy for many bloggers, it’s also important to sound natural. After all, it’s not just the search engines looking at your content – there are real human readers too! And they’re likely to be turned off if it sounds like you’ve just stuffed in your keyword as many times as possible. This is why it’s important to work on writing a good blog post first, and worry about the keywords you’re including second. No matter how well you’ve incorporated keyword search optimization into your article, your site isn’t going to do well unless you can keep readers interested with well crafted, interesting content that’s written with their needs in mind. Too Many Keywords Can Have The Opposite Effect Although we all know that it’s useful to include keywords in your blog posts, including too many can even turn the search engines off. The giants like Google are well aware that bloggers and internet marketers are trying to improve their rankings with methods like this, so they won’t reward you for taking shortcuts and stuffing your content with too many keywords. If they did, it would be too easy for low quality rankings to get to the top of the rankings. Keywords Aren’t Everything Following on from the point above, it’s important to realize that Google is looking at a lot more than just keywords to rank your site. It takes into account who links back to your site, how you link to your own pages, how well your site is laid out and, importantly, whether your website actually delivers the information your visitors are searching for. Keyword search optimization is definitely something you should be incorporating into your blog posts if you want to take advantage of free search engine traffic. However, it’s also important to work on the quality of your blog. The visitors will follow.

June 29, 2012
All about Auto-responder

A Popular Auto Responder Marketing Technique Marketing through auto responder series is a popular strategy to increase repeat website visits and sales. Here is a popular strategy. EZINE EBOOK Instead of trying to publish a small daily or weekly eZines, try publishing one large monthly eZine (similar to a monthly magazine) as an e-book format delivered via auto responder, preferably an Adobe .pdf file. You could have it made up of a large number of articles per issue and insert regularly featured areas throughout like inspirational quotes, industry tips, favorite sites and advice from the pros. You could also insert full-color graphics, multimedia components like audio / video file links and ads. Then you can charge a monthly rate, with an annual discounted package purchase, and sell advertising spots to sprinkle in your auto responder announcements for each issue and with an informational series to announce your monthly eZine to new prospects. In summary, by using customized marketing techniques like an eZine eBook, tailored to fit your own products and services, you can reach out and increase your website traffic and sales opportunities. Internet marketing can mean more ways to grow your business. Auto Responder Improvements Stuck in an auto responder rut with only your eZine going out regularly? Get out of the rut with some of these ideas for improvements. 1. Provide back issues of your eZine archives via your auto responder instead of hosting all your archives online. This will give your subscribers and web site visitors easy access to them and offers a chance to include graphics, audio and video and other components all rolled up in .pdf files for quick, easy download. 2. Help with tech issues and publish your entire web site, save it in a pdf file, and load it into an auto responder. Sometimes visitors don’t have enough time read your entire site or they lose their Internet connection or time online. So this way, they could print it out and read it offline. 3. You could offer your eBook via an auto responder. Often your visitors won’t have to download it or have the software to read it right away, so this way they can take it “to go”. 4. For a handy – -and nice legal – touch, you could include the terms and conditions to purchase transactions and load them into an auto responder that is triggered with each purchase. This could include return policies, purchases, refunds etc. Auto Responder Marketing Techniques The Internet offers many means of affordable marketing with auto responders. Here are a couple of popular ways of using them. DIRECTORY
Some webmasters set up link or article directories on their sites. They create a directory on a specific industry topic, placing their own ad or banner along the top. Then they invite others to add their website links via a link exchange program, listing themselves in your directory. Or they invite articles to be submitted that include a resource box at the bottom of each with a link to the author’s website. This results on increased traffic as sites link up across the World Wide Web. Enter “link exchange software” or “article directory software” into a favorite search engine for help with each. TEACH A COURSE
Some marketers write up a simple step-by-step instructional class in their area of expertise. Then they break it up into smaller portions or messages and set them up in an auto responder as email messages, including short ads within each message to invite sales & website visits. Then they invite website visitors to sign up through on online form or email subscription address offered through the auto responder service. As people sign up, they will learn more about the products and services through the teaching series. Do the Two-Step! Top sales pros confirm that it often takes seven or more communications or sales messages before prospective customers make a purchase. They also confirm that it’s generally easier to sell to a referral, because someone they know gave positive testimonial about their products or services. What would happen if you combined both of these powerful ideas? A nifty and thrifty two-step. Try this two-step tip: 1. Collect leads with your auto responder. Ask for mailing addresses and telephone numbers, too, for additional ways to follow up with each person. When you download the e-mail digest of everyone’s e-mail addresses and other information from those who requested additional information from your auto responder, follow up multiple ways. Send postcards. Call. Mail sales letters and other promotional pieces. 2. Publish a price list of all the products and services that you offer in an insert, direct marketing package and / or .pdf to be made available via auto responder. You could also include order forms, product descriptions, and other sales material. Then send to the people in #1 above with monthly updates, announcements of new sales and products / services, and a request for referrals. So why not improve your closing ratio and reach out even farther at the same time? Do the two-step! Word count: 828

Read more http://wikibloggers.org/auto-responder/

June 29, 2012
Google Announces Google Drive for iOS and Offline Editing for Google Docs

A version of Chrome for iOS also was announced during the second day keynote for the company’s Google I/O conference.

Google kicked off the second day of its I/O conference by announcing offline text editing for Google Docs, and a version of its Drive storage service for Apple’s iOS. The search giant also announced a

version of its Chrome Web browser for iOS, and demonstrated it running on Apple’s iPad and iPhone.The offline text editing is available now in Google Docs, and Google is working on offline editing for its spreadsheet and presentation applications, the company said in its day-two keynote at the conference. The updates mean Google Docs users will be able to edit documents on a plane, for example, and then synch the changes to the cloud when they reconnect at the other end.
The offline capabilities will step up the competition between Google and Microsoft. Google emphasized that Docs is a viable product for the enterprise as well as consumers: Five million businesses are using its cloud applications, it said. A Google Drive app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch will be available from the App store later Thursday, Google said. It’s also developing a version for its own Chrome OS.

Chrome OS Improvements

In Chrome, Google Drive operates as the local file system, said Clay Bavor, director of product management for Google Drive. He showed how a user can search through a folder of scanned receipts and find a particular receipt using a keyword search. The receipts are stored as image files, but the Drive application uses optical character recognition to index the text in the receipts.

It can also index images. Bavor showed how a user can store their photos from a vacation in Egypt in Google Drive, for instance, and then search for “pyramid” and locate photos with pyramids in them, even though the photos are not tagged with the word “pyramid.”

New Ways to Collaborate

Google also showed how Google Docs and Google Drive can work together to allow “real-time collaboration.” It showed how three users can edit a text document simultaneously from three different devices, and have the changes all appear on each of the three screens.

Referring to users’ increasing tendency to use multiple devices, Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president of Chrome and apps, said, “It’s not just at home: It’s the same person who leaves home and shows up at work, and they demand the same experience.”

The company also announced an on-demand computing service called the Google Compute Engine, which will compete with Amazon Web Services’ EC2 offering.

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June 29, 2012
Google Nexus Q Hands-On Review: The Buggy Streaming Story

The Nexus Q has some pretty neat media streaming features, but is way too expensive–and the preview release is just plain buggy.

I finally got hold of one of the new Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) smartphones capable of running the Nexus Q app you need to operate the preview release of the new Google media streamer–and a PC World colleague armed with a second Jelly Bean handset came by to help me test the device’s social networking features. The verdict: While it has some nice features–it’s cool to see a light show when you stream music to an HDTV– the Nexus Q is at this point too buggy. We were unable to implement guest access despite trying for two hours, and even the primary controlling phone sometimes lost network connectivity. Initial setup on the first phone went fairly smoothly. I had already hooked up the Nexus Q to my HDTV and to my home network using an ethernet cable connecting to a powerline switch, so when I downloaded and installed the free Nexus Q app from the Google Play store, it immediately found the device and established a link by having me log in to my Google account. Because the Android app can control multiple Q’s on the same network–much like the Sonos system–you have to give each one a name; the app proposes several common household rooms (e.g. kitchen, living room, media center) in a menu that also has a custom entry option. The app by default sets My Home as the name for your Nexus Q collection–the term it uses to denote your entire Nexus Q network (each Q appears as an entry in the collection). But you can change this name in the settings.

Sound and Light Show

After that, when I went to Play Music and tapped a streaming media icon on the top of the screen, I was presented with the option of streaming to my phone or the Nexus name I’d just created. Because I was hooked up to an HDTV, when I played music, Nexus Q created pretty dancing visuals on the screen–and the LEDs on the edges of the Q’s dome also pulsed in color and in time to the music. You can change the look of the light show by choosing one of half a dozen themes (e.g. warm, cold, blue), make it brighter or dimmer, or eliminate it completely from the settings menu in the Q app. You can add songs to the Q’s queue (pun unavoidable) or play them immediately by tapping on options in a menu that appears when you tap a track listing. You can fiddle with the queue, moving or deleting tracks, by tapping an option in Play Music. To play YouTube videos, you go through much the same routine after tapping the Android’s YouTube app. You are already signed in to your Google account, so accessing favorites and new videos on channels you’ve subscribed to is a breeze. Quality was good, at least while the Nexus Q was connected to the network using the ethernet cable and powerline switch. I didn’t download any movies or TV shows to check out how well the device works with the Google Play movie and TV app.

Guest Access Proves Elusive

So far, so good, but it was all downhill from there. I’m not sure what the issues are, but my colleague Mike was never able to put his Google Play music in the queue–and when we disconnected the ethernet cable to try connecting the Q via Wi-Fi, things really went south. Here’s how it’s supposed to work. In the Nexus Q app, I made sure a setting authorizing guest access was set to On, then tapped a link that created an e-mail message inviting Mike (using his Google account address) to play his music on my network. Mike got the message, which instructed him to download and install the Nexus Q app on his Android 4.1 phone. He then ran the app, which searches for existing Nexus Q devices. Once you find a Q that has granted you access, you can go to Play Music to add tracks to the queue via a pop-up menu and a streaming media icon, the same way I could from my phone. But the Nexus Q never showed up as a streaming device on Mike’s phone. He also got repeated messages saying the My Home collection and/or the Q itself was unavailable.

And while we were doing the testing, my own ability to stream music was intermittently impaired. A troubleshooting guide suggested connecting the Q to the network via its built-in Wi-Fi, so I disconnected the ethernet cable and rebooted the Q to start from scratch. But while I was able to restore its factory settings, setting up my 802.11n Wi-Fi network as the Q’s connection proved difficult. I rebooted several times and reinstalled the app a couple of times before the Q mysteriously began streaming the same music it had effortlessly played with the ethernet connection. Even after that, the app intermittently would show the Q as being unavailable one minute and available the next. I live next to several high-rise apartment buildings in downtown San Francisco, and my guess is that the difficulties I encountered relate to 2.4GHz network overcrowding. You also need a router that can handle Wi-Fi multicasting so that the Q can connect to your router while other devices can connect to the Q; Google’s documentation already shows several incompatible routers. Mine wasn’t among them, but I suspect that it was too difficult for the network to sustain the multiple Wi-Fi connections required. I’ll repeat what I said in my earlier post: Google should have included 5GHz 802.11n support. Still, Mike and I were at a loss to explain why he couldn’t play any of his music on the Q–even when my collection and the Q both showed up as available, the Play Music app never displayed the Q as a streaming destination. Hopefully Google will work on these issues before it begins selling the Nexus Q to the general public. But even if you’re an Android fan willing to spend the $299 on a device with fairly limited functionality (it could at least have supported streaming media from other local network devices), I wouldn’t recommend the Q to anyone who is planning on Wi-Fi only connections in a city or a neighborhood with lots of Wi-Fi networks in range. That’s just asking for trouble.

June 29, 2012
Rumor: 10-inch Kindle Fire Coming

The current generation Kindle FireKindle Fire gossip is almost as common as iPhone and iPad rumors. Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about a new Kindle Fire tablet, which may arrive as early as next month. The rumored new model will be the successor to the first-generation Fire that debuted less than a year ago, and not a moment too soon–the impressive specs of the just-announced Google Nexus 7 make the original Fire seem pretty dated already. Want more rumors? Here ya go: Before the end of 2012, Amazon will unveil its first 10-inch color tablet, one likely designed to go head-to-head with Apple’s dominant iPad. BGR reports that the planned 10-inch “Hollywood” tablet will be powered by a quad-core processor. Better Build Citing anonymous sources
, the report says that both the upcoming 7- and 10-inch Kindle Fire models will have a much better build quality that the original 7-inch Fire, which was derided by some critics for its cheap look and mediocre display. The new models, for instance, will feature a metal casing rather than the plastic body found on the first-gen model. The 10-inch Kindle Fire also adds a front-facing camera, BGR reports, and both models have a microUSB port and an additional jack that may be an HDMI-out port. It may be too late at this point, but Amazon might consider adding a front-facing camera to its second-gen 7-inch Kindle Fire as well. The Google Nexus 7 has a 1.2-megapixel camera, and it’s priced the same as the original Fire at $199. The latest Kindle Fire rumors sound much more credible than those of late 2011, when Digitimes reported the second-generation Kindle Fire would have an 8.9-inch screen.

June 29, 2012
Legal Battle Over LinkedIn Breach Could Be Costly

LinkedIn, the professional social networking site facing a $5 million-plus lawsuit for a massive breach earlier this month, may win its impending legal battle. But victory will probably not come cheap. Legal bills mount up quickly, especially with an “aggressive” defense, which LinkedIn has promised. Unless the suit, filed on behalf of lead plaintiff Katie Szpyrka and a potential cast of millions of other coplaintiffs, is settled quickly and quietly, it is likely to provide regular public reminders, for months or possibly years, of what happened and why. That, as marketing people say, is not good for “brand identity.”
The 6.5 million member passwords, which were posted on a Russian hacker forum, had been easily decrypted because LinkedIn was using only a rudimentary hashing algorithm that is not even close to the current industry standard. And that encryption weakness is what the lawsuit cites repeatedly in its seven allegations, including violation of California business and professional code; violations of California civil code; breach of contract; breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing; breach of implied contracts; negligence; and negligence per se. Szpyrka, listed on LinkedIn as a senior associate at the Chicago offices of UGL Equis, a global real estate firm focused on business clients, is represented by Sean P. Reis of Edelson McGuire LLP, a law firm in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif. The suit is seeking certification as a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all LinkedIn users compromised by the hack. The suit doesn’t allege violations of any specific cybersecurity law, but complains that the company violated its own privacy policy, which asserts that it will, “safeguard its users sensitive PII (personally identifiable information), specifically that: ‘All information you provide will be protected with industry standard protocols and technology.’” By its own admission, LinkedIn was not in compliance with the industry standard, which is to “salt” the hashes — merge the hashed passwords with another combination and then hash them for a second time. LinkedIn, however, invokes the classic defense in data breach cases to contend the suit is “without merit.” LinkedIn spokeswoman Erin O’Harra told Cameron Scott of the IDG News Service: “No member account has been breached as a result of the incident, and we have no reason to believe that any LinkedIn member has been injured. Therefore, it appears that these threats are driven by lawyers looking to take advantage of the situation.” So, now that the dueling sound bites have been issued, how vulnerable is LinkedIn really? The likelihood is, not very much. The courts have so far declined to award damages to plaintiffs who cannot prove actual damages. Legal experts viewing a string of lawsuits, also in California, over breaches of personal medical information, told CSO in April that judges are well aware that 100-percent security on the Internet simply does not exist, due to the rapidity and sophistication of attacks. There are numerous examples of breaches of companies that are in compliance, which makes it much more difficult to prove negligence. Indeed, the Oregon Supreme Court recently struck down a class-action suit against Providence Health Systems that had been settled six years ago, finding no evidence that any of 365,000 patients whose data had been on disks/tapes that were stolen from a Providence employee’s car had suffered any financial loss or other adverse consequences. “We are aware of no other jurisdiction that has allowed recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress in circumstances where the alleged distress is based solely on concern over the increased risk that a plaintiff’s personal information will, at some point in the future, be viewed or used in a manner that could cause the plaintiff harm,” the court said then. The suit against LinkedIn goes to some length to assert that actual damages have occurred, arguing that, “plaintiff and the class members … have lost money in the form of the value of their personal data. They have lost property in the form of their breached personal data, which is of great value to LinkedIn, LinkedIn advertisers and malicious actors. SubClass members have lost money in the form of monthly membership fees.” But it does not offer specifics — only that the PII, “…has ascertainable value to be proven at trial.” It is not certain, of course, that precedent will prevail. Rebecca Herold, an information security, privacy and compliance consultant known as the “Privacy Professor,” said while the precedent so far is not to award damages that cannot be proven, “I see the trend will likely be changing as judges, courts and lawyers come to understand better how such breaches can have damages long-term, in many downstream systems that were attached in some way to the breached system.” For example, she said, many LinkedIn users may use the same password on other systems as they used on LinkedIn, even though that practice is strongly discouraged by security experts. But those other accounts may now be breached, even though the LinkedIn account itself may not have been breached, Herold said. Todd Thiemann, senior director of product marketing for Vormetric, said when the breach became public that among the still unanswered questions were, “How did the bad guys get this information? And if they got that, what else did they get?” Those questions will be at the heart of the pending litigation.

June 29, 2012
Create a contact Form for Websites, Worpress, Blogger With File Upload Option
Create a simple contact form with no company Ads and along with an upload option that will allow your visitors to send you files straight from your website. The files can be a text file, video, audio, pdf, gif, png, anything. Follow these steps:
Live Demo

Create a Free Web Contact Form

Sign up for a free account at emailmeform
Once you are registered click the “Add a Form” button and choose the form builder option.

Keep your form simple with some important fields only like Name, Website URL, Email, Age, Country, Subject and Message. The form builder looks like this,

The form builder has blue buttons at left and display at right. When you click a button on left the effect is displayed on right. Now kindly follow as I instruct for keeping things simple and for creating a simple but informative contact form.
Follow this order:
1. Click the Name button in advance section
2. Next click Web site
3. Next Email
4. Next Hidden Field. Now click the hidden field section on the right and rename it as Age
5. Next click Hidden Filed again and rename it as Country
6. Next click File Upload (Optional you can leave this option if you don’t want users to send you files via email)
7. Now From the Basic section click Paragraph Text & click it to rename it as Message
8. To make a specific form option a must to fill then simply click that row and select required as shown below
Your contact form now must look something like this:

     9.   Click the Form Title and add some message there for your visitors. For example you can write :

We Love To Hear From You
Feel free to ask for any help. We will catch you back as soon as time allows

If you wish you can remove the form title by unchecking the box and deleting the description text. See below

     10.    Now on the form settings choose Redirect URL and insert the page link of your thank you page. A thank you page is something like this

You may create a separate post for this by giving it an old publishing date. Blogger users can create a Page instead of Post.
11. Now replace send Email by submit and align it to right as shown below:

12. Next click the Captcha Code at the bottom and select the none option from the left section as shown below:

This security code is often added to prevent spam but I have never used this security code and I honestly have received not even a single spam till today. Just remove it to make the contact form even more neater.
13.   Finally hit the Save Form Button and a window will appear as shown below:

14.   Choose the second option and add a recipient email ID. Choose an ID that you often use so that whenever someone leave a message you may receive it straight in your inbox. You can also add more than one recipients. See below:

Leave other options as default. Hit Save! Now choose the third option.

15.   In Form manager Click Code

16. Choose the HTML Only option and copy the code.

Now simply copy the code and paste it in your contact page. To delete the emailmeform logo from the contact form find and delete a similar code like the one below from the code you just copied.

</p> <div>Powered by<span style=”position: relative; padding-left: 3px; bottom: -5px;”><img src=”https://ewtnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/footer-logo.png” /></span>EMF <a style=”text-decoration:none;” href=”http://www.emailmeform.com/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Forms Online</a> </div> <p><a style=”line-height:20px;font-size:70%;text-decoration:none;” href=”http://www.emailmeform.com/report-abuse.html?http://www.emailmeform.com/builder/form/r99G329aiV6k6″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Report Abuse</a>

Note: Paste the Contact Form code in Edit HTML mode only and hit the publish button on blogger Post Editor. Do not toggle to compose mode because this will collapse the form.
June 28, 2012
How To Use The Old Blogger Interface Without Reverting to the Old Blogger Interface
How To Use The Old Blogger Interface Without Reverting to the Old Blogger Interface

With blogger threatening to take down the old blogger interface, it becomes extremely relevant to use this trick to work on your blogger with the old blogger interface without needing to revert to the old blogger interface.
just follow the simple steps below:
- On your address bar, copy and paste the link below
http://draft.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=8830827511167965358
- Replace 8830827511167965358 with your blog ID
Tap Enter and your are done.
June 28, 2012
How to Connect your Twitter With your Gtalk, 2go, IM, Gmail
Twitter can be boring at time if you have a lots of followers. I want to save you the stress of visiting your twitter to read and update tweets. I’m going to show you a proving way to update and read your tweets using your Instant Messenger or even your gmail account

How does it work?

The tweet.IM service sits between your Jabber or Google@Talk instant messaging account and your Twitter account and passes messages to and from, in both directions. As a result, you can create Twitter messages in your instant messaging application and send them direct to Twitter, without having to enter your Twitter account. You can also elect to receive tweets from users that you follow, directly in your instant messenger.

HOW TO UPDATE YOUR TWITTER USING GTALK, GMAIL
- Visit www.twitter.com and sign in to your twitter account. Now, when you are Logged in, Go to www.tweet.im/ and click on the Sign in with twitter button.
- Click on Authorise App.
- Select Google Talk & put your E-mail address, then click ‘Register’
- Login to your gmail account and you will find a box like this: This is your twitter updates HOW TO CONNECT YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT TO YOUR 2GO ACCOUNT
  - Open your 2go and go to Settings , click on Gateway and select Gtalk then activate using you gmail logins all in lower case.
  - Now go to your friend lists and you will see a request from Twitter, click and accept request and add Twiiter as a friend. That’s All.
June 28, 2012
How to Connect your Twitter With your Gtalk, 2go, IM, Gmail
Twitter can be boring at time if you have a lots of followers. I want to save you the stress of visiting your twitter to read and update tweets. I’m going to show you a proving way to update and read your tweets using your Instant Messenger or even your gmail account

How does it work?

The tweet.IM service sits between your Jabber or Google@Talk instant messaging account and your Twitter account and passes messages to and from, in both directions. As a result, you can create Twitter messages in your instant messaging application and send them direct to Twitter, without having to enter your Twitter account. You can also elect to receive tweets from users that you follow, directly in your instant messenger.

HOW TO UPDATE YOUR TWITTER USING GTALK, GMAIL
- Visit www.twitter.com and sign in to your twitter account. Now, when you are Logged in, Go to www.tweet.im/ and click on the Sign in with twitter button.
- Click on Authorise App.
- Select Google Talk & put your E-mail address, then click ‘Register’
- Login to your gmail account and you will find a box like this: This is your twitter updates HOW TO CONNECT YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT TO YOUR 2GO ACCOUNT
  - Open your 2go and go to Settings , click on Gateway and select Gtalk then activate using you gmail logins all in lower case.
  - Now go to your friend lists and you will see a request from Twitter, click and accept request and add Twiiter as a friend. That’s All.
June 28, 2012
How To Add the Multi Column Footer Widget To Blogger
This widget adds a multi column widget section to your blogger template. You must have seen the multi-column footer in most websites and wordpress blogs.

The Multi Column Footer Widget allows you to add upto 4 (recommended column is 4 but you can add more sections) widgets in different columns at your footer region. This feature is quite new to blogger and luckily, you will be among the first people to enjoy this widget.

Below we have prepared a complete walk through that will guide you in installing a similar widget to your blogger site.

How To Add the Multi Column Footer Widget To Blogger

First we will add the CSS code to your blogger templates and then the HTML.
So without wasting any time lets jump straight to the steps,
1. Go To Blogger > Design > Edit HTML
2. Backup Your Template
3. Search for ]]></b:skin>
4. Just above ]]></b:skin> paste the code below,
/*----- EWT MULTI COLUMN FOOTER WIDGET -----*/ #lower { margin:auto; padding: 0px 0px 10px 0px; width: 100%; background:#333333; } #lower-wrapper { background:#333333; margin:auto; padding: 20px 0px 20px 0px; width: 960px; border:0; } #lowerbar-wrapper { background:#333333; float: left; margin: 0px 5px auto; padding-bottom: 20px; width: 23%; text-align: justify; color:#ddd; font: bold 12px Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; line-height: 1.6em; word-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; } .lowerbar {margin: 0; padding: 0;} .lowerbar .widget {margin: 0; padding: 10px 20px 0px 20px;} .lowerbar h2 { margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px; padding: 3px 0px 3px 0px; text-align: left; border:0; color:#ddd; text-transform:uppercase; font: bold 14px Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; } .lowerbar ul { color:#fff; margin: 0 auto; padding: 0; list-style-type: none; } .lowerbar li { display:block; color:#fff; line-height: 1.6em; margin-left: 0 !important; padding: 6px; border-bottom: 1px solid #222; border-top: 1px solid #444; list-style-type: none; } .lowerbar li a { text-decoration:none; color: #DBDBDB; } .lowerbar li a:hover { text-decoration:underline; } .lowerbar li:hover { display:block; background: #222; }
5. Now search for </body> and paste the following code just above </body>
<div id='lower'> <div id='lower-wrapper'> <div id='lowerbar-wrapper'> <b:section class='lowerbar' id='lowerbar1' preferred='yes'> </b:section> </div> <div id='lowerbar-wrapper'> <b:section class='lowerbar' id='lowerbar2' preferred='yes'> </b:section> </div> <div id='lowerbar-wrapper'> <b:section class='lowerbar' id='lowerbar3' preferred='yes'> </b:section> </div> <div id='lowerbar-wrapper'> <b:section class='lowerbar' id='lowerbar4' preferred='yes'> </b:section> </div> <div style='clear: both;'/> </div> </div>
6. Save your template and you are done!
Now go to Page Elements and add your widgets to the newly added Footer Widget that will look something like this,
You can observe that there a total of four columns by default and you can add as many widgets as you want to each column. If you wish to increase or decrease the number of vertical columns then follow the steps below.

How to Customize the Widget?

Well I will keep it simple. I think the colors and overall size and padding and margining are just perfect. The only thing that you will need to adjust according to your template is the width of the widget and the number of vertical columns.

1. In order to reduce or increase the overall width of the widget simply change width: 960px;
2. If you wish to decrease the number of widgets to three then simply delete this part of the code,
<div id=’lowerbar-wrapper’>
<b:section class=’lowerbar’ id=’lowerbar4‘ preferred=’yes’>
</b:section>
</div>

3. Or if you wish to add an extra column then add the code below just above <div style=’clear: both;’/>
<div id=’lowerbar-wrapper’>
<b:section class=’lowerbar’ id=’lowerbar#‘ preferred=’yes’>
</b:section>
</div>

Remember that lowerbar# refers to the column number. So if you want to add a fifth column then simply replace lowerbar# with lowerbar5.
After you have added the fifth column then remember to change width: 23%; with width: 17%;
You will repeat step 3 for as many columns as you wish to create. But three and four and five columns are a standard. Increasing them will make things look ugly.
June 27, 2012
The Key SEO Mistakes That You Must Avoid
This article presents the common mistakes which people make in search engine optimization (SEO).
- Failure to apply constant effort in optimizing a website for search engines. SEO involves continuous effort in carrying out all the key activities that can help you rank high on search engines. Many people fail in their efforts to rank high on search engines because they expect overnight success, and they soon give up when they fail to see immediate results. It is important for you to gradually add new content to your website so that search engines visit your website more often. You also need to steadily build links to your website in order to improve your ranking on search engines.
- Failure to use different SEO strategies and tools. It is important for you to use different tools for optimizing your website. You must also aim to rank high on several major search engines. Choose about four main search engines and aim to rank high on them. Write and submit articles, participate in relevant forums, submit your website to many directories and search engines and exchange links with related websites that have high popularity rank. List the strategies that you intend to follow in optimizing your website for search engines, and make sure that you carry them out on a regular basis.
- Lack of a good understanding of your niche’s keywords and phrases. If you want to successfully optimize your website, it is important that you know all your keywords and it is also important that you use these keywords on your website content, in your articles, and in any other content that you use to promote your website. Many people make the mistake of using untargeted keywords and phrases on their websites and other content that is meant to drive traffic to their website. Some internet marketers and website owners also fail to use their keywords on the title tag of their website.
- Lack of patience. Many web masters get impatient and they want to see their website rank high on search engines immediately. They fail to apply constant effort in implementing their SEO strategies. SEO requires that you patiently use your selected strategies and tools in optimizing your website for search engines.
If you want to succeed in optimizing your website for search engines, it is important that you avoid the mistakes outlined above.
June 24, 2012
What Are The Benefits Of Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
Search engine optimization (SEO) is very essential if you want to successfully earn money online.

Because of the importance of SEO, many website owners spend a lot of money and effort improving their website ranking on search engines. This article outlines the key benefits of SEO to your website and to your online business’ success.
- SEO helps to increase the ranking of your website on search engines. When your website ranks high on search engines, it means you get high volumes of traffic that is directed to your web site through the search engines. More traffic means more sales.
- SEO helps you to save money on paid advertising. If your website is well optimized and receives large volumes of traffic through search engines, you get a large volume of traffic coming to your website through organic links on the search engines. This means that you do not have to spend money on other advertising tools such as Pay Per Click (PPC).
- Optimizing your website for search engines and using your keywords and phrases in this process ensures that you get targeted visitors on your website. If you use all your keywords and phrases in your articles and website content, it means that your website is visible on search engines for your relevant keywords. When people type your keywords on search engines, your website ranks high on search engines.
- SEO helps you dominate your niche. If your website ranks high on all major search engines, and for all your keywords, you soon dominate the niche and become an expert in your niche or topic. This builds a good reputation for you, which further drives more traffic to your website.
With all these benefits of SEO, it is important that you start to optimize your website for search engines today!
June 24, 2012
Keyword Search Optimization Advice For Bloggers
If you’re blogging then you will almost certainly have heard about keyword search optimization. There are many ways to get traffic to your blog, but the best free method is to appear in the search engines for relevant keywords. Searchers will then click through to your blog to find what you’re looking for.

Although the search engines may include your site in results when you take advantage of keyword search optimization or not, you can give them a helping hand. By doing keyword research, finding highly searched keywords, and then using them appropriately in your content, you can make sure that the search engines rank you higher for these terms.

Keyword Density

When writing using keywords, the number of times you include a given keyword throughout the content is known as “keyword density”. For example, if your blog post is 400 words long and contains 4 instances of the keyword, this means that you’ve got a 1% keyword density (one instance of the keyword per 100 words). There is debate about how much you should use the keywords, but it’s often recommended you use them at least once per 100 words.

Where you use the keywords is also important. You should include them:
- At the beginning of the title
- Within the first sentence
- Within the last sentence
- And spread through the article body.
Keep It Natural

Although keyword search optimization is an important strategy for many bloggers, it’s also important to sound natural. After all, it’s not just the search engines looking at your content – there are real human readers too! And they’re likely to be turned off if it sounds like you’ve just stuffed in your keyword as many times as possible.

This is why it’s important to work on writing a good blog post first, and worry about the keywords you’re including second. No matter how well you’ve incorporated keyword search optimization into your article, your site isn’t going to do well unless you can keep readers interested with well crafted, interesting content that’s written with their needs in mind.

Too Many Keywords Can Have The Opposite Effect

Although we all know that it’s useful to include keywords in your blog posts, including too many can even turn the search engines off. The giants like Google are well aware that bloggers and internet marketers are trying to improve their rankings with methods like this, so they won’t reward you for taking shortcuts and stuffing your content with too many keywords. If they did, it would be too easy for low quality rankings to get to the top of the rankings.

Keywords Aren’t Everything

Following on from the point above, it’s important to realize that Google is looking at a lot more than just keywords to rank your site. It takes into account who links back to your site, how you link to your own pages, how well your site is laid out and, importantly, whether your website actually delivers the information your visitors are searching for.

Keyword search optimization is definitely something you should be incorporating into your blog posts if you want to take advantage of free search engine traffic. However, it’s also important to work on the quality of your blog. The visitors will follow.
June 24, 2012
Top 6 Tips For Driving Traffic To Your Blog
Blogging is very effective in attracting large volumes of traffic. However, if you really want to drive huge volumes of traffic to your blog, you will need to do more than just blogging.

This article outlines the top seven secrets for driving traffic to your blog.
1. Create high quality content that is rich with your keywords and phrases. This brings two main benefits. First, high quality and useful content will keep your website’s visitors interested and they will visit your blog on a regular basis and will buy the products you sell on your website. Second, fresh content with your key words will improve your search engine ranking which brings traffic to your blog and website.
2. Optimizing your titles for search engines is also an effective way of driving traffic to your website. You will need to optimize your blogs titles and use all the keywords or phrases which people use while looking for information on the internet. This will make your website visible on search engines, and your website will also rank high for all your keywords, driving traffic to your website.
3. Use email marketing with your blog. This is an effective way of bringing readers back to your blog as well as to create a list. Having your own list is important because you can sell your products and services to your list. By using an auto responder, you can send emails to your list about updates to your blog, hence driving traffic to your blog.
4. Social book marking is yet another powerful way to drive traffic to your blog. If you rank high on some of the most popular social book marking sites, you can drive large volumes of traffic to your website.
5. RSS feed for blog traffic. RSS feed is another way you can use to keep people coming back to your blog because after people subscribe to read your RSS feed, they will get updates continuously. This means that you will be bringing readers back to your blog every time you make a new blog post.
6. You can use some of your blog posts and covert them into articles. All you have to do is to add more content to your blog posts if necessary, add a catchy article heading and convert it into an article. Writing and submitting articles is one of the most excellent strategies for traffic generation.
These six strategies can significantly increase the volume of traffic to your website and blog.
June 24, 2012
How to install Windows 7 on your Mac: The Complete Walkthrough

How to install Windows 7 on your Mac: The Complete Walkthrough
Using Boot Camp to install Windows 7 on your Mac: The Complete Walkthrough

Somewhat similar to the Using Boot Camp to install Vista on your Mac walkthrough, this tutorial will take you every step of the way through installing Microsoft Windows 7 on your Intel Mac (running 10.5 or later), using Boot Camp.
Note: if you’d rather not dual boot OS X and Windows 7, you can always install Windows 7 in a virtual environment using Parallels Desktop 6.0 for Mac.

To install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp you will need the following:

All firmware updates installed on your Mac (use Apple Button -> Software Update… to check)
A Windows 7 installation DVD
Your OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard installation DVD
Around 30GB of empty hard drive space on your Mac. You can probably get away allocating less than 30GB to Windows 7, but it will leave very little room to install anything in Windows.
An hour if all goes well, up to 5 hours if not
Though not absolutely required, it’s a VERY good idea to have a complete and up to date Time Machine backup of OS X – it really came in handy for me. Because part of the process involves partitioning your drive, there’s always the distinct chance something will go wrong and everything will be wiped out.
Patience, possibly a great deal of it. Having a book handy will also help kill time during the partitioning, installing etc).

Installing Windows 7 via Boot Camp

Here goes. First thing – close absolutely every open program you can. That includes those things running in the Apple Menu that you always forget about. Don’t worry about killing the Dock or Dashboard – having those running is fine.
Now open a Finder and navigate to Applications -> Utilities and double-click Boot Camp Assistant.

Click Continue on the initial Introduction screen. Ignore the fact that it doesn’t mention Windows 7 as a possible OS to install.
Now you have to decide how much space you want to allocate to Windows 7. You might be able to get away with going as low as 10GB, but I would highly advise against it. You’ll have almost no space left over to install software, and your page file in Windows might cause frequent crashes. I opted for 20GB, which left me with just a bit over 16GB to use after installing Windows 7.

To change the amount of space to dedicate to Windows 7, click the small divider between Mac OS X and Windows, and drag it to the left.

Once you’ve determined how much space you want to allocate to Windows 7, click the Partition button.
The partitioning itself doesn’t take particularly long. If you receive an error, proceed to step 10 of the “How to install Vista with Boot Camp” tutorial. It provides all the troubleshooting info you need to resolve partitioning issues. Once you’ve cleared up any problems, or if everything just goes smoothly, proceed with the next step in this tutorial.

Once completed you’ll notice a new BOOTCAMP drive on your desktop.

Now insert your Windows 7 DVD and click the Start Installation button.

Your Mac will restart, and Windows 7 will boot. You’ll be prompted with a window asking you which partition you want to install Windows on. Select the one with BOOTCAMP in the Name column. Selecting anything else may wipe out OS X or cause serious problems. Then select the Drive options(advanced) link.

With the BOOTCAMP volume still selected, click the Format link.

Click OK.

And Windows 7 will begin to install. It’s a fairly boring process, so you may want to grab yourself a cup of coffee or your beverage of choice. But don’t go too far away, because when your system reboots, you’ll need to remove the Windows 7 DVD.

With the Windows 7 DVD removed, your Mac will automatically boot back into Windows 7, and the installation will complete. You’ll be prompted to select your language, keyboard layout etc. The rest of the Windows 7 installation process is very straight forward.
Once the installation has completed and your Mac has restarted again, you’ll be able to use Windows 7. WiFi will work immediately (no drivers to install) so connect to the Internet. Windows 7 will then begin to download updates, including the proper video card driver. Let it do its thing.

Once completed, you’ll be prompted to reboot yet again. Do so.

Once Windows 7 boots back up again, you’ll notice the resolution is much better, and you can enable the advanced graphics features.

But if you check for sound, you’ll notice there are no sound drivers installed.

Insert your OS X Leopard (or Snow Leopard) DVD. When prompted, select Run setup.exe. Note: If you’re using Snow Leopard and a message pops up saying “Remote Install Mac OS X”, close that window and eject the CD. Put the CD in again and this time select “Open folder to view files”, navigate to the Bootcamp folder, and run setup.exe.

The Boot Camp installer will launch. Click Next to begin.

Select I accept the terms in the license agreement and then click Next again.

Make sure that Apple Software Update for Windows is checked, and click Install.

The Boot Camp installer will do its thing, and install all the required drivers.

Notifications will pop up with each driver that gets installed.

Once completed, click Finish.

And yet again you’ll be prompted to reboot. Remove your OS X Leopard DVD from the drive, and click Yes to restart.

At this point most of the hardware on your Mac should be working in Windows. However, some iMacs and MacBook Pro’s will have to update to the 3.1 version of Boot Camp for Windows. To do so, just follow the few steps in this tutorial.
Note: If you still have problems with sound not working, you’ll need to install the Realtek drivers.
That’s it, you’re done! When your Mac boots, hold down the Option key to select which Operating System you want to boot into.

June 15, 2012