How To

Nobody who uses an iPad will ever confuse it for a full-feature notebook PC (especially once they've tried to enter data via the device's built-in keyboard). But anyone who computes on the road knows there's more to business travel than keyboarding.

These four free iPad apps transform the tablet into a clock radio, weather reporter, file manager, and multi-talented notepad.

Free file manager simplifies transfers to PCs via Wi-Fi, USB If you store Word, Excel, and other Office documents online, you may not need to keep copies of the files on your iPad. But many iPad users … Read more

Sharing movies while mobile can be fun, but generally will eat a lot of your monthly bandwidth allowance.

Instead of sharing the entire movie while you're out, why not share a quick animated GIF instead? With GIFDroid for Android, you can take a new or existing video and turn it into an animated GIF that you can send off in seconds to a friend or family member.

First you'll need to install GIFDroid from the Android Market, then open the app.

Step 1: Press either the Select Video or Record Video button. Select … Read more

Apple's iTunes Match service is running up cell-data charges for some unsuspecting iPad users.

For $25 a year, iTunes Match stores your iTunes library on Apple's iCloud servers and makes them available on any PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and other iOS devices. CNET blogger Lance Whitney describes the iTunes Match service in a December 28, 2011, post; Apple provides an iTunes Match FAQ.

When I signed up for the iTunes Match service, it took several hours to upload via a cable-modem connection about 5,500 MP3s that were stored in the iTunes Library on a Windows … Read more

Purchasing and reading books on your Nook is simple enough, but navigating the interface and getting extras (like free library books) does require some guidance.

After some bonding time with my Simple Touch, I gathered the 10 most useful tips you probably missed while engrossed in the latest chapter of "A Game of Thrones."

Bookmark these tips and clue me in on your discoveries in the comments below.

1. Customize the screensaver Watch the video to find out how you can easily grab any photos from the Internet or your personal collection and turn them into a … Read more

Did your spouse or significant other bestow an iPad upon you this Christmas? If so, it won't be long until your spouse or significant other asks you to put down your new toy for a little while and pay attention to the rest of the family. There is, of course, a way to spend time with your family and your new iPad simultaneously: iPad board games!

Four classic games--Monopoly, Scrabble, Life, and Risk--are available for the iPad, and if you catch EA's DailyDeals holiday sale on the right day, you can get them for as low as 99 cents. The fifth game here, Ticket to Ride, is a personal favorite, and its iPad version is beautifully done. With Monopoly and Ticket to Ride, the iPad acts as the board, with players sitting around it and taking turns as they would with the actual board game. With Scrabble, Life, and Risk, the games feature Pass N' Play, where the board is oriented in one direction and the iPad is passed to each player when it is his or her turn.

Granted, playing a board game on the iPad isn't the same as gathering the family around the real thing, but for these five games, the iPad offers a reasonable facsimile. The iPad forces you to downscale, but what you sacrifice in size you make up for in faster gameplay, as the iPad tallies scores, moneys, armies, and so on.… Read more

The Kindle Fire is a great tablet for watching videos. Streaming videos from Amazon look and sound great, but what if you want to put your own videos on the Kindle Fire?

One of the simplest ways we've found to get your own, DRM-free videos onto the Kindle Fire is by using Miro. Here's how:

Step 1: Download and install Miro. Make sure to install file support for the types of video files you want to be able to transfer to your Kindle Fire.

Step 2: Add your video to Miro by going to File > Open and … Read more

Wi-Fi passwords help maintain a level of browsing privacy and keep strangers or neighbors from stealing your bandwidth.

If you aren't in charge of your network, or rarely add new devices to it, you might forget what security key you picked. Retrieving this can be easy if you can access the admin panel of the router, but this isn't always an option-- like when you aren't in charge of the network, or you forgot that password too. Fortunately there's an easy-to-use program that can retrieve the security information for networks saved on your computer. Just follow … Read more

People have been looking for ways to improve on the iPad's onscreen keyboard since day one. The constant screen-shifting and other shortcomings of the iPad key layout have led many people to use apps that let you communicate with minimum typing. Say "hello" to voice-recording apps.

Of the five free voice-recording iPad apps I tried, only two--Audio Memos Free and Smart Recorder Lite--let you record short sound bites and attach the resulting sound files to an e-mail or transfer them via Wi-Fi, ftp, or an online file-storage service. Dragon Dictation coverts the words you speak into text … Read more

Do you have an e-book or a collection of e-books that you want to transfer (side load) to your new Kindle Fire? If you've already tried transferring them, you may have noticed that some or all of your e-books show up under the "Docs" heading, instead of "Books."

The benefit of having your e-books listed under "Books" is that you can sort them by author. Under "Docs," you can only sort by recent or title. If your collection is a modest one, this might not bother you a whole lot. If, … Read more