Intel Linux Graphics Driver Update Utility for Ubuntu and Fedora

Category: LinuxThe folks working with Intel for Linux graphics drivers recently released an updated Intel Linux Graphics update utility late July for Ubuntu 13.04 and Fedora 19. The download can be found on the 01.org website with a guide and links to earlier versions. The team helpfully once again reminds users of Intel graphics chipsets to run their respective Linux distribution's own software update...

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Using Infographs while Jobhunting Part 2

Continued from Using Infographs while Jobhunting Part 1 The broad range of fields and expertise existing in many industries today can be an advantage to jobseekers who know what they are good at since they can specialize and focus on a specific skillset or area. Proven proficiency is the emphasis here -  a graduate armed with standardized knowledge such as Cisco networking concepts...

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Consumer Electronics Buying Tips: Download the User Manual First Part 2

Continued from Consumer Electronics Buying Tips: Download the User Manual First Part 1Admittedly, the quality of user manuals/guides/documentation between manufacturers vary. Some are highly technical and are intended for a specific audience. For example, Intel and AMD provide well-written and copious amounts of documentation for developers and engineers for use with their processors and motherboards....

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Consumer Electronics Buying Tips: Download the User Manual First Part 1

Category: Tech TodayThe best way to determine if a product or device right for you is by trying it out first. "Showrooming", which is the practice of checking out products at the retailer before buying it online, is an unfair but very real practice. I understand why so many people do it - any electronic product is a long-term investment. On the other hand, there are lots of other ways to...

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Troubleshooting Table of Contents in Adobe InDesign

Category: Tech WriterAdobe InDesign is exceptional at page layouts but when it comes to even basic document organization, FrameMaker, Microsoft Word 2010 or open source LyX handle table of contents more efficiently. If your PDF's bookmarks or table of contents hyperlinks aren't working, try checking the following:1. If you created a Book in InDesign to organize your .indd files, make sure that...

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Using Infographs while Jobhunting Part 1

Category: Tech TodayAs a former teacher and trainer, I strongly believe that a person shouldn't be reduced to a number or set of metrics. Many of the industries I worked in involved associating an employee with an ID and a bunch of tables and measurements. A person is more than the numerical equivalent of his skills (which can be subjective and inaccurate). Even IQ shouldn't be used as a basis for measuring a person's...

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Back up your old Yahoo! Mail using Opera Mail

Category: Tech TodayDespite all Yahoo management's efforts, Yahoo! Mail is a mess - the "new" interface doesn't offer anything useful and their mail servers are prone to spam and all sorts of malware. However, the old dotcom mainstay has been around for so long most people have email stored on their servers that prevented them from closing their account and moving on from their decrepit service. Although Yahoo! ...

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Yahoo!?

Category: Tech Today Yahoo! recently popped up in the news recently due to its "success" in attracting web visitors in the U.S. Now, anyone who has been online for the last three years or works in the web industry knows that when it comes to tracking sites and visitors, numbers can be fudged pretty easily (and this has nothing to do with SEO). At the risk of sounding...

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Cheap and Discriminating

Category: Tech Today It was my mom's birthday the other day so I made a long-distance call using my mobile phone. After a friendly greeting and stories about Asia's weather, she asked me how I was doing. Without thinking I sighed and said: "I think I might have to finally invest in a smartphone." Instantly, my mom responded in our native language and in no uncertain terms said: "You're...

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Quick Fix: Clean an overheating Lenovo Ideapad

Category: Tech TodayThe Ideapad series is aimed at consumers and may require more maintenance than the more robust Thinkpad series. Even if you keep your Lenovo Ideapad in the office or at home and use your Ideapad as a desktop replacement, the fans and vents can still accumulate plenty of dust over time. Due to the design of the Lenovo Ideapad series, Lenovo includes a utility that helps the fan "clean" itself....

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Tech Flashback: The Lethal Weapon series 1987-1998 Part 1

Category: Tech Today The Lethal Weapon series, once hailed as one of the best movie franchises of all time, has been overlooked in the last couple of years for less worthy movies such as the unimpressive Rush Hour (1998) and the gratuitous Bad Boys (1995). Despite the number of buddy cop characters that have inundated movies and TV over the years, the mismatched couple of Sgt. Murtaugh and Martin Riggs can't be equaled...

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Quick Fix: Search using Duck Duck Go

Category: Tech TodayMost users are happy between Bing and Google searches since both are integrated in Android and Windows Phone 8 and are found as default in the most popular browsers. However, what can you do if both these search engines are rendered unusable?Duck Duck Go is a search engine that features private searches and unlike Bing, isn't restricted by country or region settings. Although Duck Duck...

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Manjaro Openbox on a 7-year old Acer Aspire 5500Z Part 2

Category: LinuxContinued from Manjaro Openbox on a 7-year old Acer Aspire 5500Z Part 1Quick Hardware RundownThe installation didn't take very long mostly because I had no access to the Arch repositories. After rebooting, Linux proved once again why it's great for old hardware. Manjaro supported the old Broadcom and Intel networking components without further tweaking (Fedora's recent releases no longer...

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Manjaro Openbox on a 7-year old Acer Aspire 5500Z Part 1

Category: Linux Anyone who has been working with Linux distributions on different types of hardware is generally no longer surprised with the improved performance over mainstream OSs. Even the most bulked up KDE release can ably compete with pretentious MacOSX and superfluous Windows 7/8. That said, recent Linux distributions running Gnome 3.x and KDE 4.x can be...

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Quick Fix: Identify the PDF producer in Adobe Reader and Okular

Category: Tech WriterThere are so many ways to create a PDF today that Adobe Acrobat and Adobe products no longer have monopoly over the file format. XSL-FO, Microsoft Office, Google Chrome and directly from any Linux application are only some of the more popular ways of producing a PDF from a document or project. If you need to identify what application produced the PDF (for example to check...

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