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In springtime, people's fancies may turn to love, but their to-do list turns to cleaning. Make this the year that you finally recycle all the ancient MP3 players, toner cartridges, ethernet cables, and bulky monitors out of the closets, garages, and spare rooms where they've been lurking. Your home will feel more modern, and you'll be doing your part to boost the 27 percent electronics recycling rate. Just in time for another spring constant, Earth Day. Before you get rid of any of your electronics The first step on your recycling journey: Make sure that none of your personal data will be leaving the house along with your soon-to-be-discarded electronics. If you're using Apple's iTunes to manage your digital music and video, be sure you deauthorize any device you're recycling. "But that computer is dead" is no excuse: Apple expects you to simply deauthorize all your devices via the iTunes app, then reauthorize the ones that are still alive If you're recycling a smartphone, do a complete reset of your phone to wipe out its data and restore it to its factory settings. Before you do this, however, make sure that you've got your data backed up someplace else If you're recycling a computer or a hard drive, don't just assume that deleting files will wipe the data off your system, because it won't. All it does is reformat the space on the drive, and the data can be snagged using tools designed for disaster recovery. Now, on to recycling Broadly speaking, you have three recycling options: You can drop off your unwanted stuff in person somewhere; you can ship it away; or you can donate it to a willing organization. Drop it off in person. The advantage to dropping off your gear is that you don't need to really plan ahead and print out prepaid labels (as you would if you were shipping things away); you just toss your stuff in the car and go Another option that's cropping up across the U.S. is the electronics recyc

While it becomes impossible to live without your iPhone 4S, you must be a bit worried about the habit of the gadget eating up all the battery at inopportune times.there are still some vital tips and tricks you can follow to improve your Smartphones battery life. Low Down The Screen Brightness Just as it goes for your laptop devices, you need to lower down the brightness of your iPhone screen, which will enhance the battery life. Adjust the screen brightness under the Settings tab. Make Use of Wi-Fi When You Can Instead of making Voice calls, downloading apps or browsing the Web over your iPhone 3G or cellular connection, it is recommended to always find a Wifi hotspot or make use of your home network. This will help you keep away not only from data charges but also will aid you have a better battery life as your device will not be searching for the data signals. Remember, if you are in an area where there is no Wi-Fi hotspot, it is better to turn off the search and it will help save the battery life of your iPhone 4S. Do Not Use The GPS Tracking Feature If you are using apps that support the feature of Automatic GPS tagging and location such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, your iPhone is working overtime to determine your location. If you do not want to be Geo-tag your updates and posts, must keep the GPS function off. Do Not Use The 'Fetch' & 'Push' feature If you have your iPhone 4S set to 'fetch' the data after every 30 minutes time along with numerous apps to push new alerts and messages as they happen, then you need to turn off this feature on your device. This feature is going to drain your battery. Only use the facility when you really need it otherwise keep it off. Keep Your Notifications In Check To enhance your iPhone 4S battery time, you need to limit your app notifications to just the apps you make use of more often. This actually means that you have to say 'no' to the requests for all kinds of notifications you ge

"iPhone 5 Called ""Gadget off the Year"" by Time Magazine, Apple's iPhone 5 (from $199 on 2-year AT&T, Sprint or Verizon plan) is a serious piece of hardware. Along with its powerful new A6 chip, iPhone 5 works on 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks for wireless speeds that rivals your home's broadband connection. iPhone 5 also has improved cameras: an eight-megapixel iSight rear-facing camera (3264 x 2448 pixels) and front-facing FaceTime camera with 720p HD quality for video calling. Samsung Galaxy S III The Samsung Galaxy S III (from $149 on 2-year plan with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon) is a true smartphone in every sense of the word -- and we're not even referring to its stunning 4.8-inch display, fast LTE speeds or versatile Android operating system. the Galaxy S III's front-facing camera knows when you're looking at the screen, so it'll give you the bright display you seek, but if your eyes look away it'll dim itself to preserve its battery. It also knows when you want to talk: if you're messaging with someone and want to call them, simply lift the smartphone to your ear and it'll dial for you. Nokia Lumia 920 As the flagship Windows Phone 8 device, Nokia's Lumia 920 (from $99.99 on 2-year AT&T plan), has a lot to offer, including a colorful Start screen with ""live tiles""; familiar Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote; and a People hub that aggregates all your contacts into one page per person (so you don't need to close, say Outlook, to see what that friend is up to on Facebook or Twitter). HTC Droid DNA and HTC One X+ A pair of Android-powered HTC devices are also worthy of ""best of 2012"" nods: the HTC Droid DNA ($149.99 on 2-year Verizon Wireless plan) and HTC One X+ ($199.99 on 2-year AT&T plan). Protected by Corning's uber-durable Gorilla Glass 2 technology, the Droid DNA's 5-inch 1080p HD screen was built for video, games, ebooks and web browsing. Integrated Beats Audio - an

Last week Doug Peterson pointed me to an article called "Let's not call it computer science if we really mean computer programming." My initial reaction was "Let's not call it computer programming if we really mean software engineering."  Really the author was talking more about the difference between CS and SE than much else.The ACM has a great Computing Careers web site which lists a number of computing fields and degrees. I recommend this series to teachers and guidance councilors all the time. They list five different degree paths:

Last week Doug Peterson pointed me to an article called "Let's not call it computer science if we really mean computer programming." My initial reaction was "Let's not call it computer programming if we really mean software engineering."  Really the author was talking more about the difference between CS and SE than much else.The ACM has a great Computing Careers web site which lists a number of computing fields and degrees. I recommend this series to teachers and guidance councilors all the time. They list five different degree paths:

Why it's a good idea to own a USB-to-SATA adapter The USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter the most indispensable tool in my PC repair kit. Just this weekend, it once again proved itself worthy of that title. In a nutshell, the adapter allows you to connect an internal hard drive to your PC-externally. What would an internal drive be doing outside your desktop or laptop? Funny you should ask. About a week ago, my media-center PC starting displaying this message during boot-up: "Hard drive failure imminent." And you know what? It was. In short order, the machine wouldn't boot at all. Long story short, I had to replace the drive, reinstall Windows, etc. But I wondered if I could salvage any/all of my recorded TV shows. To find out, I connected the old, non-booting drive (now "naked" outside the system) to a USB port via my adapter. Huzzah! The machine was able to read the drive and copy over the recordings. Except for the hassles (and expense) of actually replacing the drive, no harm done. There's another reason to keep one of these adapters on hand, and that's if you're planning to upgrade to a solid-state drive (SSD). Unless you buy a kit that comes with an adapter, you'll need one so you can image (i.e. clone) your existing drive to the new SSD. Then you'll remove the old drive, install the new one, and presto, you're back in business. (Much faster business: SSDs rock.) Unless you have a pretty old desktop or laptop, you can skip buying a USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter and just go for USB-to-SATA. At the same time, I recommend one that supports USB 3.0. You may not need it now, but it's a good bet your next PC will have USB 3.0 ports -- and that'll make for much faster copying between drives. Trust me: When the time comes that you need to upgrade or replace a hard drive, you'll be glad to have a USB-to-SATA adapter on hand. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com

In days gone by, all you needed to make a website was a Geocities account and some basic knowledge of HTML. Maybe you'd throw in a bit of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) if you wanted to get fancy. Times have changed, though, and now people build websites using at least one advanced coding language. Programming is a noble pursuit, but if you want to build apps and services for the Web, you need to learn one of these popular languages

Are you teaching Advanced Placement Computer Science? Are you looking for supplemental exercises that may help you students with the concepts? If so this announcement may be of interest to you. Pex for Fun has been around for a while offering coding duels in C#, F# and Visual Basic. Recently though it was decided to invest some time, money and effort to adapt some exercises specifically to help learn APCS concepts. Most students find the differences between Java and C# pretty minor at this level so most APCS students will find this doable even if they have only been taught Java previously.

Learning to code is one of the most powerful and satisfying things you can ever do. If you're a designer, learning to code can help you understand what you're creating for, and if you're looking to build a startup from scratch, being a technical founder can make things exponentially easier for you.

App Inventor runs through a Web browser. If you're using a phone, you work with the phone connected to your computer by a USB cord. Your app will emerge on the phone bit by bit as you work. If you don't have a phone, there's a phone emulator included with the App Inventor setup package that you can use instead. When you're done building, you can "package" your finished app to produce an "application package" (Android apk file) that can be shared around and installed on any Android phone, just like any other Android app.

If you're setting up a worksheet only for yourself, you can simply leave an empty cell for this purpose. To check it, just type in an x or any other character. Then use a formula with the =isblank() function to make the contents of that cell affect the rest of the spreadsheet. But you might want something more mouse-friendly--especially if you're designing a spreadsheet for other people. I've tested the technique below on Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013. I'm not sure about earlier versions. You can insert checkboxes on Excel's Developer tab. Unfortunately, that tab is hidden by default. To make it visible in Excel 2010 or 2013, click the File tab and select Options. ClickCustomize Ribbon. You'll see two lists. Make sure that the one on the right is titled Main Tabs. Check Developer.

A geek is one who isn't satisfied knowing only the surface facts, but instead has a visceral desire to learn everything possible about a particular subject. A techie geek is usually one who knows a little about everything, and is thus the person family and friends turn to whenever they have a question. If you're that type of person and are looking for a few extra skills to pick up, or if you're a newbie aiming to get a handhold on the honor that is geekhood, read on to find out what skills you need to know.

There's nothing you can do if hackers get into a database with your password in it, but you can still protect yourself for all the other worst-case scenarios involving hacking. First, don't make it easy on hackers by choosing a common password. Splashdata uses security breaches to gather 'most popular passwords' lists each year. The word 'password', number sequences, and other simplistic phrases or numbers fill the top spots. Also, don't use your name, a password related to another one you might have on a different site, or a login name. Instead, experts recommend using 15 characters, upper-case letters, better yet nonsensical words with special characters and numbers inside them. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com

Here's one of those sad facts of life that you just can't avoid: Like cars, clothing, and people, batteries wear out. You can't stop this process, but with proper care you can slow it down. What wears down a battery? Charging and discharging. Obviously, you can't avoid either of those acts entirely (although if you could, you wouldn't have to worry about wearing out your battery). The trick, of course, is to do as little charging and discharging as possible. And one way to avoid charging and discharging is to remove the battery when you don't need it. Ideally, you would remove the battery (with the laptop shut down, of course) before plugging in the AC adapter and working at your desk. Then, before you take your PC on the road, you would shut it down, insert the battery, and let it charge for a few hours. In reality, that's not always practical. Shutting down and rebooting your PC every time you go from portable to deskbound quickly becomes a nuisance. Worse, you have to remember to recharge before leaving home. A more practical solution would be to shut down the laptop and remove the battery when you expect it will stay plugged in for a week or more. And don't intentionally discharge the battery before removing it. After all, the whole point is to charge and recharge as little as possible. Some of the charge will be lost while the battery sits unused, so it's still a good idea to recharge it before taking it on the road--even though that requires some planning ahead of time. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=140300136155835&set=o.172245722918618&type=1&theater

Xbox owns your TV Voice commands will be a big part of interacting with the One. While we can assume youll still be able to navigate via your controller or Smart Glass app, Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft's senior vice president of interactive entertainment, demonstrated how to navigate the One using voice commands and gesture control with the updated Kinect sensor. Xbox One Users can instantly activate the One by uttering "Xbox On." The Xbox will be able to differentiate the user's voice and automatically remember where that particular user last left off in the dashboard. One of the most impressive features demonstrated Tuesday was Xbox One's Instant Switching, which moves between functions with little latency. Like the current Xbox Kinect, users can switch between functions with voice commands such as "Xbox go to music" and "Xbox go to game," but the One is able to do it with the ease of switching between television channels. One of the biggest additions is the introduction of live television streams into the Xbox experience. Users can instantly switch to live TV via a prompt of "Xbox Live TV." The One even features a TV Guide-like "Xbox One Guide," which shows what television is available right now alongside on-demand content. Additionally, users will be able to organize media content by "favorites" as well as by what content is currently trending in popularity. Borrowing a trick from Windows 8, the One's new Snap Mode will allow users to multitask between different apps and functions on the same screen. For example, if youre watching a live sporting event, you can prompt the One to access your updated fantasy league stats or search the Web for using Explorer-all in one screen. One will also offer Skype integration and allow users to video chat using the network directly through the Kinect sensor. In effect, Xbox will make any TV it is attached to a smart TV-smarter and more functional than almost any TV we've see

"Your wallet and your phone are probably the two items you carry around with you the most. What if you can combine the two together and carry just one item? Now you can with the new Q Card Case for the iPhone 5 by CM4. The Q Card Case is a 2-in-1 device that functions both as a protective casing for your iPhone5 as well as a wallet. It has space to comfortably fit 3 credit card sized cards plus cash. The case is made from a special patent pending soft-touch rubber and premium fabric. It also has a cut out slots for quick access to the cards as well for accessing all the buttons on your iPhone. It even has a big cut out at the bottom of the case to allow for in-case charging as well as fully compatible with Apple's Lightning port to 30-pin port adapter. The Q Card Case is available in 4 colors - Black Onyx, Mahogany Brown, Pacific Green and Red Rouge." By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/techvedicinc https://twitter.com/techvedicinc http://pinterest.com/techvedic1 http://techvedicinc.tumblr.com/ https://plus.google.com/u/0/110467075169904075419/

"Looking for a pair of wireless headphones to complement your super tight jeans? JayBird's SB2 Sportsband headphones should serve as the perfect tech-cessory for your 80′s inspired hipster wardrobe thanks to their wide headband and small collection of colors ranging from subtle to almost neon. But what's that you say? You embrace the 80′s except when it comes to technology? Well you'll be happy to know that in addition to Bluetooth A2DP support, the headphones also support the newer apt-X Bluetooth audio codec, which is apparently included in Apple's new Mac Mini. However, if you wanted to take advantage of its CD-quality wireless sound with other gear like the iPhone. The iSport (pictured above) which is compatible with the iPhone and other iDevices, or the uSport which connects to the headphone jack of pretty much any other audio source. like with most Bluetooth headphones they include buttons on the side for controlling your music, as well as an integrated mic for making calls." By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/techvedicinc https://twitter.com/techvedicinc http://pinterest.com/techvedic1 http://techvedicinc.tumblr.com/ https://plus.google.com/u/0/110467075169904075419/

"Handset makers and wireless carriers love to load up Google's Android platform with custom overlays, user interface tweaks, and third-party programs that don't ship natively with the open source operating system. That's great for them, but most power users would prefer a clean version of Android to work with, which is why the third-party ROM community is popular. Well, following in the footsteps of Samsung and it's custom S4 that was announced at Google I/O, HTC is reportedly kicking around the idea of offering a Google Edition of its One smartphone. News of the custom HTC One comes from Russell Holly over at Geek.com. Citing un-named sources, Holly says the Google Edition device would be offered in the U.S. first, though it's unclear if it would be carried in the Play Store like the Galaxy S4 will be. Other details are equally light and vague, though Holly claims an official announcement could come within the next two weeks, with a release likely planned for sometime this summer." By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/techvedicinc https://twitter.com/techvedicinc http://pinterest.com/techvedic1 http://techvedicinc.tumblr.com/ https://plus.google.com/u/0/110467075169904075419/

How about a wristband that glows when you get a text message or a phone call on your smartphone? EMBRACE+ is the new gadget in the market that will glow in various colors on your wrist. The wristband will be a wearable gadget made for your smart phone and will display specific colors to indicate depending on what kind of notification you have received on your phone. You do not have to even take the phone out of the pocket. As soon as you get the notification, the wristband will give a visual notification in a specific color and will let you differentiate between a tweet and text message. The wristband connects to your smartphone using Wi-Fi connection.The EMBRACE+ wristband features will includes indications for incoming calls, text messages, new emails, notifications from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and will even give you low battery levels indications. It will have a special feature that will help secure your phone. It will give notification if the smartphone goes far away from the wristband. The release date of the EMBASE+ wristband is July 2013. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/techvedicinc https://twitter.com/techvedicinc http://pinterest.com/techvedic1 http://techvedicinc.tumblr.com/