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7 Skype Tips for Power Users

Now that Skype has been merged with Windows Live Messenger, it's more popular than ever. There's no way to use Skype with a third-party client, but Skype does offer hidden features that can make it more powerful.

These are a few useful Skype tricks you won't find unless you go off the beaten path, offering ways to sign into multiple Skype accounts, use IRC-style chat commands, record Skype calls, and even disable some of Skype's built-in advertising.

Sign Into Multiple Skype Accounts

Unlike some messaging programs, Skype doesn't allow you to easily log into multiple accounts. Try to launch the Skype shortcut once you've already opened Skype and it will just bring your already-open Skype window to the front. But you may have multiple Skype accounts — perhaps you have one for work and one for personal use.

Rather than open Skype as another Windows user account, Skype has a hidden option you can use to open a new Skype instance.

To do this, press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog. In the Run dialog, enter the following command if you're using a 32-bit version of Windows:

"C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe" /secondary

On 64-bit versions of Windows, enter the following command instead:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe" /secondary

Skype will open a second Skype window, which you can log into as another Skype account. If you wanted to use this frequently, you could create a new Windows shortcut that opened Skype with the /secondary switch.

Disable Contact List Advertisements

Skype will always show advertisements in its home pane, but it also shows advertisements at the bottom of your contact list by default. You can click the X button to close these advertisements whenever they appear, but they'll just keep coming back. But there's a better way — you can disable them permanently if you know where to look.

To disable the contact-list advertisements, or "promotions," open Skype's Options window, navigate to Notifications -> Alerts & messages, and uncheck the Promotions checkbox.

Edit or Delete Sent Messages

This feature also isn't immediately obvious if you're used to other chat programs. If you make a mistake when typing a message or send a message you didn't mean to, you can edit or delete a sent message later.

To do so, just right-click a message you've already sent and select Edit Message or Remove Message. When you edit a message, Skype will note that the message was edited — and if you delete a message, Skype will display "This message has been removed."

Of course, if your recipient already saw the original message you sent, there's no way to edit it out of their mind.

Record Skype Calls

Skype doesn't include a built-in call recording feature, but you may find yourself wanting to record a call at some point. Perhaps you're interviewing someone remotely and you want to create a record of the interview that you can refer to later, perhaps you're recording a podcast, or perhaps you're having a business discussion and want a record of any agreements you make. There are plenty of good reasons you may want to record a call — aside from the obvious creepy ones.

As Skype doesn't include a built-in call-recording feature, you'll need to use a third-party application that will do the recording for you. There are several options out there — in the past, MP3 Skype Recorder was recommended to us by a reader and we found that it worked well.

Use Screen Sharing

Skype's screen-sharing feature allows you to share your desktop with a Skype contact. You can use this feature to quickly troubleshoot someone's PC without making them install additional remote access software. Or, you can us this feature to give a presentation and or show anything else remotely. You could also choose to share a single window instead of your entire desktop, giving yourself some privacy.

While on a Skype call, just click the + button and select Share screens. You could also just click the + button and select Share screens to initiate screen-sharing while not already on a call.

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Bear in mind that, unlike traditional remote-access software, there's no way to give someone else control over your screen. You'd have to walk the other person through any changes you make to their computer if you were acting as remote tech support via Skype screen-sharing.

Master Text-Based Chat Commands

If you're a geek, there's a good chance you've used IRC before. IRC offers a wide variety of chat features that are available as text-based commands, and Skype offers many comparable features.

In a Skype chat room, you can use the /add command to add a Skype user to the chat, use the /topic command to set a topic for that chat room, use the /setpassword command to set a password for that chat room, use the /setrole command to assign permissions to users in the chat, use the /kick command to kick a user from the chat, or use the /kickban command to kick a user and ban them from rejoining.

These are just a few of the chat commands Skype offers — check the What are chat commands and roles? page on the Skype website for a comprehensive list. You could also just use the /help command from within Skype to access a list of chat commands, although you'll only see the full list if you're in a chat room with more than two people.

Easily Send a File to Multiple People

While you're in a Skype chat with multiple people, you can easily send a file to them all by dragging and dropping the file into the chat room or conference call. Skype will give a copy of the file to everyone, allowing you to quickly share files without the hassle of sending them as an email attachment, sharing them via Dropbox, or even using Skype's Send File feature to send it to them one at a time.

You could also create a group in your contacts, and then right-click the group and select Send File to send a file to every contact in that group at once. It's an easy way to distribute files to several people at once.

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Skype may have become popular because it offered dead-simple voice and video calls over the Internet that "Just Worked" without any firewall configuration, but it's more than a basic program. It offers quite a few power-user features that geeks will appreciate.

via [howtogeek]

Free Antivirus For 6 Months From Facebook

Facebook is concerned with the security of its users and wants to make their experience on Facebook more secure. To achieve this Facebook is providing license for 6 months for 5 major antivirus applications. A user can select any one antivirus from McAfee Antivirus for 6 months, Norton Antivirus for 6 months, Trend Micro Internet Security for 6 months, Microsoft Security Essential (It's free), and Sophos Antivirus for Mac.

 

 

 

 

Just go to Facebook's Antivirus Marketplace Page and choose your antivirus and get it free for 6 months. After the 6 month's period create a new Facebook I

Read more: http://mstoic.com/free-antivirus-for-6-months-from-facebook/#ixzz2gruE6IVq
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How to Increase Your Windows Laptop’s Battery Life

How to Increase Your Windows Laptop's Battery Life

We often fixate on smartphone battery life, but most laptops still don't have all-day battery life. Rather than always using your laptop tethered to an outlet, here are some ways to squeeze more life from your laptop's battery.

None of these tricks will turn a laptop without much stamina into an all-day workhorse, but they'll help you go without an outlet for longer. Pay particular attention to your laptop's display — that's the big battery sucker.

Reduce Screen Brightness

The biggest battery drain on any modern portable electronic device — whether it's a laptop, smartphone, or tablet — is the display. Reducing your screen's brightness is a simple way to squeeze significantly more time from your laptop's battery.

On a typical laptop, you generally hold the Function (Fn) key and press the brightness buttons on your laptop keyboard. The lower the brightness level, the longer you can use your laptop on battery power.

You can also use the Windows Mobility Center to quickly adjust screen brightness. Open it by pressing Windows Key + X on Windows 7. On Windows 8, you can launch it from the Control Panel — Windows Key + X opens the power user menu instead.

Have Your Display Automatically Turn Off

If you step away from your laptop for a few minutes, its screen will still be on, draining power. You can set more aggressive display power settings to have the laptop dim and turn off the display when you're not using it.

Open the Power Options dialog in the Control Panel and set your display to dim and turn off after a short period of time. You can move your mouse or press any key to turn the display right back on with no delay, so this is an easy way to save power — as long as the display doesn't turn off while you're using the laptop, this shouldn't bother you too much. Media players set the display to automatically stay on while they're running, ensuring you can still watch a video without constantly having to move your mouse or changing your power settings.

Disable Bluetooth and Other Hardware Devices

Your laptop likely has a Bluetooth radio and may even have an infrared (IR) port. All of these devices use battery power simply by being enabled and powered on. You can save battery power by disabling them when you aren't using them. To disable Bluetooth, you can often press the Function (Fn) key and press the key with the Bluetooth symbol on your laptop.

Disabling Wi-Fi can also help if you aren't using it. For example, if you're using your laptop on an airplane and not taking advantage of in-flight Wi-Fi, turn off your laptop's Wi-Fi to save some power. Wi-Fi can be turned off in a similar way using the function keys on your laptop or even by disabling the Wi-Fi adapter in the Control Panel's network connections window.

Tweak Your Power Plan

Windows offers power plans that can quickly change your laptop's power settings to different profiles. For example, you can have your computer in Balanced mode most of the time and switch to Power saver mode when you need every bit of power you can get. Each power plan's settings can be modified individually. You'll find power plans in the Control Panel's Power Options window.

To modify advanced power options, click the Change plan settings link and select Change advanced power settings.

You can change a variety of settings here, including setting your laptop to power off its hard drive more quickly and telling your computer to slow down the processor rather than turning on the fan if it becomes hot. Both of these behaviors will save power. The default settings should be fairly optimal if you select Power saver mode, but you can make the settings even more aggressive in some areas.

Use the Windows Power Troubleshooter

Windows 7 and 8 include a power troubleshooting tool that will scan your system for common battery drains automatically fix them. To load this tool, open the Troubleshooting pane in the Control Panel — perform a search for Troubleshooting to find it.

Select the View All option in the Troubleshooting pane and launch the Power troubleshooter.

Windows will look for common issues and automatically fix them. This is a quick way to check if a laptop's settings are optimal without digging through many different options dialogs.

Slim Down Startup Programs, Use Lighter Software

To save power, make your computer do less in general:

• Don't use a screensaver. They're unnecessary on modern displays and will drain your battery to do nothing useful when your display could be off and saving power.
• Run less programs in the background. Examine your system tray for programs you don't need and uninstall them or disable them and prevent them from automatically starting with your computer.
• Reduce CPU usage. If you use heavy programs that have your CPU doing a lot of work all of the time, your CPU will use more power and your battery will drain faster. Running less programs in the background can help with this, as can selecting lightweight programs that are easy on system resources.
• Avoid maxing out your RAM. If your computer fills its RAM and needs more memory, it will move data to the page file on its hard drive and this hard drive usage can drain battery. This shouldn't be a problem on modern computers with a decent amount of RAM. If your laptop's RAM is full, try to make more RAM available — close programs running in the backgrounds or even upgrade your laptop's RAM.

The less your computer has to do, the more power it can save. You can find more information about CPU and RAM usage in your Task Manager.

Hibernate Instead of Sleep

When your laptop goes to sleep, it uses a small amount of power to power its RAM and keep its system state loaded in memory, allowing it to wake up and resume in just a few seconds. When your laptop hibernates, it saves its system state to disk and powers off, using almost no power.

If you're not going to be using your laptop for a few hours, place it into hibernate mode rather than sleep mode to conserve even more battery power. Sleep mode doesn't use a lot of battery power, but hibernate uses as much as having the computer powered off.

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If you've had your laptop for a while and the battery is holding less power than it used to — but you're not ready to upgrade to a new laptop just yet — you can try replacing your laptop's battery with a new one for even longer battery life.

[via howtogeek]

Scan to PDF using your smartphone.

The Power to eliminate clutter far beyond any ScanSnap before it! The iX500 is the next generation of desktop scanner. Its dual-core, CPU-mounted "GI" processor enables it to perform intelligent image functions dramatically faster. And with a Wi-Fi connection, you can now scan directly to an iOS or Android mobile device without even turning on your computer. Watch video See everything the ScanSnap iX500 has to offer, visit http://us.fujitsu.com/scansnap/ Regards Nafees khan www.techshare.tk

How to Enable Pin Sign-in For Domain Users on Windows 8

Domain users are not allowed to sign in with a Pin by default. However, using a little bit of GPO, we can change that.

How to Enable Pin Sign On For Domain Users on Windows 8

Press the Win + R keyboard combination to open a run box then type "gpedit.msc" and press enter.

When the Group Policy editor opens, navigate to:

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon

On the right hand side, double click on the "Turn on PIN sign-in" setting.

Now switch the radio button from Not Configured to Enabled, then click Apply.

Once the setting has been activated, you need to refresh your current Group Policy settings. To do that, open a run box using the Win + R keyboard combo and type the following, then press enter.

gpupdate /force

Of course, this will only be useful in a domain environment, in which case you could assign this group policy setting to an OU in Active Directory. That's all there is to it.

How to Make a Bootable OS X Mavericks (10.9) USB Install Drive

Just like other recent major Mac updates, OS X Mavericks arrives as an app that wants to update the current OS X installation, and with a little work you can make a bootable USB installation drive. This allows you to easily perform partitioning for dual boot situations, clean installs, upgrades on multiple Macs, and more, plus it's just really convenient to have for troubleshooting and simple future installations, without having to re-download OS X 10.9 every time you want to install it or perform an upgrade.

But unlike before with creating prior version OS X boot install drives, the process is slightly different with Mavericks and requires an additional set of steps to make the installer actually function as a a bootable installer disk. It's not too complicated, just a bit more time consuming.

Before beginning, make sure the Mac you want to install Mavericks on meets the system requirements for 10.9. You will need OS X Mavericks (obviously), and an 8GB (or larger) USB drive that you don't mind formatting, we're using a USB thumb drive for the purpose of this walkthrough but an external hard drive should work as well.

Create a Bootable OS X 10.9 Mavericks Installer

• Download OS X Mavericks (get Developer Preview from Apple, devs only for now) but do not install it yet
• Attach the USB drive to the Mac and launch Disk Utility
• Choose the USB drive from the left side menu, click the "Partition" tab, select "1 Partition" from the drop down menu, and then click the "Options" button to select "GUID" as the partition type, click "OK" then click "Apply"
• Launch Terminal to show hidden files and relaunch the Finder using this defaults command string:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE;\killall Finder;\say Files Revealed

• Go to the /Applications/ folder to locate the "Install OS X 10.9 Developer Preview.app" file
• Right-click and choose "Show Package Contents", then open "Contents" and open "SharedSupport"



• Double-click to mount "InstallESD.dmg"
• Open the mounted 'OS X Install ESD' image, and right-click "BaseSystem.dmg" choosing "Open" to mount the image (BaseSystem.dmg is invisible by default, thus why invisible files must be made visible in the earlier step)



• Go back to Disk Utility, then select "BaseSystem.dmg" from the sidebar and then click the "Restore" tab
• With "Source" set to "BaseSystem.dmg", set "Destination" to the USB drive by dragging the USB drive into the box, then click "Restore" to begin – confirm that contents of the drive will be erased



• When finished, go to Finder and navigate within the newly created USB drive to System > Installation > and delete the file (alias) located here named "Packages" – keep this window open



• Go back to the 'OS X Install ESD' mounted drive, and drag & drop the "Packages" folder into the /System/Installation/ directory you just deleted the Packages alias from, let this large folder copy

Once that Packages folder is finished copying to the drive, the USB drive is now ready to be booted from which it can install OS X Mavericks from.

Booting from OS X Mavericks Install Drive

• With the USB drive attached, reboot the Mac and hold down the Option key
• Select the orange drive, labeled "OS X Base System 1″ from the boot menu
• Proceed with the installation as usual