GeekSugar

How To: Change Your Desktop Icons

GeekSugar — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:00:04 -0700

I love to customize! From getting my BlackBerry engraved at the TechCrunch/Popsugar shindig in LA, to downloading some pretty wild wallpaper to bring out my inner animal and make me feel at home while I'm at the office. I do all I can to show my personality and prevent desktop boredom, even when it comes to my gadgets, which is why I switch it up and get down with cool (and free!) desktop icons through Iconfactory. The good news is that they're both Mac and PC friendly, and if you haven't checked them out, head on over - they have tons of cool icons to download and use to customize your virtual space on your computer. Not everyone loves the standard Safari or iPhoto icons, am I right? Once you find the icons you love, come back here and learn how to quickly and easily change your old icons into something a little more you.

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New Sleek LaCie Hard Drives Designed by Philippe Starck

GeekSugar — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:02:00 -0700

Today, the makers behind the glamorous gold hard drive and the rainbow bright flat cables - LaCie - is announcing its new sleek and sexy desktop hard drive and mobile hard drive. By teaming up with world renowned designer Philippe Starck, LaCie was able to create this new collection of drives which incorporate Starck's iconic design philosophy.

What's unique about the desktop hard drive is its touch-sensitive surface, which you can pre-program to open an application of your choice. So say you want to quickly show off videos on your drive, you can press your finger on the front panel and it will instantly pull up the folder with your video files (or launch iTunes). Both the desktop and the mobile drives are made from aluminum, which makes them nice and durable. They are also both Mac and PC friendly, will easily connect to your laptop's USB port and feature a built-in desktop manager, for quick drive formatting and customization. And best of all, the desktop drive is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities and only costs $130, while the mobile drive is available in 320GB and 500GB capacities for only $100. . . That's one heck of a deal.

To check out more photos of the LaCie Starck desktop hard drive and the LaCie Starck mobile hard drive, just read more.

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Dell and Nickelodeon Team Up to Create a Kid-Friendly Netbook

GeekSugar — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:15:36 -0700

Ah, kids these days. . . when they're not gabbing away on their cell phones, they've got their faces glued to the screens of portable gaming devices.

Well Dell is next in line to target younger audiences by working closely with Nickelodeon to create a 10.1-inch mini Inspiron netbook. The laptop, which is covered in the signature-green slime design by iCarly, comes fully loaded with entertaining and educational content and a Nickelodeon-branded desktop wallpaper and icons.

The price of this three-pound netbook hasn't been announced as of yet, but you can expect it to be around the same price as the regular mini 10. They will be available in Dell and Wal-Mart store shelves starting this October.

Simply Sync Up Your Google Goods on Your BlackBerry

GeekSugar — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:04:08 -0700

Want to access your Google calendar events on your BlackBerry? Or what about sync up your phone's contacts with your Gmail contacts so you have a backup if you ever lose your phone? Easy peasy thanks to Google Sync for the BlackBerry, which has been around for some time now, but I realize not everyone knows about its fabulosity.

Just go to http://m.google.com/sync on your BlackBerry's browser and then click on the Download Google Sync link. Once you arrive there, click on Get link and then download. The BB sync icon will then be on your home screen. Once you click on the icon, enter your Google Account username and password. From there, left click on the button beside your scroll wheel and click on options to set what tools you want sync'd - like your calendar, or just your contacts. Keep in mind it will take a few minutes for the first sync to be completed.

In other good syncing BlackBerry news - RIM will be coming out with a fancy BlackBerry Desktop Manager for the Mac this Fall. The suite will allow you to perform firmware updates, add and remove apps, sync your BB with iTunes, create backups, and more.

New BlackBerry Theme Flowberry Is So Apple I Can Taste It

GeekSugar — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:13 -0700

Meet Flowberry, a hot new BlackBerry theme that offers all the Apple aesthetics a Mac-obsessed-BlackBerry girl could ever want. With icons that look like they belong on a MacBook's desktop, you can fool everyone into thinking you've got a Mac OS X running on your BlackBerry! Flowberry can work on most devices, but it's best if you have version 4.3 or higher. And unchangeable icons include Messages, Calendar, Address Book, Media, SMS/MMS, BlackBerry Messenger, MemoPad, and Keyboard Lock.

To see a video of Flowberry in action just read more.

How to Organize Your Computer

GeekSugar — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:01:15 -0800

We all know things at our desks can get pretty messy, but if you have as many pictures, documents and music files on your computer as I do, you've probably noticed things on your hard drive getting pretty messy too.

For my guide to creating a well-organized computer, just read more

Open the most unorganized folders and begin to choose the ones that you do not need anymore.
Select and delete the files you do not need by dragging them to the trash or clicking on them and clicking delete.
Create at least three new categories and then create folders to go along with them. If you have many sub-categories, you can create folders inside the folders you just created, but be careful not to create so many folders that you can’t remember where you’ve saved your items.
Move all your categories into your documents. This is usually named 'My Documents.'
Empty your recycle bin. All the files you have just deleted go to a folder called the recycle bin. The recycle bin is located on the desktop. Confirm all the deleted files. Then right click the recycle bin and select empty.
Run the desktop clean up wizard. This wizard will clean up any shortcuts you have never used before, or haven't used in a long time. To get onto this wizard you must right click on the desktop and put your mouse over 'arrange icons by', then click 'run desktop clean up wizard'.
Restart your computer. After your computer has done all the hard work, moving files on your hard drive, it needs a mini break.

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How Does The Hard Drive Feature of iPod Work?

GeekSugar — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:00:27 -0800

As many of you know, your iPod can double as a hard drive for your computer. This allows you to transfer files and applications from your computer to the iPod and take them with you wherever you go. iPod is smart enough to keep your data files separate from your music collection so that they will not be accidentally erased when you are updating your music.

Personally, I go this route whenever I know I am going to be away from my computer for a couple days but want to make sure I have my most important data with me. It also works great for transferring files, although it isn't as easy as using a simple flash drive. read more

Using your iPod as a hard disk

You can use your iPod as a drive (hard drive or flash drive depending on your iPod) to store and transfer data files on (also known as disk mode).

Tip: To transfer music files to iPod, use iTunes. You can't see the songs iTunes copies to your iPod in the Finder or My Computer. If you copy music files to iPod using the Finder or an Explorer window, iPod won't be able to play them.

Connect iPod to your computer.
Open iTunes if it doesn't automatically open.
Select the iPod icon in the Source pane.
Click the Summary tab.
For most iPod models (except iPod shuffle):
Select "Enable disk use" or "Manually manage songs and playlists". Either one will allow you to use iPod as a drive. If you select "Manually manage songs and playlists," iTunes won't automatically update iPod with the iTunes library. If you want iTunes to automatically update your iPod, select "Enable disk use" instead.

For iPod shuffle:
Click the "Enable disk use" checkbox and set the Storage Allocation slider to indicate the amount you want to be used by audio files and the amount you want to be used for data files.

The iPod disk icon appears on the desktop and in Finder windows, and in My Computer in Windows. Double-click the icon and drag files to or from iPod's window to copy them.
Make sure to eject iPod before disconnecting it from your computer. Tip: The iPod display will say "Do Not Disconnect" when disk use is enabled (iPod shuffle's status light will continue to blink orange until after it is ejected). These are reminders for you to eject iPod first.

Love 2.0: Anil Dash and Alaina Browne

GeekSugar — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:10:19 -0800

As part of our Geeks We Love series, I caught up with a few couples that, through the beauty of the internet and technology have influenced both our lives and each other.

There are plenty of couples that both blog, but Anil Dash and Alaina Browne are in an elite club of longtime bloggers that have been around the blogosphere for years, but are still humble about their success, influence and accomplishments. Anil, is Vice President at Six Apart, a blogging software used by millions of people across the world, but he describes his occupation by saying "I help people start blogging." Alaina is the general manager at Serious Eats, a website filled with video, blogs, photos and feature stories all geared toward the foods people love. What geeky things do these two love about life online and each other? read more.

Geeksugar: So, let's lay it all on the table. What do you think is the "geekiest" thing about yourself?
Anil: I'm probably a little bit obsessive over weird little technical things, like the order of icons on my desktop, or the way my songs are tagged in iTunes. I've even gotten hundreds of people to tell me how they use Excel to organize their personal lives. So probably the most geeky thing about me is that I really, really love software and consider myself a student of software culture.
Alaina: I won my school’s Computer Science Student of the Year award in 7th grade.

Geeksugar: Tell us a bit about your background.
Alaina: I’ve been a web geek pretty much since the beginning, working with MindSpring (later Earthlink) and puttering around with websites and later blogs for about ten years. I had a personal site for a long time, and then when I moved to New York City in 2002, I started NYC Eats, which later became A Full Belly. It was one of the first food blogs, and I was very lucky and happy to meet a lot of people and discover a lot of new things through the site, though I don’t update it much anymore. After we moved to San Francisco in 2004, I started working for Mule Design, a great web design shop run by some friends of ours. While there I got to work on a diverse mix projects for Six Apart, CNET’s Chowhound, and a lot of other great clients. Then late last year I got the chance to help get Serious Eats off the ground. Combined with the chance to come back to New York, it was an irresistible opportunity and one that I’m very excited about. The community on Serious Eats is already something really special.
Anil: I work at Six Apart because I've been a blogger since 1999 (at dashes.com) and I wanted to help people get started blogging. I was the first employee, so I've been at it for about four years. These days, I get to go everywhere talking about Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox, and it's the best job I've ever had. You could say I got into it because I couldn't not do it.

Geeksugar: What about the geekiest thing about your significant other?
Anil: Hmm, that's a tough one. Alaina is very adept at masking her geekiness around others, so that I am the only one who gets to see how funny and clever she really is. It's like being married to a geeky J. Frog.
Alaina: His blortal.

Geeksugar: How and when did you meet eachother?
Anil: We were introduced by a couple whom I had met through my blog. In late 2001, they set us up, and 5 years later, we're married!
Alaina: We met in December 2001 thanks to an introduction from a college roommate, dear friend, and master matchmaker. Before we met, she sent me the link to his blog which I’d seen before. Its tagline at the time was “New York, New Media, New Funk,” which made me go “blech” but I trust Shannon so I kept an open mind.

Geeksugar: What are your top 5 favorite gadgets?
Anil: I really love my Nintendo Wii and covet Alaina's DS Lite. (I have a regular DS, so I can't complain.) I have an iPod Nano, which works well enough, but I love the form factor more than the device itself.
Alaina: iPod Nano and accompanying Nike+ sport kit, white DS lite, Macbook, Fuji F11 digital camera, my pink Gameboy Advanced SP.

Geeksugar: Top 5 luxury gadgets you really want?
Anil: Oddly, I don't covet very many gadgets. I got a chance to see the new Nokia NSeries phones because they work with Vox, and the video camera in the N93i looks awesome.

Geeksugar: Your first computer was a...
Anil: A Commodore VIC-20. I had pretty much every Commodore but the Amiga, including a VIC-20, a C-64, a C-128, and even a Commodore Colt, which was a PC clone.
Alaina: Commodore 64.

Geeksugar: What are your favorite websites?
Anil: Well, seriouseats.com, of course. And I am pretty proud of what I've done with dashes.com over the past several years. I think the web page I visit the most is my Vox neighborhood at anil.vox.com. But I'm inspired by some of the really great blogs I read - Overheard in New York, Ftrain, Rebecca's Pocket.
Alaina: Seriouseats.com, Flickr.com, Vox.com, Kottke.org

Geeksugar: What are your Valentine's Day plan?
Anil: Well, we like to eat well, so I think a nice dinner somewhere and then returning home for a date to play Wii Sports and Wario Ware might be pretty nice.
Alaina: Not to have a Valentine’s Day plan.

Geeksugar: Who makes the final decision when it comes to gadgets for the home?
Anil: Actually, we almost never even have discussions about this. We're fairly moderate in our gadget purchases, so we can each pretty much get whatever we want. It's always a nice surprise to come home and find that the other person has something shiny to show off.
Alaina: We’re pretty in sync when it comes to gadgets and our finances and trust each other to make these kinds of decisions. If it’s a big ticket item, like the flat panel tv we just bought, we’ll discuss it together first so there are no surprises when it comes time to balance the checkbook.

Geeksugar: Who solves tech problems at home?
Anil: I think it depends on the nature of the tech problem. I tend to do most of the CSS troubleshooting and wifi wrangling. Alaina is more adept with hacking blog templates and making DVD/TV/web video go. It's a pretty balanced relationship.
Alaina: I try to solve tech problems myself and if I get stuck, I call in Anil.

Geeksugar: Are you going to buy an iPhone?
Anil: Probably not. I love the idea of a common platform for portable hackery, but I hate phones and phone carriers, especially. I tend to be a late adopter with iPods anyway, which is fine by me.
Alaina: No. No. No.

Geeksugar: How do you feel about people calling you a "geek"?
Anil: I'm very comfortable about that. I like that, when I'm in a room full of normals, I'm the geeky one, but when I'm in a room full of geeks, I'm seen as not geeky enough.
Alaina: It’s an accurate description I don’t object to.

Geeksugar: What do think are the greatest things you guys have contributed to the blogsosphere?
Anil: I've helped promote the good work that other people do in creating the social web. I'm very proud to be friends or acquaintances with a lot of the most talented people in the world of blogging and social media. As far as Alaina's accomplishments, I think she has been phenomenally influential in the world of food blogging and in food community online in general - A Full Belly (originally NYC Eats), was a seminal food blog and informs the spirit of a lot of food communities today, including Serious Eats.
Alaina: His ability to effectively communicate about technology with the non-geek majority. No one does it better.

Geeksugar: How many hours do you spend online a day?
Anil: Roughly 24? Actually, in all seriousness, I pretty frequently spend 14+ hours a day online, and sometimes 18 hours, since I don't sleep much and you could count watching a DVD on a laptop or playing video games as "being online."
Alaina: 16.

Geeksugar: How many hours does your partner spend online a day?
Anil: Less than that. She actually does other things like running marathons and eating good dinners at nice restaurants. I should learn from her example.
Alaina: All of them.

Geeksugar: What is one geeky habit you're trying to quit?
Anil: Obsessively checking things like stats, RSS feeds, and email. Nothing that important is ever in there, but sources of stress often are.
Alaina: Reading scripting.com.

Geeksugar: Are you the "Beauty" or the "Geek" in the relationship?
Anil: I think we're both a lot of both in our marriage! Even though I'm definitely a geek, Alaina's had a personal website a lot longer than me, and really gets a lot of geek culture at a gut level. On the other hand, I dress a lot better since I've had Alaina's help, so while I can't quite come to her level of beauty, I'm at least not looking like something the cat dragged in.
Alaina: I think we’re both beautiful geeks.

How To Update The Calendar On Your iPod

GeekSugar — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 09:00:46 -0800

iTunes can automatically transfer calendar data stored in your iCal, Entourage, Microsoft Outlook or Palm Desktop so that you have all of your important dates with you any place you bring your iPod. I thought I would never use this, but I actually ran into an old friend at the gym and was able to look up a date we met up for dinner on my iPod. It may have been the geekiest move of my life, but it worked!

For tips on how to enable syncing of your other calendars, just read more

Open iTunes and connect your iPod to your computer.
Select the iPod icon in the source pane of iTunes.
Click the Contacts tab.
Enable the "Sync iCal calendars" checkbox.

Simply drag your iCalendar or vCalendar files to your iPod, and you can access your calendar even when you are away from your computer.