Category: How To

One of the most common questions I get here on the site has to do with screenshots.  The questions generally fall into two categories.  First, how to actually take the screenshot itself and second, how I create the images that you see in reviews or posts on applications.  In both cases they are easy and free to do and hopefully this How To will clear it up for you.

First, let’s focus on the actual screenshot taking process itself.  On your Android phone or tablet, when you are viewing the screen you want to capture, press the power button and volume down button at the same time.  You will know that you have captured it when your screen flashes and you see a fading image of what you captured on the display.  You will also get a screenshot notification in your Notification area.  The screenshot itself will be a PNG file and will be stored in your device’s photos folder.

While Chrome OS is rock solid as a platform, like any Operating System, there are times where things go wrong.  The technical term is “poop”.  Sometimes it just poops and you are stuck looking at a screen that tells you there is a problem with it.  Fortunately Google has made it very easy to recover your Chromebook and Chrome OS through a Recovery drive.  You can create these drives ahead of time which is a good idea so you have one with you in your back while you are traveling.

Creating a Recovery drive for your Chromebook is pretty easy but you have to make sure you follow the steps to assure you get the right build for your particular Chromebook.  In this How To I’ll show you how to create a Recovery drive so you have it ready in case the worst happens.

Android Wear is a great extension of the Android platform on your phone.  These devices, mostly smartwatches, can give you timely information on your wrist without ever having to touch your phone.  That’s the promise we were all sold and for the most part, it’s true.  The problem however is what you weren’t told when you picked up that Moto 360 or LG G watch:  All those notifications will kill your battery life.

Realistically, for most Android Wear devices, you are going to be pushing it to make it through the day on battery life and the more notifications you get, the more of a stretch it is going to be to make it through the end of the day.  Fortunately there is a quick and easy way to stop the notification overload on your wrist and the beauty is you can do it from your Android phone or from your Android Wear device.  In this How To I’ll show you how to quickly and easily block app notifications.

While many users of Google Chrome use it because it is lightweight and clutter free, the browser experience is only the beginning for this browser.  Google has created a powerful ecosystem of extensions for the browser that allow you to do everything from open your Gmail account with one click to integrating with other 3rd party applications like Evernote.  The best way to think of Extensions in Google Chrome is that they are mini-applets.  They bring a function or feature to the browser that in often cases you have to browse to a site to get.  Likewise, they are integration points for 3rd party services to bring them closer to you without having to navigate your PC or the web.

When I started doing the research for this article, I asked many friends who use Google Chrome about extensions and the ones that they used.  What I found was very interesting.  Mind you, most of these people are “tech savvy”.  They use PCs and/or other technologies on a daily basis and, to be fair, Extensions are a bit of a geeky subject.  So when I got two common answers (“What are extensions?” or “I thought those were only for Chromebooks”) I decided to clear the air a bit.  That’s really the point of this article so if you have ever questions what Google Chrome extensions were and how to enable them, this should point you in the right direction.

In December of last year I posted a How To on taking screenshots of your Windows 8.1 tablet and it turned out it was one of the most popular How To’s on the site.  Apparently a lot of you like taking screenshots on your tablets, which is done in a similar way to Windows Phone.  However a few of you have written asking how this can be done on Windows PCs.  From your emails, it looks like most of are using Control+PrintScreen to take a screenshot which saves it to the Clipboard then editing that photo (or creating it more-or-less) in Paint.  There is an easier and quicker way.

Notifications on your tablet or PC are both expected and appreciated by most.  Whether it is an email arrival notification or the latest weather information being popped up, I for one have become dependent on these little tidbits of information that come to me throughout the day.  There are times however when I’m in the middle of another task and I get a notification and need just a few more seconds to tap it and interact with it.  By default Windows 8.1 gives you 5 seconds to either click on the notification (or close it) or it will fade away.  There is a way however to make this displaying of notifications longer and in this How To I will show you where this setting is buried within the PC settings on your device.