Posts Tagged Paraphrase

Showing You The Best Fastest Way To Mend A Slow Mac

Posted by on Saturday, 24 September, 2011

You are not alone. At this very moment hundreds of people are screaming in unison: ‘How To Make My Mac Faster?’

Well, this Article will explain all.

But before we start talking about the best Mac optimiser, let us first outline precisely what optimisation is and why you could need a Mac optimiser. Disk optimization is the method whereby the locations of computer files are streamlined. To paraphrase, your files are rearranged so as to access information quicker.

As to the reasons why you need to understand this, heres the straightforward explanation: Over time , files usually become fragmented. This means that parts of a single file are stockpiled in different locations in your hard drive. A Mac optimizer collects these slivers and puts them back together so as to speed up the process of opening these files. Running software like this does have its share of risks because if something disrupts the optimisation process like power loss, as an example your files may be damaged. It is therefore wise to back up your files before running it. That being said, MacKeeper is the safest software to do just this and has an industry leading track record for making things better agin.

How does one know if you need it ? Well, Apple users generally dont need optimization for one or two reasons. First, there's sometimes larger hard disk capacity, so you'll seldom need to liberate space. 2nd, faster hard drives and better caching now result in less fragmentation, so you may not truly need to utilise software like this for some time. Third, newer Mac versions use technology that guarantees that fragmentation has less effect on overall system performance. For these reasons, you might find little need consider it.

Nonethless over time, things do slow down, and even the best system can benefit hugely form a clean up.

Now, if you do desire to utilise software to speed things up again, you may want to try restarting your Apple first. If that does not do the trick and your Mac is still running slow, you may want to delete some unused and unwanted files and programs. If, after doing this you continue to consider it wise for speed, then you will of course have to make sure that you choose only the best App in the market. An excellent applicant for being the best Mac optimiser currently available is the MacKeeper by ZeoBIT.

This application is really more than simply a lcleaner and speed program. In reality it's been dubbed as the 911 for your precious because it can do just about everything that is required to keep your Computer safe and well-maintained. However since we are looking out for the best Mac optimizer, lets take a more in-depth look at the Mackeepers optimisation feature.

The MacKeepers features have three elements, namely: Login Items, Default Applications, and Update Tracker. The Login Items element helps optimise your Computer by allowing you to control the automatic start up utility. This suggests you can limit the quantity of applications that instantly get launched on login. The second component, Default Programs, allows you to select which particular application will open each file type. This will help you save time in opening associated files and applications.

Ultimately, you've got the third and final Mac optimiser part, which is the Update Tracker. This checks all of the applications installed in your Hard Drive and permits you to know when an application should be updated. The application may then be updated just by clicking on the Update button. These parts may very well be all that you need to keep your Mac healthy and carefully maintained.

Access Your Free Trial Copy Of The No1 Mac Clean Up App at Make My Mac Faster.com. The Ultimate Solution To Improve Performance And The Most Trusted Speed Up My Mac Utility.


Mobile Makes Millions — But It’s Not As Simple As It Seems

Posted by on Sunday, 10 April, 2011

Do you seriously want to become rich? Here’s the secret — and it’s got nothing to do with building an online social network, or even getting the government to bail out your bank. To paraphrase Mr. McGuire from ‘The Graduate,’ I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Mobile.



Wired Top Stories


Don’t worry, they’ll sell iPads at Best Buy

Posted by on Wednesday, 24 February, 2010


Allergic to Apple Stores, like me? Not to worry. Tim Cook, COO at Apple, has said (though there is no direct quote at the moment) that Apple will indeed be selling the iPad at places like Best Buy and other partners. This will likely follow a period of Apple Store-only availability, as the sales process is more fully fleshed out and the world becomes more familiar with the device. This isn’t too much of a surprise; after all, they sell other Apple products at Best Buy. The iPad may be Apple’s baby now, but after a little time on the market it’ll be well-understood enough to have a big yellow tag under it.

If you’re curious about the other stuff the man said in this little Q&A, there’s a sort of rough paraphrase over at SAI that’s worth checking out. Nothing should be taken as gospel until a real transcription comes out, but there’s nothing life-changing in there. Just good news for those of us that get creeped out by Apple Stores.

Not that Best Buy is a hell of a lot better, but you know what I mean, right? All those Apple people, smiling at you? Goosebumps.



Finding the Right Sized Mini Excavator Rental

Posted by on Saturday, 6 February, 2010

Do you need a mini excavator to perform a certain job but you do not need the utilization of the mini excavator for a lengthy period of time enough to explain getting a mini excavator of your own? If that is the case do not be disturbed about it. You can still gain access to a mini excavator by getting in contact with a dealer who specializes in kit rental, especially mini excavator rental.

Mini Excavator Rental is good when you have tiny projects that won’t last for a significant period of time, just every once in a while. Although the project may last for a month or two, if you do not have work for the mini excavator on a regular basis, there isn’t a need in budgeting for a machine of your own. To paraphrase, to budget for a machine like this, you are going to need to make sure that you have enough work to keep on use of the machine on a regular basis. Otherwise, the machine will not pay for itself, and because this is amassive investment, that’s critical.

Now, you can gain access to a mini excavator by making use of a mini excavator rental business, and you’ll only have to pay for the time that you use the machine. When you are done with the projects just simply return the machine. You then don’t have to stress about maintenance on the machine, storage of the machine, and operating costs, for example. The mini excavator rental business will look after all of that.

The single thing that you’re going to have to worry about is paying for the machine and the transport of the machine to the location where it is required. Almost all of the time, mini excavator rental prices are based upon the hours that the machine is utilized. In some cases, you utilize mini excavator rental on a daily basis, meaning you pay up for each day that you have the machine. When paying by the hour that you use the machine, you will want to make certain that you pick up the machine right before you plan to begin the project and return it instantly upon completion of the project. Otherwise, the money can add up very fast by letting the machine set overnite.

Mini Excavator Rental is great for tiny projects or small businesses that don’t need the machine on a regular basis, not to mention the undeniable fact that it truly helps to save on the budget of any project that’s being done. Sometimes the budget for purchasing new equipment just isn’t there, and in cases like that, mini excavator rental truly does become a blessing.

You do not have to stress about paying another contractor to come do your work. You don’t have to stress about coming up with the money to get a machine. You don’t have to fret about paying high fees to have simple projects done, even if you don’t own a business and youare simply a homeowner. Now, be at liberty to dig up that sewer line yourself by employing a mini excavator rental company.


Review: EOS wireless speaker system

Posted by on Monday, 2 November, 2009

EOS
To paraphrase my favorite Jack Handy quote, “If the Vikings were around today, they would probably be amazed at the number of wireless audio solutions we have.” Hopefully said Vikings would read reviews of said wireless audio solutions here at CrunchGear, since we’ve covered a fair number of these things. Today we’re taking a look at the Eos wireless audio solution. “Named for the Greek goddess of dawn, Eos lets you put great music all over your house — without the hassle of wires.”

The Core System
The Eos core bundle contains a speaker with integrated iPod dock, a remote control, and an additional wireless speaker. You can buy wireless speakers individually, and pump music to up to four speakers from a single base station, for a total of five rooms filled with music. The base station is not too big, with ample room in the dock for the entire gamut of iPods and iPhones. On the front of the unit are plus and minus buttons for volume control, a wireless on/off toggle, a source input button, and a mute button. There are two LEDs on either side of the base: the one on the left is labeled “iPod” and the one on the right is labeled “AUX”. Obviously, pressing the “Source” button will toggle the audio source between a docked iPod and the line-in connection on the back of the unit.

Aside from the line-in jack, the back of the base station has a power port, a toggle switch for the Range Extended feature, and a link button which is used to set a unique ID for your Eos base station. In the unlikely event that your neighbor also buys an Eos, you can use the link button to make sure that your wireless speakers only play music from your base station.

The remote control is small, and the kind of thing I’d lose pretty quickly. I confirmed that the remote would operate a docked iPod, and then never touched it again. Maybe I’m an anomaly, but I usually just listen to my music on “shuffle”, and don’t have any need to interact with the iPod once the music starts playing.

The speakers in the base station were good. Speaker reviews are always a little tricky, because listening to music is such a subjective experience. So I won’t linger too longer here other than to say that I was entirely satisfied with the audio quality and the richness of the sound produced.

Expansion
Adding speakers is super easy. Just plug the speakers in and turn them on: they should find the base station automatically. Each speaker has its own volume control, so you can set sound levels on a per-room basis. Unfortunately, this is an entirely manual process: you need to turn the knob for each speaker on the speaker. There’s no centralized volume control, a la the Sonos system.

The speakers sounded as good as the base station: no complaints on audio quality.

The wireless speakers are billed as an all-in-one design, such that you plug the whole thing into the wall. You can certainly do that, but I find them to be a little too big for that kind of use. The power plug can be removed from the speaker, allowing you a little more flexibility with placement. I found that to be a really handy feature, though the power cord was, in most cases, just a little too short to allow me to place the speakers where I wanted. Also, removing the power plug from the speaker is a somewhat daunting process. The instructions — and a sticker on the speaker itself — says to “press down hard”. They’re not kidding. You have to really exert some force to get the plug free. Also, the power plugs are gigantic wall warts. Don’t expect to share an outlet with any other device, regardless of whether you use the all-in-one design or remove the plug from the speaker.

GigaWave Technology
The secret sauce in the Eos system is the GigaWave technology:

To avoid interference, Eos™ GigaWave uses proprietary frequency hopping digital spectrum technology (FHDSS). The special communications algorithm used in our GigaWave technology will not interfere with WiFi networks or digital products like Bluetooth and cordless telephones. This same technology allows Eos to stay clear of interference cased by with by other products that communicate in the 2.4 GHz , 5.8 GHz and the new Dect 6.0 cordless telephone frequency range.

I didn’t notice any interference or static, despite the countless WiFi and Bluetooth devices I have on at any one time. The speakers inside the house all worked fine, and it was fun to rock out to music through my abode without having to make any single source obscenely loud.

The range is listed as 150 feet. I put a speaker in my garage, which is maybe 75 feet from where I had the base station. In the default configuration, the signal would drop out pretty frequently. There was no static, and no faded signal: either it played, or it didn’t. I then enabled the Range Extender feature, which was surprisingly well-explained in the user manual:

To maintain a solid, interference free link the Eos system incorporates an advanced proprietary error correction scheme. Error correction is done by creating a slight delay between the transmitter and Wireless Speaker. Using this delay, Eos can confirm that the audio packets arrived at the Wireless Speaker/receiver. If the audio packet is not received, the Eos base station can resent it. Eos’ default delay (Range Extender Off) is 20 ms.

Turning on the Range Extender Switch increases the delay to 64ms. The increased delay allows Eos to resend more audio packets due to distance from the transmitter or ambient interference.

The Range Extender feature didn’t make for a perfect transmission to my garage, but it did make it noticeably better. There were still brief outages in my music playback, but there were far less and they were far shorter than when the Range Extender was off.

Uses
The intended primary use for the Eos is clearly to play music from an iPod or iPhone. Alas, this device isn’t specifically for iPhones, so you get that annoying screen: “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone” and are then prompted to turn on Airplane mode. Even though the Eos system is WiFi-friendly, I was repeatedly unable to stream last.fm music to my iPhone while it was in the base station.

If you want to manage your music, you’ll either need to deal with the ergonomics of using an iPod in the dock, or use the remote control. And remember, there’s no volume control with an iPod. As the manual states, “iPod volume jog wheel changes the headphone volume only and has no effect on the Eos base station volume.” So you’ll need to manually adjust volume on a per-room basis.

Perhaps a better solution is to connect the Eos base station to your Apple TV, or that home media PC that stores all your music. If you’re using iTunes, you can use the iPhone Remote app to control the music and the master volume from your phone.

The Bottom Line
I’m not the kind of guy who regularly wants to listen to the same music in more than one room of my house. I usually want music in only one room, anyway. If you’re the kind of person who would like to listen to the same music in multiple rooms, then the Eos may be a good choice for you. Or, if you can’t (or won’t) run speaker wire through your walls, the Eos would be worth considering. The Eos plays extremely well with other wireless devices, so you ought not have anything to worry about.

The retail price for the Core system (base station + one speaker) is $249 USD. That strikes me as a little much. It looks like there’s a sale going on right now, though, making that Core bundle only $199. I’m still not sure that’s a good price, but hey, it’s $50 you get to keep.



Rock music is dead, and all the Rock Band in the world won’t save it

Posted by on Tuesday, 27 October, 2009

saverock

In the interest of bringing Ron and Fez’s fantastic radio show topics to a more tech-minded audience, I propose the following: games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, while fun and, generally speaking, “good,” will not save rock music. Rock and roll, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Bear with me for a minute, I’ll make this relevant to CrunchGear.

So the topic on today’s show was: U2—you may have heard of them—recently released a new album, but it didn’t sell too well. This created the discussion: is rock dead? Someone brought up the idea that kids today just aren’t buying music anymore, that they’re playing video games instead; you have but so many entertainment dollars to spend, right? But even if kids (and by kids I mean the 30 and under crowd, a completely arbitrary cutoff point) are going out and buying these games left and right, does that mean they’re experiencing music in a new way, as proponents of the idea that Guitar Hero will save the music business would have you believe, or are they just killing time?

To paraphrase Ron Bennington, if the only thing these kids are doing is playing Simon with Pearl Jam in the background, Pearl Jam might as well be the Pac-Man theme song. The kids aren’t paying attention to the music, aren’t getting “into it,” per se, but are merely following along with whatever random melody is playing in the background.

(Incidentally, a caller tried to blame the decline of rock music on Pearl Jam’s anti-everything antics back in the 1990s and 2000s, driving kids into hip hop’s flashy embrace. Kids want to look up to Rock Stars, and the lifestyle they live, and not necessarily people who, while armed with guitars, are generally against the whole rock “scene.” That’s partially why rapping about money, women, and cars caught fire in the 1990s: it filled a void that rock had left behind. I sure as hell would rather listen to Jay-Z than, say, The Strokes, who, if I recall correctly, were once promoted as the saviors of rock and roll.)

future
The future?

What new (and I do mean brand new, and not merely new to you) rock music have you heard in one of these games that made you think, “Hey, this band is pretty good. I’m gonna buy their album from iTunes and buy a t-shirt from their Web site.”? You may well be able to play along just fine with a Weezer or Peter Frampton song, and you’ll have a good time doing so, but in doing so you’re not exactly discovering Bruce Springsteen back when he was just a local Jersey act. You’re not discovering new music, but rather pressing a fisher price fret along with the melody to a classic rock song. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not going to save rock music, now is it?

And by save I just mean to make it popular again. I’d love to see a sales comparison between rock music and hip hop over the past 10 years. I bet it’s pretty one-sided.

Now these games are great for bands like The Beatles that are trying to introduce their catalog to millions of new eyeballs, but you’re not necessarily creating any new talent. It’s sorta like WWE in that sense: I stopped watching regularly back in high school (2004ish), but I turn on Raw or Smackdown today and the very same guys are who were main-eventing then (Triple H, Undertaker, John Cena, etc) are main-eventing now; no new stars have been created in the past five years. That’s not good!

So yeah, sorta rambling, but you get my point: Rock Band & Co. may be great for the record labels looking to make a extra few dollars on licensing deals, and may be great for old bands looking to introduce new fans to their music, but you’re crazy if you think these games will make rock music the music of this generation’s young people; hip has already won that battle. No new rock talent is being cultivated with these games, and the relationship between the actual music and the player isn’t genuine: you’re playing a video game with your friends as part of an event or fun social gathering, and aren’t carefully digesting the melodies and lyrics of “Gouge Away” for the sake of the music itself.

That is all.

Flickr and Flickr