How To

Before you tweet a photo of your delicious, homemade dish, check your settings--your phone might be embedding coordinates in your photos, leaving your location open to prying eyes.

Using the built-in GPS, phone camera applications can embed the latitude and longitude of a location in photos. Coordinates aren't shown in your photo library, but if you post a geotagged pic online, someone with an evil motive can easily extract the photo's EXIF data and find out where you live, eat, or hang out.

Creepy, right? This is a big security risk, especially for parents who post photos of … Read more

Places like Starbucks, neighborhood cafes, Barnes&Noble, and universities are all jumping on the "free Wi-Fi" bandwagon--hey, it's trendy. As a result, more of us are connecting to these networks without realizing the security risks.

But did you read the fine print? Wi-Fi hot spots are unsecured networks that hackers like to take advantage of. Everything--including your data, account information and passwords, Google searches, and finances--can become available to the hacker who wants it badly enough.

So before you pay your bills or write your genius business plan at the local cafe, get to know these … Read more

Some readers took exception when I stated in a post from last month on future-proofing your data archive that Microsoft's proprietary Office file formats may not stand the test of time. Well, compatibility problems have already surfaced between the two most recent releases of MS Word.

Several people report spaces being dropped randomly from documents created in Word 2010 when the files are opened in Word 2007 on another machine. (A post on the Microsoft Answers forum explains the problem in more detail.)

The quick fix is to set both systems to use Adobe PDF as the default printer … Read more

Selecting text, particularly entire paragraphs in Notes and other text-heavy apps can be tricky, if not somewhat difficult.

If you need to select an entire paragraph, the first intuition most iPhone and iPad users have is to double-tap a word and drag the text selection handles to cover the entire paragraph.

Though this is an effective method of getting all your text selected, there's an easier way.

Next time you have to select a paragraph to copy and paste somewhere else, try using two fingers and swiping across the paragraph you wish to copy. The text will be selected … Read more

Because Apple computers are so intuitive, you may be overlooking some simple but helpful settings. A few tweaks to your security settings, dock, Finder, and keyboard are really all it takes to make your MacBook even easier to use than it already is.

If you're a first-time MacBook owner, this how-to will introduce you to your computer's security settings and help you enable a few of your Mac's most useful features.

So before you say, "Hey, there's no right-click on MacBooks?!" walk through the following tips:

Rev up security settings. Go to System Preferences &… Read more

This tip is easy, but extremely useful for users wanting to get the most out of their iOS device. Interestingly, there are tens, if not hundreds, of calendar, to-do, and organization Apps for your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that you can use to remember things.

But the best way may be a functionality that iOS offers already. The screen most people see the most is the lock screen. It stands to reason then that the lock screen would be the perfect place for a constant reminder.

There are any number of ways to accomplish this. One, provided by a … Read more

As your e-mail inbox fills up, it can be difficult to distinguish the important messages from the ones you can read later--if at all. One way to help identify personal e-mails from impersonal ones is by the number of recipients. By highlighting messages sent only to you, you're less likely to miss mail requiring your immediate attention.

Last November I described how to merge multiple e-mail accounts and organize them by using filters and labels. This can help shuttle less-important messages out of your inbox and into folders you can peruse at your leisure.

But not all the non-filtered … Read more

Want to back up your iTunes library and/or transfer it to another PC? iTunes itself has a backup option, but it requires blank CDs or DVDs. Bleh.

CopyTrans TuneSwift will back up your iTunes library to the media of your choice (including network folders, flash drives, and external hard drives), or let you transfer it to another machine--Windows or Macintosh.

(Just to clarify, TuneSwift itself is for Windows only, but it includes an option for transferring iTunes libraries to Macs. Pretty neat!)

The program will cost $20-30 when the next version is released, but right now you can get TuneSwift free of charge. … Read more

There's no reason why Windows 7 users have to settle for whatever interface Microsoft sets as the operating system's default. Customizing Windows 7's start, log-on, and desktop backgrounds isn't as easy as it might be, but it's eminently doable.

Deactivate the "Close Encounters" start-up animation The animation that plays as Windows starts is irritating primarily because it never changes. If you're like me and would prefer to see nothing than to sit through that micro-advertisement for the umpteenth time, turn it off.

Press the Windows key, type system configuration, and press Enter … Read more