http://www.ecoustics.com/latest/articles Latest articles, updated every five minutes http://www.ecoustics.com/dt/guide/164 High-priced plans, dropped calls and bumpy 3G connections? Now that the glimmer has faded, the iPhone is starting to fall short of its miracle status. Good thing for us there are plenty of other mobile handsets eager to step up and feed our desire for smartphone bliss.LG Prada 2, Price: TBD Update to the popular high-end smartphone. Touchscreen up front, slide out keyboard below. 5 megapixel camera, full HTML browser and Wi-Fi. Price TBD. Available by year’s end. www.pradaph...Read | Permalink | Linking Blogs Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:00:00 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/154352 Kevin Germino keeps programs and data on separate partitions, but he needs to adjust their sizes. Can he do this safely? Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:44:00 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/154216 It's 2008. Do you know who has your Social Security number? Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:00:00 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/153525 Christopherm needs to maintain a web site. He asked the Answer Line Forum for easy-to-use software recommendations. Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:07:00 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/153825 If you lose your device, at least the data stays locked. Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:05:00 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/153826 Encrypting your hard disk to protect your data doesn't have to be a daunting task, thanks to a large number of practical tools. Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:00:00 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/153495 Traveling with sensitive business information can be risky. A hardware-encrypted hard drive can keep your files locked up on the road. Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/23997/ Like many people, I've really gotten addicted to having a big music collection. Recently, though, I've gotten into other things, like video podcasts and recording LiveTV on my Mac. My pitiful 120GB external drive, unfortunately, just wasn't packing the kinda space I needed. So, I began the journey of finding the right drive for my system. Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:18:16 -0500 http://www.ecoustics.com/dt/guide/147 Serious home audio enthusiasts are in luck this year: There are plenty of great new home theater-ready models just itching to tickle your eardrums for the holidays. Want to see what you’ll be rocking out with well into 2009? Check out the following product gallery, and don’t say we didn’t warn you – these recommendations are sure to keep the good times rolling for months to come. Yamaha YAS-71, $600 Yamaha was the first company to create an all-in-one speaker that provides simulated...Read | Permalink | Linking Blogs Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/152734 These free and fee-based Web services not only aggregate data from your online bank accounts, they give you tools for managing your money. Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:49:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/151949 Excel is great for basic number crunching, but don't try to stretch it too far. Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/151944 Encrypting data can save you lots of heartache. How should you do it? Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/151946 Lock up employee data, or face the consequences. Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/150734 Ralph Isaacs wants to know why Windows is telling him that it can't install its own updates. Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:30:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/dt/feature/88 Grant Hill may be best known as a NBA superstar, but when he's not honing his skills on the court, you might just catch him in a heated game of Madden Football with his teammates, playing Super Mario Brothers with his daughter, or browsing virtual art collections on the Web. Grant told us how tech has helped him stay in touch with his family on the road, relax in his downtime, and promote important causes like the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, where he recently became an honorary chairman.Digital Trends (DT): I understand you're a gamer, so I've got to ask: do you ever play any of the NBA video games in your spare time?I don't necessarily play any of the basketball... Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/146367 If a natural disaster wipes out your hard drive, it will probably destroy your local backups, too. Here's a backup plan that will get you through even the worst-case scenario. Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/dt/feature/85 The new iPhone is finally (almost) here, and not a moment too soon, as the original models have all but disappeared. Although iPhone 2.0 makes good on promises like 3G data speeds, Assisted GPS, and stereo Bluetooth, it's still a work in progress. Here are five things we'd like to see in iPhone 3.0. 1) More Memory 8GB and 16GB? Still?! This may have helped keep the iPhone's price down, but we are definitely ready for a 32GB version. Adding a microSD slot would be a nice touch too, though that raises som... Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:00:00 -0400 http://ecoustics-cnet.com.com/4660-10165_7-6876299.html?part=ecoustics-cnet&part=ecoustics-cnet&subj=video It's not 100 percent perfect, but here's how to get most of your data off the iPhone before you sell it. Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/146582 A nifty free Wi-Fi hotspot tool, a real-life GPS gadget review, and a scary-looking "motorcycle." Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:45:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/21993/ Windows Media Player is a media player for all your digital media (audio, photos and video) for computers running Windows XP and Vista. It is available as a downloadable application for Windows XP directly from Microsoft or via Windows Update and ships with Windows Vista as its default player. It is also available on Pocket PC and Windows mobile based devices. In the following sections, I will show you the basic interface, library management, ripping/burning audio cds to the library and how to sync your media to a portable MP3 player. This article focuses on Windows Media Player 11. The Interface Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11) is the latest version on Microsoft's Media Player. It has undergone a complete overhaul from previous versions and sports a slicker user interface. It is pretty simple to navigate and access your media by just a few clicks of the mouse. You can use it to share media with other pcs, media streaming devices (XBox360, PS3, Netgear EVA8000, etc.), to rip and burn cd's to and from your library and sync your media to/from portable media players (both audio and video). There are 5 main buttons on the interface, they consist of the "Now... Fri, 16 May 2008 11:15:06 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/dt/guide/122 If we had a nickel for every time we've gotten lost on the back roads of some semi-rural state, we'd have enough money for a few beers. But if we had a good GPS with us every time, we'd never have gotten lost in the first place, saving hours of aggravation, not to mention gas money.Portable GPS devices offer an excellent and easily self-installed solution, ranging in price from about $150 to $1200. Models specific to activities like hiking, geocaching, biking, boating, and running are also available, and a handful of smartphones have built-in GPS hardware, with service for around $10 a month on top of voice and data plans.Garmin and Magellan currently dominate the GPS market; behind them are TomTom and a... Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:00:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/143770 The graphics board vendor sent a reader two replacement cards that also malfunctioned, but it never tried to troubleshoot the problem. Plus: D-Link recalls its first dual-mode draft-n routers, and Magellan blames support problems on a change in outsourced customer service. Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:30:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/143696 Plus: Patch IE, update Reader and Skype, and crush Yahoo Jukebox bugs. Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:50:00 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/21472/ Everyone with a digital music collection of any size has this problem: their music tags are far from perfect. Maybe it's because you ripped the songs from a CD before it was in cddb or one of the other directories, maybe there was no cddb back when you took your first steps into digital audio, maybe your ripper didn't do a good tagging job - remember MusicMatch Jukebox? Whatever the reason, however bad the tags, there is a pretty straightforward way to sort them out, and that's to let your computer fix them for you. I've tried a number of tools to do this, but the best I've found so far is BeaTunes . BeaTunes works on both Mac and Windows machines, all you need is a copy of iTunes with a library containing the (non-DRM'd) tracks you want to clean up. The way BeaTunes works is that it analyzes the audio of selected tracks and creates a fingerprint which it then compares to a database run by MusicIP.com. If it finds a matching fingerprint, BeaTunes can use the associated track data to update your track's tags. Yes, it's just that simple, and pretty fast too. Even if your current... Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:00:05 -0400 http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/21466/ Apple recently released a major upgrade to its Apple TV software that sports a new interface as well as additional features; the most significant of which is movie rentals. They're offered in both standard definition and in some cases, high definition. I didn't jump on the upgrade bandwagon immediately; over the last year I've been using my Apple TV primarily to watch videos stored on my NAS in non-Quicktime format, and I didn't want to lose that capability. So, I decided to wait and make sure that the various hacks which allowed me to do that were going to be updated to support the Take 2. They are all in various states of beta testing at this point, so last week I did the upgrade and began playing with the new release. So far, here are my thoughts... Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:45:04 -0500