Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Set a New Windows Explorer Launch Folder
Set a New Windows Explorer Launch Folder
When you run Windows Explorer, it always opens to the Libraries folder. That's fine if you use Microsoft's default file organization, which designates Libraries as the overall container for your folders. But what if you don't? You might prefer to have Windows Explorer open to Computer or any other folder you choose. Here's how to do it:
1. Right-click the Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar (it's the one that looks like a folder), and then right-click the Windows Explorer icon from the context menu that appears and select Properties. The Windows Explorer Properties dialog box appears.
2. You'll have to edit the Target field on the Shortcut tab of this dialog box in order to change the default location at which Explorer opens.
If you want Explorer to open to a specific folder, simply enter the name of the folder, substituting your folder name for Folder, below, like this:
%windir%\explorer.exe c:\Folder
So to open Explorer to the folder named Budget, you would type this in the Target field:
%windir%\explorer.exe c:\Budget
If you want Explorer to open to special, pre-set locations, such as Computer, you'll need to enter special syntax in the Target field. Following is a list of three common locations and the syntax to use, followed by the syntax for the Libraries folder in case you ever want to revert to the default.
- Computer:
%windir%\explorer.exe ::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} - My Documents:
%windir%\explorer.exe ::{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103} - Network:
%windir%\explorer.exe ::{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D} - Libraries:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe
3. After you've changed the Target field, click OK. Next time you launch Windows Explorer, it will open to the new location you've designated.
Windows Explorer tips
Windows Explorer tips
Windows Explorer is the heart and soul of the Windows interface, and overall it works quite well. But you can make it better.
Add a Videos Link to the Start Menu
Add a Videos Link to the Start Menu
The Windows 7 Start Menu includes links to your Pictures and Music folders, but not to your Videos folder. If you watch a lot of videos and want a link to them on your Start Menu, here's what you can do:
1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.
2. On the screen that appears, go to the Start Menu tab and click Customize.
3. In the dialog box that appears, scroll to the bottom, look for the Videos section, select "Display as a link," and click OK and then OK again.
If you'd prefer that Videos display as a menu, with links to files and submenus, instead select "Display as a menu."
Customize the Shut Down Button
Customize the Shut Down Button
The default action of the Start Menu's Shut down button is to turn off your PC. If you want to use the button for another action, such as restarting your PC, you click the arrow to the right of the Shut down button and select an action from the drop-down menu.
What if you rarely shut your PC down completely but frequently restart it? You can change the Shut down button's default action to be Restart -- or Switch user, Log off, Lock, Sleep or Hibernate.
To change your default, right-click the Start button and select Properties. On the Start Menu tab, click the "Power button action" drop-down menu and select which action you want to be the default. Then click OK, and OK again.
Start Menu tips
Start Menu tips
Many people overlook the Start Menu, rarely using it except as a jumping off point to run an application or get to the Control Panel. But there's actually plenty you can do with it.
Get a Power Efficiency Report
Get a Power Efficiency Report
Have a laptop and want to get more battery life out of it? Windows 7 includes a hidden built-in tool that will examine your laptop's energy use and make recommendations on how to improve it. To use it:
1. Run a command prompt as an administrator. To do this, type
cmd in the search box, and when the cmd icon appears, right-click it and choose "Run as administrator."
2. At the command line, type in the following:
powercfg -energy -output \Folder\Energy_Report.html
where \Folder represents the folder where you want the report to be placed.
3. For about a minute, Windows 7 will examine the behavior of your laptop. It will then analyze it and create a report in HTML format in the folder you specified. Double-click the file, and you'll get a report -- follow its recommendations for ways to improve power performance.
Shake Your Desktop Free of Clutter
Shake Your Desktop Free of Clutter
If you frequently run multiple programs simultaneously, your desktop can get extremely cluttered. This can get annoying if you're working on one program and want to minimize all the other windows -- in previous versions of Windows you had to minimize them individually.
With Windows 7's "shake" feature, though, you can minimize every window except the one in which you're currently working -- in a single step. Click and hold the title bar of the window you want to keep on the desktop; while still holding the title bar, shake it quickly back and forth until all of the other windows minimize to the taskbar. Then let go. To make them return, shake the title bar again.
You can accomplish the same thing by pressing the Window key-Home key combination -- although doing that is not nearly as much fun.
Use Hidden International Wallpapers and Themes
Use Hidden International Wallpapers and Themes
When you first install Windows 7, it asks for your language, time and currency. Based on your responses, it installs a set of wallpapers and themes. If you choose English (United States) for your time and currency format, for example, the available desktop backgrounds and themes will include a United States section with scenery from locations such as Maine, the Southwest and so on.
Hidden, though, are background scenery and themes from other English-speaking countries -- Australia, Canada, Great Britain and South Africa. Normally, you can't access those backgrounds or themes, but there is a simple way you can install and use them:
1. In the search box in the Start menu, type
C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and press Enter. (Note: If Windows 7 is installed in a drive other than C:, use that letter instead.)
2. Windows Explorer will launch and show you a list of subfolders under
C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT: MCT-AU, MCT-CA, MCT-GB, MCT-US, and MCT-ZA. Each subfolder has wallpapers for a specific country: AU for Australia, CA for Canada, GB for Great Britain, US for the United States, and ZA for South Africa.
For any of the countries whose wallpaper and themes you want to use, go into its Theme folder, for example,
C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT\MCT-ZA\Theme. Double-click the theme you see there (for example ZA).
3. That will install a shortcut to the theme and wallpapers in the Personalization section of Control Panel.
You can now use them as you would any other theme or background, by right-clicking the desktop, choosing Personalize, and choosing a background or theme. They will be listed in their own section.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Picturing Your Photos on the iPod
Featured Article
Picturing Your Photos on the iPod
iPod Missing Manual coverNote: this article is taken from
iPod: The Missing Manual, Fifth Edition by Jude Biersdorfer ISBN: 0-596-52978-3
Copyright 2006 Jude Biersdorfer. All rights reserved. Used with permission from
the publisher, O'Reilly Media
The picture-perfect fun doesn't stop there, either. Both the
regular iPod and the Nano can also display your photos in mini-slideshow form,
right in the palm of your hand. And if you have the full-sized iPod, you can
plug it into the television set with a special AV cable and fire up those
slideshows on the living-room screen. This chapter shows you how to do
everything except microwave the popcorn for the big show.
What You Need to Put Photos on Your iPod
In addition to a computer loaded with iTunes and an iPod
with a color screen, you need a few other things to move pictures to 'Pod:
● Compatible
photo-organizing software for the Mac or Windows-or a folder of photos on your
hard drive. The iPod and Nano can sync with several popular photo programs that
you may already have. On the Mac, there's iPhoto 4.0.3 or later. Windows mavens
can grab pictures from Adobe Photoshop Album or the more versatile Adobe
Photoshop Elements. You can also transfer pictures from a folder of photos on
your computer, like the iPhoto Library folder for those who are a few iPhoto
versions behind, or My Pictures on the Windows side of the fence.
● Digital photographs in the proper format.
Most of the common photo formats used by digital cameras, Web pages, and email
programs are acceptable to iTunes, along with a few others. On the Mac, you can
use JPG and GIF files, as well as images in the PICT, TIFF, BMP, PNG, JPG2000,
SGI, and PSD formats. In Windows, JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, PSD, SGI, and PNG files
work for the iPod.
You should remember a few other things when adding images to
your iPod. For one, you can't import pictures off one of those photo CDs from
the drugstore or a backup disc you made yourself-iTunes needs to pull the
photos directly from your hard drive. Photos stored on DVDs or CDs won't cut
it.
The iPod allies itself with one computer when it comes to
photos. Unlike manual music management, where you can grab songs from several
different computers and drag them onto your iPod yourself, synchronizing
pictures can happen only between one iPod and one computer. If you want to load
photos from a different computer, all the photos currently on the iPod will be
replaced with ones from the new machine.
You also can't dump photos directly into the iPod from your
digital camera-you need to go through iTunes, unless you have a gadget like the
iPod Camera Connector (available for $29 at http://store.apple.com) that can
siphon photos from the camera's memory card over to the iPod's hard drive.
These devices don't work with the iPod Nano, though.
Getting Pictures onto the iPod
Okay, so you've got the right iPod and a bunch of pictures
in iTunes-friendly formats on your hard drive. How do those photos get from
your hard drive to the iPod? They get there like the music does-through iTunes.
But first, you should set up your iTunes and iPod
preferences to copy the photos you want to carry around, like so:
1) Connect the iPod
to your Mac or PC with its USB cable.
2) Once the iPod
shows up in the iTunes Source list, click its icon to select it.
3) On the iPod's
preference screen, which appears in the middle of iTunes, click the Photos tab.
4) Turn on the
checkbox next to "Sync photos from" and choose your photo program or
folder of choice so iTunes knows where to look for your photos. You can choose
to copy over everything or just selected albums (sets of pictures).
5) Click Apply when
you've made your selections.
If you don't use any of the programs listed in the "Sync photos from" menu, and just want to copy over a folder of photos on your hard drive, select "Choose folder" from the pop-up menu and then navigate to the desired folder. You can sync just the photos in your chosen folder, or include the photos tucked away in folders inside your chosen folder, too.
Select the "All photos and albums" option if you want every single image in your photo program's library to get hauled over to the iPod. (If you don't want those bachelorette-party snaps to get copied, opt for "Selected albums" and choose only the collections you want from your photo program.)
Now, whenever you connect the iPod, it syncs the photo groups you've designated and also picks up any new pictures you've added since you last connected it. During the process, iTunes displays an " Optimizing photos…" message.
Don't let the term " optimizing" scare you: iTunes hasn't taken it upon
itself to touch up your photographic efforts. The program is simply
creating versions of your pictures that look good on anything from your
tiny iPod screen to your TV screen. Then it tucks away these copies on
your hard drive before adding them to the iPod.
Digital Photographer Alert: Storing Full-Quality Photos on the iPod
When iTunes optimizes your photos for iPoddification, it
streamlines the images a bit for faster travel instead of copying the
big, full-resolution files. But if you want, you can copy the full-size
photo files to transfer them to another computer-good news if you're a
photographer and you want to haul around a big, print-ready photo
collection.
- Connect the iPod and select it in the iTunes Source list. Make sure you've set up the iPod as a portable hard drive. (See Chapter 8 for details.) The short version: in your iPod's settings page in iTunes, click the Summary tab and then turn on the "Enable disk use" checkbox.
- Click the Photos tab in the iTunes window.
-
Turn on the "Include full-resolution photos" checkbox.
After you sync, full-resolution copies of the photos sit happily in the Photos folder on the iPod's hard drive. (The Photos folder also has a subfolder called Thumbs that's full of iPod-optimized images all scrunched up in special .ithmb files; you can safely ignore these.)
Viewing Pictures on the iPod
Once you've got those photos freed from the confines of your computer, you'll probably want to show them off to your pals. To get to the goods, choose Photos -> Photo Library from the iPod's main screen. Or, if you opted for different photo albums when you set up your synchronization preferences, scroll to the name of the album you want to view and press the round center button.
The iPod pops up a screen filled with tiny versions of the pictures in the group you just selected. Use the scroll wheel to maneuver the little yellow highlight box, and then zoom along the rows until you get to the picture you want to see. If you have hundreds of pee-wee pix to plow through, tap the Previous and Next buttons to advance or retreat by the screenful.
Here are some other navigational tips: - Highlight the photo and press the center button to call up a larger version that fills the iPod screen.
-
Press the Previous and Next buttons or the click wheel to move forward or backward through pictures in an album
Press the Menu button to go back to the screen of tiny photos.
Playing Slideshows on the iPod
A photo slideshow takes all the click work out of your hands and frees you to admire the pictures without distraction. To run a slideshow on the iPod itself, you need to set up a few things, like how long each photo displays and what music accompanies your trip to Disneyland.
Start by choosing Photos -> Slideshow Settings. You'll see a slew of options to shape your slideshow experience.
- Use the Time Per Slide menu to set the amount of time each photo is displayed on screen, from 2 to 20 seconds. You can also choose to move to each new image manually with a tap of the click wheel.
- Use the Music menu to pick one of your iPod's playlists to serve as a soundtrack for your slideshow, if you want one. You may even want to compose a playlist in iTunes just to use with a particular slideshow. If you've already got music assigned to the photo album in iPhoto, choose the From iPhoto option at the top of the menu.
- As with your music, you can repeat and shuffle the order of your photos. You can also add fancy Hollywood-style scene transitions by choosing Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> Transitions. Pick from several dramatic photo-changing styles, including "Push across" and "Wipe from center."
- To make sure the slideshow appears on the iPod's screen, set the TV Out setting (toward the bottom of the screen) to Off, which keeps the signal in the iPod. (Nano owners don't have to worry about this step.) Or you can select Ask, so that each time you start a slideshow, the iPod politely inquires whether you intend to run your photos on the big or small screen.
Your choice of music, transitions, and time per slide all match what you chose in the Slideshow settings. If you get impatient, you can also use the Previous and Next buttons on the click wheel to manually move things along.
Flip back to the previous chapter if you need help connecting your iPod to the television set so you can display videos and photos on the TV. These figures show one possible setup. Once you've linked your color screen iPod to your TV, you're almost ready to start the show. You just need to adjust a few more things on the iPod:
- Choose Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> TV Out -> On. The On option tells the iPod to send the slideshow out to the TV screen instead of playing it on its own screen. (You can also set it to Ask, if you want the iPod to pester you about what screen to use when the time comes.)
- Select your local television broadcast standard. If you're in North America or Japan, choose Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> TV Signal -> NTSC. If you're in Europe or Australia, choose Photos -> Slideshow Settings -> TV Signal -> PAL. If you're in an area not listed above, check your television's manual to see what standard it uses or search the Web for "world television standards."
- Turn on your TV and select the video input source for the iPod. You select the input for the iPod's signal the same way you tell your TV to show the signal from the DVD player or VCR. Typically, you press the Input or Display button on your TV's remote to change from the live TV signal to the new video source.
Your preselected slideshow settings control the show, or you can advance it manually with your thumb on the click wheel. Although just one photo at a time appears on the TV screen, if you're driving the iPod, you can see not only the current picture, but the one before it and the one after, letting you narrate your show with professional smoothness: "OK, this is Shalimar before we had to get her fur shaved off after the syrup incident…"
If you're showing a video, select the file you want to display on the TV from your Videos menu, and then press Play/Pause.
