The new MacBooks hidden USB C benefit may be battery power

The new MacBooks hidden USB C benefit may be battery power

If youre a road warrior worried that the 9-hour advertised battery life of Apples new MacBook falls short of the 10 hours on the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, you may be able to lay that fear to rest.

A hidden and unadvertised benefit to Apples switch to the USB-C connector on the new MacBook over MagSafe on older models is that you may be able to buy an external battery pack or power bank.

Similar to how smartphone owners can recharge their phones with an external battery pack, a power bank allows MacBook owners to recharge their laptop if they arent near a power outlet.

"Most accessories supporting the USB Type-C specifications should work with your new MacBook," 9to5Mac wrote of the new port. "Apple wont be doing anything to block any specific types of accessories - in fact, it will even allow external batteries or other Macs to charge the new MacBook."

This would be a drastic change from Apple, which is not only moving away from its proprietary MagSafe charging connector, but is also opening up its laptops to third-party charging solutions. In the past, Apple thwarted third-party battery packs like Hyper Juice that utilize non-licensed MagSafe charging tips to connect to a MacBook Air or Pro.

More power

Enterprise users will find support for external battery packs extremely useful. Many enterprise workstations and laptops designed for field use come with a user-replaceable battery. When the notebook runs out of power, users can swap a dead battery for a new one and continue working.

However, given that Apples notebooks come with a sealed battery, this isnt a possibility. For workers in the field, carrying a single external battery pack or multiple packs would allow them to have a system that runs longer than the 9-hour battery life from the internal battery.

The downside with USB-C is that it may not automatically unlatch from the MacBook if, for example, someone trips on the cord.

A benefit that Apple promotes with MagSafe is that if someone trips over your power cord, the magnet from the MagSafe cable would unlatch from the notebook. By having the cable automatically unhook from the laptop, your laptop wouldnt crash on the ground.

USB-C Standard

With the USB-C port on the new MacBook, Apple is not only replacing the MagSafe charging port: its also replacing standard USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports as well as display-out ports. The port can be used to connect peripherals like external drives, keyboards, monitors and displays.

In adapting the new standard, Apple also dropped existing ports like traditional USB, Thunderbolt and Mini DisplayPort. This means that you can only have one thing plugged into the USB port at any given time so you cant charge the notebook and connect a hard drive unless you buy an adapter or hub.

download file now

Continue reading ...

The POWER of the FOX! Mozilla Firefox Tricks

The POWER of the FOX! Mozilla Firefox Tricks

Mozilla Firefox is one of the most used internet browsers today along with Google Chrome. But do you use it effectively? or you do not know what this browser is capable of? Let me give you some tricks and things you do not know you can do with your Mozilla Firefox.


1. More screen space. 

Make your icons small. Go to View - Toolbars - Customize and check the �Use small icons� box.


2. Smart keywords.

If there�s a search you use a lot (let�s say IMDB.com�s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select �Add a Keyword for this search�, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let�s say �actor�) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox�s address bar, type �actor� and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box.


3. Keyboard shortcuts. 

This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):

* Spacebar (page down)
* Shift-Spacebar (page up)
* Ctrl+F (find)
* Alt-N (find next)
* Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
* Ctrl+T (new tab)
* Ctrl+K (go to search box)
* Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
* Ctrl+= (increase text size)
* Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
* Ctrl-W (close tab)
* F5 (reload)
* Alt-Home (go to home page)


4. Auto-complete.

This is another keyboard shortcut, but it�s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the �www� or the �.com�. Let�s say �google�. Then press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the �www� and the �.com� and take you there - like magic! For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.


5. Tab navigation. 

Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:

* Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
* Ctrl+Shft+Tab (rotate to the previous tab)
* Ctrl+1-9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)


6. Mouse shortcuts.

Sometimes you�re already using your mouse and it�s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:

* Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
* Shift-scroll down (previous page)
* Shift-scroll up (next page)
* Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
* Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
* Middle click on a tab (closes tab)


7. Delete items from address bar history.

Firefox�s ability to automatically show previous URLs you�ve visited, as you type, in the address bar�s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don�t want those URLs to show up (I won�t ask why). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you�ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.


8. User chrome. 

If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you�ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It�s a bit complicated to get into here, but check out this tutorial.


9. Create a user.js file.

Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You�ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder (see this to find out where the profile folder is) and see this example user.js file that you can modify. Created by techlifeweb.com, this example explains some of the things you can do in its comments.


10. about:config. 

The true power user�s tool, about.config isn�t something to mess with if you don�t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser�s address bar. See Mozillazine�sabout:config tips and screenshots.


11. Add a keyword for a bookmark

. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.


12. Speed up Firefox. 

If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it�s optimized for dialup connections). Here�s how:

* Type �about:config� into the address bar and hit return. Type �network.http� in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
* Set �network.http.pipelining� to �true�
* Set �network.http.proxy.pipelining� to �true�
* Set �network.http.pipelining.maxrequests� to a number like 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at once.
* Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it �nglayout.initialpaint.delay� and set its value to �0?. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.


13. Limit RAM usage. 

If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter �browser.cache� and select �browser.cache.disk.capacity�. It�s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.


14. Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized.

This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it�s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it �config.trim_on_minimize� and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.


15. Move or remove the close tab button.

Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox�s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for �browser.tabs.closeButtons�. Here are the meanings of each value:

* 0: Display a close button on the active tab only
* 1: (Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
* 2: Don�t display any close buttons
* 3: Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)




16. Build your own Firefox search engine

Want to power up Firefoxs search box? Its easy to create your own search engine, so that you can rifle through any site from right within Firefox. Adding a search engine that has already been written, of course, is easy. Click the down arrow to the left of the search box, select "Manage Search Engines," then click the "Get more search engines" link at the bottom of the screen. From the Web site that appears, click the search engine you want to install, and youre done.

There are plenty of sites that dont have prebuilt search engines, though. No problem: Its easy to build your own search engine. First install the OpenSearchFox add-on. Then, when youre on a search site, right-click the search box and choose the Add OpenSearch plug-in. From the screen that appears (shown below), type in the name that you want to be associated with the search engine, add a description of the search engine and click Next. Then click Finish, and the site will be added as a search engine that you can choose like any other -- by clicking the arrow to the left of the search box and selecting the engine.



Building your own Firefox search engine. (Click image to see larger view)

Note that as of this writing, OpenSearchFox doesnt work properly with Firefox v. 2.0.0.10 or 2.0.0.11, although it may be fixed as you read this. When you use the add-on in v. 2.0.0.1 or 2.0.0.11, youll get an error message after you click Finish, although in some instances, even if you get the error message, the search engine will still be added.


17. Use keywords to speed up your searching

Dont want to go to the trouble of adding your search engine -- or you cant get OpenSearchFox to work properly? Heres another way to do an instant search. When youre at a site, right-click on its search box and select "Add a Keyword for this Search." Type in a name for it and an easy-to-remember shortcut (for example, hp for the Huffington Post blog site). Then click OK. Now, to search the site, go to the Address Bar, and type in your shortcut, followed by a search term, such as hp Clinton. Youll search the site, just as if you were there. Note that on occasion, the search wont work properly, but it will on most sites.


18. Use keywords to speed up bookmarks

Visiting your favorite sites using Firefoxs bookmarks is far too much of a chore -- do you really want to do all that mousing around? Instead, you can use keywords to instantly jump to any site youve bookmarked. To do it, after you bookmark a site, right-click on the bookmark, select Properties, type in a short keyword (or even just a letter or two) in the keyword field and click OK. Now, to visit the site, type in the keyword in Firefoxs address bar, and youll jump straight to the site.


Adding a keyword to a bookmark. (Click image to see larger view)


19. Put your own graphic on the Firefox tool bar

If you dont like the plain background of Firefoxs tool bar, dont worry -- you can put your own graphic there. Type the following into the userChrome.css file and put the graphic that you want to use, background.gif, in the same directory as userChrome.css. The graphic can be any name and any type of image file supported by Firefox.

Heres the code to use:
/* Change the toolbar graphic */
menubar, toolbox, toolbar, .tabbrowser-tabs {
background-image: url("background.gif") !important;
background-color: none !important;
}

The graphic you use will automatically be scaled to fit the tool bar. For example, if its small, it will be tiled.



20. Hack the stop, back and forward buttons

Are you a minimalist? Does it annoy you that theres a big fat Stop button on the Firefox tool bar, even when theres nothing to stop? And how about the Forward and Back buttons -- if theres no place to go forward or back, would you like them simply to disappear?
Youre in luck, because its simple to do. Add these lines below to userChrome.css. Note that even after this trick, the buttons will appear when theres a use for them. For example, when a page is loading, the Stop button will appear, so that you can stop loading the page; it just wont appear when a page isnt loading. And the Forward and Back buttons will appear when theres something to go forward or back to:

/* Remove the Stop button when content isnt loading*/
#stop-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove the Back button when theres nothing to go back to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove the Forward button when theres nothing to go forward to */
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }








21. Move the sidebar to the right

Firefox has a sidebar for viewing your history or bookmarks. It normally displays on the left-hand side when you choose View-->Sidebar. If you prefer, though, you can have the sidebar instead appear on the right, by typing this code into the userChrome.css file:

/* Place the sidebar on the right edge of the window */
hbox#browser { direction: rtl; }
hbox#browser > vbox { direction: ltr; }

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 756x583.

After hacking userChrome.css, you can make the Sidebar appear on the right, instead of on the left.


22. Change the search bar width

Dont like the width of the search bar on the upper-right hand corner of Firefox? No problem -- its easy to change. All you need to do is specify the width you want, in pixels. Use this code in userChrome.css to tell the search bar to be 600 pixels wide, but you can, of course, use whatever size you want:


/* Make the Search box wider
(in this case 600 pixels wide) */
#search-container, #searchbar {
max-width: 600px !important;
width: 600px !important; }


Heres the normal-size search box ...



... and here it is, after the hack, 600 pixels wide.



23. Remove menu items

Are there menu items -- for example, Help -- that you never use? If so, you can easily make them disappear. To remove the Help menu, add this to userChrome.css:

/* Remove the Help menu */
menu[label="Help"] {
display: none !important; }

You can remove any of the other menus as well. Use the same syntax as above and substitute its name (File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks or Tools). So, for example, to remove both the Help and Tools menu, youd add these lines to userChrome.css:

/* Remove the Help and Tools menus */
menu[label="Tools"], menu[label="Help"] {
display: none !important; }




Heres Firefox with the normal complement of menus ...



... and here it is, minus the Help and Tools menus.


Thats it! By the way you can download the latest Mozilla Firefox browser here.




Enjoy the power of your Mozilla Firefox! :)
Up Next: Google Search tricks.

download file now

Continue reading ...

The Power of iPhoneberry

The Power of iPhoneberry

Oleh Arie Kjoiruddin, Nurkholish, Eko SB Setyawan

download file now

Continue reading ...

The power of silence Six ways to make a point by saying nothing reflection behaviour

The power of silence Six ways to make a point by saying nothing reflection behaviour

Continue reading the main story

In todays Magazine

• 7 questions on quizzes
• How can the Titanic be celebrated?
• Is taking rubbish stealing?
• The ear of the leader

Stop.

Close your eyes.

Take a deep breath.

Shut out the world around you.

Those moments when you are immersed in quietness are all too rare in todays world.

Noise pollution is a companion to modern life, with traffic, ringtones and other peoples conversations providing the soundtrack to our daily routines.

A record by the Royal British Legion featuring only silence is hoping to beat Take That to the number one spot this week. 

It reflects the immense power that - for many people - silence can wield, if only we stopped to listen.

Go to BBC to read the original article.

Posted via email from colby pre-posterous

download file now

Continue reading ...

The Power of Cloud Back up

The Power of Cloud Back up

Cloud back-up, also known as on the internet back-up or online back-up is a strategy for support up information that includes delivering a copy of the information over a exclusive or public system to an off-site hosting server. The hosting server is usually organized by a third-party company, who expenses the back-up customer a fee based on capacity, information or number of customers. In the business, the off-site hosting server might be exclusive, but the chargeback method would be similar.

Online back-up systems are typically built around a customer software program that operates on a schedule determined by the level of assistance the consumer has purchased. If the consumer has shortened for daily backups, for instance, then the program gathers, squeezes, encrypts and exchanges information to the assistance providers web servers every 24 hours. To reduce the quantity of information absorbed and enough it takes to transfer data files, the company might only provide step-by-step back up after the initial full back-up.

Third-party cloud back-up has become popular with small workplaces and home customers because of its comfort. Capital expenses for additional components are not required and backups can be run dark, which means they can be run instantly without guide involvement. In the business, cloud back-up services are mainly being used for preserving non-critical information only. Conventional back-up is a better solution for crucial information that requires a few months to recover. When a lot of information needs to be retrieved, it may need to be delivered on record or some other convenient storage space media.

In short there are two main back-up options: pure back-up and hybrid back-up.

In comparison with hybrid back-up, in which an organization backs up to regionally available storage space, pure back-up is all about delivering duplicates off-site to a cloud provider. With pure back-up, information is duplicated straight to the service providers cloud. With hybrid back-up, on the other hand, information is duplicated to a system with set up storage space that resides between our facilities and the cloud. The hybrid system provides the advantage of retaining information regionally to smooth out transport to the cloud and in case restores are needed.

Pure backup

With pure back-up, agents are set up on machines, with back ups going straight to the service providers cloud. The key benefit of a pure back-up strategy is that it is simple to apply, scalable and very well best for organizations that don�t possess in-house IT department skills. The expenses of these solutions go up or down depending on use and allow organizations the ability to accurately design their back-up expenses in line with projected back-up information set growth. This can eliminate the almost-impossible task of attempting to factor in the full expenses of regional back-up storage space in IT budget forecasts. The key drawbacks with pure back-ups are that it is very much restricted by available information. So, it�s not a strategy best for organizations with huge and complex back-up requirements that would hog online connections.

Hybrid backup

For organizations that produce a fair amount of information and have a requirement for readily available recover functions, cloud back-up suppliers have implemented a multiple strategy. This cloud back-up choice consists of on-site NAS equipment that acts as a regional back-up target and then performs background synchronizations of back-up information places to an exterior cloud. When a recover is required from a recent back-up, the information is sitting ready on-site in the NAS and can be quickly utilized. Alternatively, regenerates from exterior cloud-based back-up places can be recalled from the cloud into multiple NAS on-site storage space on demand and renewed from there.

download file now

Continue reading ...

The Power of Hand Writing

The Power of Hand Writing

A story about McMaster medical students being welcomed to the profession by hand-written letters has me wondering what might happen if practicing teachers took to the pencil or pen more regularly.  There is wisdom in sharing a legacy of ideas via the written word... with colleagues, with students; perhaps to inspire those new to the profession.

download file now

Continue reading ...

The Sorcerers Apprentice For those who love Magic Power!!!

The Sorcerers Apprentice For those who love Magic Power!!!

The Sorcerers Apprentice is an awesome and cool magical movie!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZL3XjwL0E&NR=1

Watch the official HD trailer from the above link.
Tomorrow you can watch it in the cinema already! 14.07.2010 ...
I always wish that i could have some special magic power~
At least a special ability to be different from the other.

download file now

Continue reading ...

The power of CC and BCC

The power of CC and BCC

Last month Im very frustrated over something at work. I couldnt get the voucher that I suppose to get after waiting for about half year.

So I decided to take an action by email to the one who responsible for that voucher and CC to my team leader and my HR people. After 1 week later I straightly away got the replied from the person who responsible for my voucher and immediately I got my voucher in full payment.

Just like the Singapore movie days in government department really show the power of CC and BCC in your emailing system.

download file now

Continue reading ...