How-Tos

How to Sideload Android Apps

Markkus Rovito — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:22:47 +0000

You've found that hot new app on the Android Market, and you can't wait to click the Install button. But you're getting the message that the app isn't compatible with your device. Being the good Maximum user that you are, you'd rather find out for yourself. Those messages are sometimes wrong, after all. Or perhaps you want to take advantage of the daily giveaways in the Amazon Appstore. Or, if you're one of the millions of Kindle Fire owners, you may want more choices than the limited Amazon Appstore provides. All of the above comprise sufficient reason to start sideloading apps to your Android device.

Step 1: Get Some Apps to Sideload

The reason you sideload apps in the first place is because you're sourcing them from a place other than the sanctioned method, which is usually the Android Market or some device-specific boutique app store. Android Apps come in the form of .apk files. You can procure such files from a prior device backup, straight from a developer's website, and of course from… the Internet (you know the deal).

Next, transfer those .apk files from your PC to your Android however you like: on a microSD card (image above), through a cloud service such as Dropbox, via a USB transfer, etc. Just remember what directory those files end up in, so you don't have to root through too many folders looking for them later.

Step 2: Tweak Applications Settings

The default setting in Android is to not allow the installation of non-Market applications. Fie on that! Go to your Android device's Settings, and under Applications, check the "Unknown sources" box (image below), allowing you, in effect, to sideload. Some unfortunate souls may have tyrannical devices that have modded the Android OS to not allow sideloading at all, in which case they'll have to look into rooting the device or installing custom Android ROMs. But that's a whole other How To.

Step 3: Install the Apps Through a File Manager

To install your .apk apps, you essentially launch the files through a file manager app. Many Android devices come with a file manager preloaded. For the rest, there are tons of file managers out there and a good handful of high-quality free ones. If you have access to the Android Market, like most Android users, we like Metago's Astro File Manager or Rhythm Software's File Manager HD for Honeycomb tablets. For folks locked into the Amazon Appstore (users of the Grid10, Kindle Fire, etc.), we prefer ES File Explorer.

Because you heeded our warning to remember what folder your .apk’s are in, you just need to launch your file manager and find them (image above). If they're on a microSD card, you'll probably need to hit the file manager's Up button a couple of times to find the "Removable" directory. Touching an .apk icon will open the Package Installer, where you can touch the Install button to finish the deed (image below). Now that app, whether it will function properly or not, is ready to launch. Enjoy the sweet freedom of the gray market!

@MaxTechMarkkus for relevant chirpings.

SOPA Protests: How To Use Google Cache To View Blacked-Out Websites

Brad Chacos — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:18:53 +0000

Websites with a beef against over-reaching legislation have drawn a line in the sand; today, many of them are following Reddit’s lead and going black to protest SOPA and PIPA. The controversial bills have been under heavy fire recently, and the heat’s bound to increase when 25 million Joe and Jill Everymen find Wikipedia cold, dark, and urging readers to contact their Congressional representatives. But you’re not Joe or Jill Everyman. You’re a Maximum PC reader, a tech-savvy webizen who already understands that SOPA flat-out sucks. What if you need to get your Wikipedia (or Destructoid, or Boing Boing, or…) on today?

Don’t worry – there’s a way around the blackout if you know exactly what you’re looking for, thanks to the magic of Google’s all-encompassing cache.

First, boot up your browser and head over to Google, where you’ll just so happen to see a link to a page outlining Google’s own SOPA/PIPA opposition. Search for whatever blacked-out page you’re looking for, but be specific: you won’t be able to browse blacked-out sites normally, so you’ll need to find deeper links to exact content, using searches like “Reddit why is morrowind so revered” or “Maximum PC Wikipedia”.

Trying to click on the link will lead you to the site’s blackout message. Instead, hover over the listing, then mouse over the three arrows that appear to its right to bring up the preview pane. Underneath the direct link in the preview pane, you’ll see a URL for the page, and to the right of that, you’ll see a link to a cached version. Bingo! Click on that.

You’ll be taken to a cached version of the page. A message at the top will tell you when Google took the snapshot. This method isn’t perfect, however; you won’t be able to click on links without being directed to the blackout page. (You can run another specific Google search for the linked-to content, though.) Additionally, the content might not be totally up-to-date, but content that’s a few day old beats no content whatsoever, right?

Here's another useful trick for skirting Wikipedia's blackout: just disable Javascript for the site and you'll be able to browse it normally. That should work for other sites using Javascript-powered blackout methods, too, such as Wordpress.org.

When you’re done circumventing blackouts, be sure to head over to AmericanCensorship.org and bug your Congressmen/women if you haven’t already. And if you don't get what all the fuss is about, check out our primer on stopping SOPA and PIPA, which includes a list of notable sites taking part in the blackout.

How To Permanently Turn Off G+ Personal Results In Google Search

Brad Chacos — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:24:13 +0000

Two days ago, Google started mixing Google+ connections with general search results. Pics, photos, shared links, posts, authored articles – if someone in your Circles shared something related to what you’re looking for, it shows up in your search results. Google calls it “Search Plus Your World;” I call it annoying. When the first page of results is dominated by “Personal Results,” that’s a problem. And to make it worse, Google doesn’t exactly make it easy to turn the “feature” off for good.

The “Hide Personal Results” button on the search page is a temporary solution but the problem rears its ugly head again the very next time your search for something. If you’re drowning in useless search results suggested by your 2000-plus Circle buddies, here’s how to swing the Personal Results banhammer permanently in less than 15 seconds.

First saunter over to Google.com, then open up your options by clicking on the gear icon in the upper-right hand corner of the screen. Select “Search Settings” from the list of options. (If you have a customized iGoogle setup, get to the classic Google homepage by selecting the gear icon, then the "Classic Home" option. You can return to iGoogle after disabling Personal Results. Thanks to Ghost6007 and Frances the Mute for pointing this out in the comments!)

Scroll down until you see the Personal Results options. By default, “Use personal results” is selected. Click the “Do not use personal results” bubble.

Now, just click “Save” at the bottom of the screen and you’ll never be bothered by those annoying and only tangentially on-topic Personal Results again! We’re interested in hearing what you think, though: do you like the inclusion of G+-related Personal Results in your everyday searches, or are you on your way to disable the feature right now?

Connect with Brad on Google+, just don't expect him to see your posts in Google Search results!

How to Customize the Windows 7 File Browser Menu

Alex Castle — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:47:43 +0000

In Windows 7, browsing for files from within a program can be a bit confusing. Why? Because for some reason, there are two separate menus for exactly that function, and they behave differently.

The first sort of menu looks more or less like Explorer.exe (image below). It’s got a folder view in the main part of the window, and a navigation pane on the left side that makes it quick to get where you want to go. If you frequently save to or load from a particular location, you can make sure it’s always at hand by dragging that location into your Favorites bar. This is the good window.

The second menu is a holdover from pre-Windows 7 days—it’s the plain-old Open menu, with a small browser and a wimpy selection of predefined, uncustomizable shortcut icons on the left (image below). It is, unfortunately, still more common in programs (including Adobe’s Creative Suite) than the superior, newer menu.

Fortunately, you actually can customize the second type of file browser—it just takes some work. There’s a way to do it in the system registry, but it’s complicated and not necessary. Instead we’ll use a free app called PlacesBar Editor.

Step 1: Download PlacesBar Editor

PlacesBar Editor is available for free at bit.ly/lqKxW. Simply follow the link to download the app, unzip it, and install it.

Once it’s installed, go ahead and run the program. The main interface is strangely complicated—despite an unnecessarily large assortment of buttons and icons on the top of the window, there’s actually really only one thing we care about: the fields in the Windows tab.

Step 2: Customize Your Windows Places Bar

The Windows tab lets you directly customize the lineup of five icons that appear in your places bar (image below). For each of the five places, you can click the drop‑down box on the right to select any system folder on your computer, such as My Documents, the Desktop, or My Computer. Most of these locations are already in the places bar, so you’ll more likely use the field to the right (which you can enable by clicking the Custom checkbox).

Here, you can add any non-system folder by simply entering its complete path in the text field, or clicking the folder icon and browsing for it. You can use any folder on your system, or any network location. We particularly like being able to add our Dropbox folder to our places list, as well as our working folder for screenshots.

Once you’ve made your changes, you’ll have to click the Save button at the top in order to have them take effect. At that point, you can click the Test button to open a sample file browser and make sure everything is in order.

Note that when you click Save, all places bar icons are changed to the ones specified. In other words, you can’t just use PlacesBar Editor to change a single location and keep the rest the same—you’ll have to define a full set of five (or less) that you want to use. If, for whatever reason, you don’t care for your new layout, you can click the Default button to get the old locations back.

How to Set Up a New PC the Right Way

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:44:10 +0000

Whether you just built or bought a new PC, it pays to optimize your setup from the start

Nothing holds more promise than a brand-new PC. The hardware is fresh and full of potential, the OS is clean and clutter-free, and you have nothing but pure, unadulterated storage space awaiting your precious data. It’s an exciting time, indeed. But before you start dumping old files onto your new rig willy-nilly, and downloading every shiny bauble of an app that catches your eye, take some time to consider a more measured approach to moving in. After all, you only have this opportunity once.

The way you set up your new PC now will have a lasting impact on your experience over time. Do it haphazardly, and your experience will be plagued by disorder and regret. Do it thoughtfully, though, by following the course of action we prescribe on the following pages, and you will have a machine that’s primed and ready to meet your every need from the start.

Check Your Specs

If you’ve just built your rig or unboxed a sparkling-new PC, it’s always a good idea to verify the hardware specs to make sure all parts are actually performing as they should be. We’ve seen simple BIOS misconfigurations downclock chips by hundreds of megahertz.

Inspect CPU-Z's memory tab to see if your RAM is configured correctly for double- or triple-channel, and that the frequency is set to the level you paid for.

First download CPU-Z. This excellent free utility will query your CPU and report the model number, cache size, and clock speed of the chip in real-time. To test your CPU’s speed, put a load on it using, say, Prime95 and run a stress test. CPU-Z should report the correct clock speed for your chip. While you’re here, pull up Task Manager by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del. Select the Performance tab and make sure that each of your cores, virtual or real, is represented. Believe it or not, we’ve seen Hyper-Threading turned off occasionally on some systems.

Turn off Prime95, but keep CPU-Z open. Click the Memory tab. You should see the memory frequency reported under DRAM Frequency. This is the base clock, so you should double it to get the frequency of the RAM. For example, if your DDR3/1600 is reporting as 667, your RAM is actually running at DDR3/1333 speed.

TechPowerUp's GPU-Z will tell you what speed the PCIe is running at.

CPU-Z will also report graphics speed, but we prefer GPU-Z for more detailed info. GPU-Z will generate a CPU-Z-like interface. Pay particular attention to the default clock speed and memory speeds for your GPU. If you paid for an overclocked GPU, check that it is running at the speeds you paid for. GPU-Z will also tell you if SLI or CrossFireX is enabled or not and also at what speed the PCIe slot is running. Yes, it's possible that a new machine will have the GPU running in a slower slot, which may impact performance.

Stress It Out

If a component is going to fail, you want it to fail while it’s under warranty. For CPU stress tests, we prefer the free Prime95. Just download it and run the in-place stress test. A properly configured and cooled stock-clocked system should have no problem running Prime95 for hours on end. For GPU stress testing, FurMark is still quite popular, or you can run Unigine’s Heaven benchmark in a loop for a few hours. Keep in mind that stressing the GPU will also stress your PSU and cooling, so any shortcomings may crop up there, as well.

RTFM

Did you know your motherboard has a special USB port that allows you to make BIOS updates without a CPU being installed? No? Well it’s right there in the frakking manual. One of the first things you should do with your new machine is to read the documentation, particularly the motherboard manual, that came with it.

Store Your Extra Parts

Once you’re done building a new PC, collect the extra modular power cables, drive rails, special sound-dampening drive screws, and put them in one place. You could even store the extra parts in your case, as long as there’s room to spare and it won’t block airflow. You won’t thank us now, but you will in three years.

Get Drivers in Order

If you installed the drivers from the disc that came with your motherboard, your drivers are already way out of date. Any new PC should be paired with the freshest drivers available for the platform, as updates can add performance, enhance compatibility, and fix the wonkiness that usually occurs with the first drivers to ship.

High-end peripherals should be paired with the latest drivers to unlock all of the device's functionality.

The freshest drivers are usually available directly from the manufacturer of the component, so the best source for updated drivers for an AMD motherboard is AMD. If you’re running a fancy gaming mouse or keyboard, you’ll also want to install the matching drivers for them. These drivers unlock the full functionality of the mouse or peripheral beyond the built-in Windows 7 HID drivers.

Set Up Your Security

There’s no point in taking the time and care to set up a new PC just right if you don’t also make security one of your first priorities. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time before some form of malware gets in your system and mucks up the works, possibly even requiring a reinstall.

Thanks to AVG's free AV app, even cheapskates can be safe from malware.

Our Holiday issue antivirus roundup found Norton Internet Security 2012 ($70, www.norton.com) to be the best AV suite for purchase, while AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 proved to be a very capable free solution. Before you do anything else, do this.

Prepare for Disaster

With Windows 7, everything you need for data backup and system repair is right there in the OS. Combine that with a large hard drive, and you have no excuse not to establish a full-fledged data recovery plan. With a secondary drive in place (either internal or external), head over to Control Panel, then System and Security, then Backup and Restore. Choose Backup Your Computer, then Set up Backup. Select the drive that backups will be saved to, choose the files to be saved, and set a schedule. Next, choose the option to Create a System Image, an exact copy of your drive—OS, system settings, program files, etc.—to use in the event your drive fails or your system stops working. Finally, opt to Create a System Repair Disc. This disc will save your bacon should your machine not start, allowing you to boot your computer from the optical drive and then retrieve the system image and backups you’ve dutifully created.

Decrapify Your PC

When you build a new PC, you have full control over the software that gets installed. Not so when you buy a system, which is practically guaranteed to host a number of apps you have little use for, or that slow your PC’s performance, or that constantly pester you with pop-ups. Get rid of that crap with PC Decrapifier. The free tool walks you through the process of removing unnecessary programs, startup items, and icons.

Transfer Your Files, Easily

It’s time to sully that pristine PC with craploads of junk from your old PC. Power users normally go manual by popping the old PC’s drive into a spare SATA port on the new rig. This lets you pick and choose what’s really worth moving. If you’d rather just do it on autopilot, check out Microsoft’s free Easy Transfer utility. It’s meant for newbies, but it can make the move to a new machine fairly painless. Run Windows Easy Transfer on your new PC (Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools), and it will give you options for the move: USB hard drive, the network, or an optional USB cable. The utility will ask you to insert a USB key where an executable will be installed. Run this executable on your old box, and it will package up all of the files into a single file that will be stored on an HDD or moved across the network to your new PC, where everything is unloaded into its proper place.

Tips for Trickier File Transfers

Moving documents from one computer to another is usually just a matter of copying-and-pasting onto an external hard drive and then to your new PC. That’s fine for office docs and photos, but what about apps that build media libraries, like iTunes and Steam, or saved games, which go wherever the publisher feels like putting them?

iTunes
If you’re using an iDevice, you might be stuck with iTunes as a media manager. Here’s how to move your music and other media (and keep your ratings, playlists, etc.) without having to rebuild your library.

First, open iTunes and go to File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files. This will ensure that all your music is in one place. Once done, exit iTunes. Copy your iTunes folder, which should be under My Music (unless you’ve moved it) to your external drive. If you’re decommissioning your old PC, be sure to deauthorize that computer from your iTunes account. Open iTunes again and go to Store > Deauthorize This Computer. Enter your Apple ID and password.

Install iTunes on your new computer, and then copy the iTunes folder from your external drive to the Music folder of your new computer. Next time you open iTunes, hold down Shift while you double-click the launcher. You’ll be prompted to choose an iTunes library; look for iTunes Library.itl in the folder you just copied to your PC. You should now have your library, with ratings and playlists intact, on your new PC.

Steam Games
On your old PC, go to your Steam folder (C:\Program Files\Steam, by default) and copy the steamapps folder and its contents to your external drive. On your new computer, install Steam and launch it once, then exit it. Go to the Steam folder and delete everything in it except for steam.exe. Now copy the steamapps folder from your old PC into the Steam folder on your new PC, and launch steam.exe again. After a brief self-update, Steam should show your games as installed. You’ll have to do a quick file-verify as you launch each game for the first time, but that’s a lot faster than downloading them all over again.

Game Saves
Not all your games come from Steam, and not all that do have Steam Cloud to manage their saves. And it seems every publisher has a different method of storing saved games. That’s where GameSave Manager (free, www.gamesave-manager.com) comes in.

GameSave Manager hunts down all those weird game save directories and lets you back them up easily.

Run GameSave Manager on your old computer, and it will auto-detect the games you have installed, find out where the game saves are, and back them up, all via the Backup Gamesave(s) menu. Once you have a backup archive (a .gsba file), you can move it to your new computer and use GameSave Manager to automatically restore all your saves.

Configure Audio

By default, most motherboards and soundcards come configured for stereo speaker output. By default, most gamers today play with headphones. The problem is that most advanced audio cards feature algorithms tuned for the output mode. Cool features such as head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) and other filters that greatly enhance sound for headphones don’t get used unless you set the driver accordingly.

To do this, just dig into your soundcard’s control panel and set the default to Headphones for the best experience.

Calibrate Your Monitor

If you got a new display with your new PC (or if you’ve never taken the time to adjust your old monitor), it might be badly calibrated, degrading the image quality you see. For a quick-and-dirty fix, you can run the calibration software built in to Windows by clicking the Start button, then entering DCCW into the search bar. The program will run you through several simple calibration exercises, and adjust your monitor appropriately.

For a more thorough calibration, we recommend that you use high‑quality calibration test images, such as those found at www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/.

Disable Accessibility Shortcuts

Windows comes with a host of accessibility features that can be a great help for people with disabilities or other difficulties using computer hardware. There are keyboard shortcuts for some of these options, but the shortcuts are easy to perform accidentally, and can pop up unwanted dialogue boxes. These shortcuts are:

> Press shift five times: StickyKeys
> Hold right‑shift for eight seconds: FilterKeys
> Hold num lock for five seconds: ToggleKeys

You can disable each shortcut individually by performing it, then choosing to turn off the shortcut, or you can disable them all in one fell swoop in Control Panel > Ease of Access Center > Make the keyboard easier to use.

Adjust Your Power Settings

Whether you’re looking to save the environment, or just your battery life, you should pay a visit to your new PC’s power options. If you open the Control Panel, then select Hardware and Sound, and then Power Options, you’ll see the available power profiles. You can select one of the available profiles, or change your screen's brightness from this menu, but if you want more control, you’ll need to select a profile and click the link that says “Change plan settings.”

A new menu will pop up, where you can change how long the computer waits before it dims the display, turns off the display, or goes to sleep. Even more options can be found by clicking the advanced power settings button.

Share Files on a Network

If your new PC will be sharing a network with other computers running a version of Windows 7, you can create a Homegroup so they can all share files and devices (such as a printer). Be aware, however, that computers running Windows 7 Starter or Windows 7 Home Basic can join an existing Homegroup, but they can’t create one.

To create a new Homegroup, click the Windows menu, choose Computer, and then click Homegroup in the left-hand column. Now click the button labeled “Create a homegroup” (you’ll find it in the main window to the right). This will open a new window in which you can choose which types of files you’d like to share within the Homegroup (photos, music, video, etc.), and whether or not you’d like to share a printer. Click Next when you’ve made your decisions. After a few moments, a new window will appear with a 10-character, case-sensitive Homegroup password. Write this password down or print it.

To add your new PC to an existing Homegroup, obtain the password from any other computer in the Homegroup, click the Start menu, choose Control Panel, then Network and Internet, and then Homegroup. Windows will inform you of the existing Homegroup on the network and ask if you would like to join it. Click Join Now, choose the types of files you wish to share, and click Next. Enter the Homegroup password and click Next. You’ll see a message indicating that you’ve joined the Homegroup, and when you click Network on either computer, you should see each of the other computers in the Homegroup and be able to move files between them.

If you’d like to share other folders within the Homegroup, right-click them, choose Share With from the pop-up menu, and then select either Homegroup (Read) or Homegroup (Read/Write).

Create a Guest Account

Say a friend wants to borrow your new computer to “check their email.” You can limit the degree of access they’ll gain (and damage they can cause) by turning on the Windows Guest account. Sign in using your administrator credentials, click the Start menu, and click the large icon at the top of menu. Click Manage Another Account, then Guest, and then click the Turn On button.

Activating your computer's Guest account is one of the easiest ways to grant someone limited access to your PC.

To switch to the Guest account, click the Start menu, then click the arrow next to the Shut Down button, and choose either Log-off or Switch User. Click the Guest button to log in as a guest. Guest users can launch programs and access the Internet, but they can’t make Control Panel changes (including uninstalling software) or other changes to the computer’s settings. They also can’t access any files or folders protected by a password, and they can’t access other computers on the network, even those within a Homegroup.

Use an Alternative DNS

Each time you type a hostname into your browser and hit Enter, your computer initiates a DNS (Domain Name System) lookup. DNS is akin to a phonebook for the Internet: It converts that user-friendly name into the appropriate IP address. If you haven’t configured your computer differently, you’re probably relying on your ISP to perform these DNS lookups.

You might be able to speed up your web-browsing experience, as well as improve your online security, by switching to an alternative DNS resolution service, such as OpenDNS or Google Public DNS. We’ll show you how to configure your Ethernet adapter to use the latter.

Sign on as an Administrator and click Control Panel, Network and Internet, Network and Sharing Center, and then choose Change Adapter Settings. Select which network connection you wish to change, right-click it, and choose Properties from the pop-out menu. On the Networking tab, choose Internet Protocol Version 4 and then click the Properties button. Choose the General tab and then Advanced. Click the DNS tab. If there are any DNS server addresses already in place here, write them down before erasing them and then click OK.

Many people find that switching to Google Public DNS delivers a faster web-browsing experience.

You should now be back on the General tab in the TCP/IPv4 Properties window. Click the radio button next to “Use the Following DNS Server Addresses” and type 8.8.8.8 in the Preferred DNS Server window and 8.8.4.4 in the Alternate DNS Server window. Click OK and close the Network Connections Properties window. Restart the network connection by right-clicking it and choosing Disable from the pop-out menu, and then right-click it a second time and choose Enable from the pop-out menu. This should restart your connection using the new DNS settings.

To ensure your new settings are working, enter a hostname into your browser: www.maximumpc.com, for instance. If it resolves correctly, bookmark it, then click the bookmark. If it doesn’t, roll back the changes you’ve just made and retest.

Tidy Up Your Insides

Your computer has a lot of cables inside, from front-panel connectors to SATA and power cables. If your case doesn’t have a window, it might be tempting to just leave a rat's nest of wiring inside, but there are substantial benefits to an uncluttered chassis—better cooling and less dust, for example.

If you bought your PC from a boutique builder, it should have come with a decent wiring job, but if you built your own or bought an off-the-shelf system, there’s likely room for improvement.

Sloppy wiring can create pockets of hot air and dust in your case.

Many modern cases have cable-routing cutouts in the motherboard tray, and room behind it to route cables. You should route as many wires as you can behind the motherboard tray—usually your motherboard power cables, at least, can go back here. Route as many power cables from your PSU behind the motherboard and bring them back out near where they need to plug in; you can dramatically reduce clutter in your case this way.

If you don’t have any cutouts in your motherboard tray, you can still use zip ties to keep your cables organized and out of the way. You can also buy stick-on organizing clips to keep your cables attached to your motherboard tray, not hanging out in the middle of your case.

Routing cables behind the motherboard tray (if possible) can lead to a much cleaner and cooler build.

If you have a modular power supply, disconnect (and keep in a safe place) any cables you’re not using. If you don’t, use zip ties to bundle unused cables together, and try to keep them out of the way of your fans’ airflow.

Optimize Your Fan Setup

Your components will last longer if they run at lower temperatures. They will run at lower temperatures if they have sufficient airflow. That’s science.

Your case should have both intake and exhaust fans. You’ll need at least one front intake fan and one rear exhaust fan. Many cases have additional intake fans on the front or left side, and additional exhaust fans at the top of the case. This helps keep hot air moving up and out of your case. You should have roughly the same number of exhaust fans as intake fans, and you should make sure they’re in places that make sense, to create obvious paths for the air. Don’t create dead zones where hot air can stay trapped. If your case has filters for its intake fans, clean them regularly. If not, dust inside your case regularly with canned air.

Provide a consistent airflow pattern for your case. Here, cool air enters at the bottom and exits through the top and rear.

Many motherboards offer fan control in their BIOS settings; you can set your fans to ramp up when your system gets hot and ramp down when it’s cool, or you can wire your fans to a fan controller and set their levels yourself. Most motherboard manufacturers also offer a desktop fan‑control utility for use with their boards. Simple fan controllers just offer speed control; others, like NZXT’s Sentry series, also include temperature sensors, which you can use to automatically control fan speeds based on the temperature of various parts of your system.

Must-Have Apps and Utilities

No PC is complete without these key programs

Google Chrome
Google Chrome remains the single-fastest web browser out there. Couple that with exclusive apps and a fully customizable web interface, and you’ve got a browser that no PC should be without.
www.google.com/chrome

Skype
Installing Skype allows you to talk face to face with anyone, anywhere, so long as they have the software and a webcam. Skype also allows you to set video conference calls, call mobile devices, and make international calls for additional fees.
www.skype.com

Secunia PSI
Installing updates for all your software can be a tedious chore, which is why Secunia Personal Software Inspector is essential. Watch as it automatically updates programs in need, with no effort on your end.
www.secunia.com

Dropbox
If you find yourself using more than one computing device daily, Dropbox makes it easy to share documents across all those devices, including smartphones.
www.dropbox.com

KeePass
Using top-of-the-line encryption algorithms AES and Twofish, KeePass acts as a password manager, allowing you to store all your passwords (e.g., email, Facebook, online banking) in a single and secure database that can only be accessed by you.
www.keepass.info

Revo Uninstaller
These days, it's simply not enough to use Windows to uninstall your programs, as harmful remnants can be left behind. Enter Revo Uninstaller, a free app that not only uninstalls software, but allows you to manually remove additional data left behind.
www.revouninstaller.com

Sumatra PDF
Sumatra PDF is a free PDF creator and viewer for Windows. It's a relatively small file, starts up extremely quickly, and is tremendously easy to use. It can also read XPS, DjVu, CBZ, and CBR files.
bit.ly/aHICnC

7-Zip
7-Zip is a fast, free file archiver that can pack and unpack a huge range of files, from ZIP to TAR files. It features an extremely easy-to-use interface that presents users with all facets of the unzipped file, automatically organized by folders.
www.7-zip.org

FileZilla
If you need to connect to an FTP server, FileZilla is the best way to go. It's easy to use and highly customizable—you can even configure your own transfer-speed limits and transfer up to 4GB of files.
www.filezilla-project.org

Digsby
With Digsby you can consolidate all of your instant messaging accounts into one centralized hub, supporting AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and Google Talk. It's also a handy notification tool for personal email.
www.digsby.com

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
Yes, you already have an AV program (right?), but it never hurts to have a second opinion or line of defense. For us, that's Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Free. It doesn't run auto scans, so it won't conflict with your other AV solution.
www.malwarebytes.org

SuperAntiSpyware
You could say that SuperAntiSpyware is the third prong in our three-prong approach to PC security. Like Malwarebytes', it provides yet another line of defense. And it's free, so why not avail your PC of this extra layer of protection?
www.superantispyware.com

How to Create a Personalized QR Code

Alex Castle — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:50:39 +0000

If you’ve been in a public space in the last year or two, you’ve probably seen a QR code—a small, square two-dimensional barcode that looks a bit like a miniature crossword puzzle. They’ve been around for more than 15 years, but they’ve recently exploded in popularity, thanks to smartphones, which are perfect QR-scanners.

Unlike traditional supermarket-style barcodes—which codify an identification number—QR codes are binary representations of numbers or letters, and can be many different sizes. A tiny QR code can represent just 30 numbers, and a giant one can represent thousands of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. With that much flexibility, everyone can find a use for QR codes. In this article, we’ll show you how to make a distinctive, personalized QR code to put on your business card, or anything else.

Step 1: Get Your vCard

We’re going to avoid the obvious joke here and let you know that vCard is a standard for digitally transmitting contact information. You might have encountered a vCard attached to an email message in the past, but they work great in QR codes, too—most QR reader apps are designed to detect vCards and automatically enter the data into the phone’s contact list.

There are plenty of sites that will create a vCard QR code for you automatically (just a Google search away), but we recommend the web app here.

There, you simply click the Select a Code Action drop-down box, and select Create a vCard. Then, enter your personal information into the boxes below (image above), and hit Generate Code. Note that QR code size is dependent on the number of characters encoded, so you might find yourself dealing with a giant, unwieldy code that will be hard to fit on a business card. To get it down to size, we recommend using only vital information, like your name, phone number, and email address.

Another way to get around having a huge QR code is to have a personal website with your contact info (perhaps in a downloadable vCard) and to embed a link to that in a QR code. You can use a link shortener to make the URL and QR code as small as possible, which you will want for the next section.

Step 2: Personalize Your Code

One downside to QR codes is that by default they look a little impersonal. If you want to give your business card some visual appeal, there are a couple of simple things you can do. For one, you can give it a more interesting color scheme. The QR code generator we recommended defaults to black-on-white, but you can tell it to use any color for the foreground or the background. Make sure the background is lighter than the foreground, and that there’s decent contrast between the two. Otherwise, reader apps may have a hard time with it.

An even neater-looking trick, and one that’s still easy to pull off is to use a subtle color gradient. To do this, just open your image editor of choice (Photoshop and the free GIMP both work great), create a color gradient, and then use your QR code as a mask for that layer (image below).

If you want to go a step further by introducing a logo into your QR code, that’s entirely possible, as well. Just make sure to use the highest error correction setting (this can be set in the web app we recommended earlier) when you generate your QR code. This will make the code larger, but will allow it to be read even if up to 30 percent of the code is erased and written over.

For best results, don’t place your graphic or logo over the tracking boxes in the corners of the code. With some trial and error, you should be able to find out what scans and what doesn’t (image above).

Build It: The Ultimate Windows Home Server

Nathan Edwards — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:58:34 +0000

Despite Microsoft’s apparent lack of love for Windows Home Server 2011—the company stripped Drive Extender from the final version, and good luck finding a retail Windows Home Server 2011 box in the U.S.—it’s still a great server OS for a Windows-heavy home environment. Backups are effortless, streaming is hassle-free, it’s easy to administer, and there are tons of add-ins available.

Given a choice between buying an off-the-shelf product and building one myself, I’ll opt for the build any day. And since you can’t get a retail WHS box in the U.S. anyway, I figured what the heck. I pinged Michael Brown, our home network guru, for advice, and together we spec’d out a Home Server Dream Machine, with a real CPU to handle on-the-fly transcoding and all the storage you can eat. No, you can’t buy a home server this nice anywhere. But if you like what you see, you can build one, too.

Fractal Design's Array chassis is a sleek and attractive home for my Home Server.

Ingredients

CPU	Intel Core i5-2405S	$220
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3	$115
RAM	4GB Corsair CMV4GX3M2A1333C	$30
RAID controller	HighPoint RocketRaid 2720SGL	$145
RAID cables	HighPoint Int-MS-1M4S (x2)	$30
Case	Fractal Designs Array R2 Mini‑ITX	$190
Storage	Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB (x5)	$900
OS Storage	Seagate Barracuda XT 1TB	$80
OS	Windows Home Server 2011	$60
Total		$1,770

Building the Perfect Server

A home server is a different animal from a standard rig. Since they’re designed to run headless, you don’t need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, except for the initial setup. Administration thereafter can be done remotely. You also don’t need a discrete videocard. What do you need? A decent CPU and RAM, a boatload of hard drives, and the means to run them.

Most off-the-shelf home servers ship with anemic Atom or ARM processors. I don’t play that way. Intel’s Core i5-2405S offers a quad-core 2.5GHz Sandy Bridge CPU with low power consumption and heat output. Its onboard video is nothing fancy, but good enough for the rare instances I’ll need to use it.

For my motherboard, I chose Gigabyte’s GA-H67-USB3-B3. The H67 chipset lets me use the CPU’s onboard graphics when I need to, its Mini-ITX form factor is perfect for a home server, and it’s inexpensive. It also has 6Gb/s SATA, which will be useful for the boot drive, and USB 3.0, in case I need to plug in additional external storage.

Fractal’s Array R2 chassis was an obvious choice for this WHS build. It’s beautiful, has a built-in 300W PSU with six SATA power leads, and has a drive tray that can hold up to six 3.5-inch hard drives.

The most important part of this build, of course, is the storage. Windows Home Server needs at least 160GB for its install partition, so I picked a 1TB boot drive because they’re not much more expensive than smaller-capacity drives. Because this server will hold backups of all my computers, as well as movies, music, and family photos, redundancy is important. Windows Home Server doesn’t have native data redundancy or RAID support, so I had to roll my own. HighPoint’s RocketRaid 2720SGL is a PCIe RAID card that supports up to eight SATA or SAS drives at 6Gb/s. I’m pairing it with five 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT drives.

Assembling the Hardware

Building the box was the easy part. The Fractal case is roomy and—once you remove the hard drive cage—easy to build into. I just mounted the CPU to the motherboard and installed the stock fan and RAM, then installed the motherboard and I/O shield into the case. The RAID card slots into the motherboard’s solitary PCIe connector and fits into one of the case’s two PCIe expansion slots. I secured the six hard drives into the hard drive cage with four screws each, then plugged the 1TB boot drive into one of the motherboard’s 6Gb/s SATA ports with one of the mobo’s included SATA cables, and the five 3TB drives into the HighPoint RAID card via the mini-SAS-to-SATA cable adapters.

Since the build doesn’t include an optical drive, I had to connect a USB optical drive in order to install Windows Home Server, the motherboard drivers, and the RAID software. If you don’t have an optical drive, you can snag one for around $30, or you can use ImgBurn on your PC to create a disk image of your WHS install DVD, and use Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to make a bootable USB drive.

Configuring the Software

If you’ve ever installed Windows 7, you know how to install WHS. Pick your language, select the primary hard drive (remember, we’re installing onto the 1TB drive, not the 3TB drives), and go make a pizza or something. In about 20 minutes, the installer will let you know that it can’t find a network driver (image below).

Insert the motherboard’s driver disc, then open Device Manager and navigate to Other Devices. Right-click the Network Adapter and select Update Driver Software, then “Browse my computer for driver software”. Navigate to your optical drive directory, then Network, then RLT8111. Select “include subdirectories.” Your driver should install and prompt you to restart. Then the Home Server installer will continue configuring, before asking you to set the system time. Sync the time to the Internet and move on.

Installing the RAID Card

Soon you’ll be presented with a familiar-looking desktop and a prompt to install device driver software for your RAID card. If you don’t see the prompt, right-click the RAID card entry in Device Manager. Download the most recent Windows Vista/2008/7 drivers, as well as the WebGUI installer, from bit.ly/qgKOkc, extract the driver, zip to your desktop, and, following the same procedures as above, navigate to the x64 folder and let the device driver install. Reboot.

Extract the WebGUI folder, right-click Setup.exe, and select Run as Administrator (image above). Follow the prompts to install it, then click the WebGUI shortcut on the desktop. Login using the username and password you got during install (default: RAID/hpt).

Creating the RAID

Navigate to Manage > Drives, and select Initialize Drives. You should see all five 3TB drives listed (image below, top). Select them all and hit Submit. Then go to Manage > Array, and select Create Array. Select all the drives and hit Submit. Now you have to choose a RAID level (image below, bottom). Since this is home backup, redundancy is important. I opted for RAID 6. RAID 6 is similar to RAID 5, except it uses two parity volumes, so it can tolerate failure of up to two drives without losing data. RAID 5 would have given us 12TB of usable space instead of the 9TB that RAID 6 gave us (out of 15TB total), but I felt the additional redundancy was worth it. Select Foreground initialization, Write Back cache policy, and 64KB block size. Create the maximum size RAID you can.

It’s very important that you select the 4K sector size instead of the default 512B; otherwise Windows won’t be able to see the whole 9TB array. Click Create. Now go away for about seven hours while the RAID builds. When you come back, verify that the RAID creation was successful, then you can go to the Dashboard.

Moving the Shares

Click Event Viewer, which should tell you that, hey, you have an unformatted hard disk available! Select “Format the hard disk” (image below) and you’ll see the 9TB (well, 8,393GB) array you just created. Format it! Now, here’s where it gets a little weird. Because WHS uses the .vhd virtual hard drive format for backing up, you can’t actually create a volume larger than 2,040GB. Therefore, your 8,393GB array is now four 2,040GB partitions plus a 223GB partition. That’s fine with me, as it provides a convenient way to categorize my shares.

Click “Server Folders and Hard Drives” in the Dashboard. You’ll see folders for backups, documents, music, pictures, and video shares. I used the “Move the folder” command to assign each to a different partition, just to be fancy (image below).

Now you have a Windows Home Server! From here, you can connect to your home server from each of your home computers to set up backup and remote administration. Feel free to disconnect your monitor, keyboard, and mouse now, and do the rest of your administration and configuration remotely. Just navigate to http://[your server’s name]/Connect from any of your home computers to download the Home Server Connect software.

Serving Up Awesome

Properly configured, a Windows Home Server is a joy to own because it hooks in so well to the rest of the Windows ecosystem. It’s easy to set up server-side backups of your home computers, designate per-user or HomeGroup read/write access, and configure media streaming options and remote web access, all from within the Dashboard on your PC (image G).

The server's six hard drives are positioned right in front of its 14cm intake fan, so they get the cool air first.

With 9TB of storage, my Windows Home Server offers plenty of space to back up my home computers and serve as the central repository for all my media. Add-ins can offer additional functionality; for tips on good add-ins I like the community site WeGotServed.com.

If this Home Server build seems like overkill to you, there are a number of ways to lower the price. If you don’t need two-disk redundancy, you can go from RAID 6 to RAID 5; this will let you go from five disks to four while still tolerating single-drive failures. Or you could save $170 by eliminating the RAID card and cables altogether, and just use the SATA ports on the motherboard. You’ll be limited to four drives, and you’ll lose the hardware RAID options, but Windows Home Server doesn’t require RAID, and given the 2TB limit on its virtual volumes, you might prefer independent disks anyway.

Windows Home Server is a lot easier to configure than was FreeNAS 7 the last time I took a look at it. I’ll be taking a look at FreeNAS 8.1 when it arrives, but this build has me convinced that the $60 for Windows Home Server 2011 is well worth the price, especially if you have a Windows-centric home.

How to Benchmark Your Android Phone for Free

Seamus Bellamy — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:00:08 +0000

Car nuts race their rides to see whose machine is the fastest. Fitness fanatics run marathons to test their physical limitations and endurance against that of their fellows. Geeks and gearheads? Our battles are fought and won on the basis of how capable our hardware is. While our desktops and laptops might be a thing of wonder to behold, carrying them around with us for the sake of collecting the accolades we deserve isn’t always convenient. Carrying around a smartphone or tablet, however, is. Benchmarking also provides the added benefit of telling you how well your phone manages the current version of your handset’s operating system and apps, as well as whether future OS upgrades will slow all that zippy mobile computing hotness to a bag of sluggish hardware fail. If you’re the owner of an Android handset, there’s a lot of options out there to see how hard your phone rocks. Here’s three of our favourite free benchmarking tools, along with the reasons why you should use them.

BenchmarkPi

BenchmarkPi gauges processor efficiency so well it’d make a grown man cry. The genius of BenchmarkPi is in its simplicity: By tasking how quickly your handset is able to calculate Pi to a particular number of decimal places, BenchmarkPi is able to ascertain how powerful your processor is. Additionally, the app is great at being able to tell whether or not your device is being overtasked by other programs running in the background, making it easyto troubleshoot problem apps. If you’re feeling competitive, you’re in luck: BenchmarkPi also maintains a constantly updated list of the top 300 Android phones out there, ranking them by their processing power.

Battery Graph

The harder your smartphone has to chug in order to crunch the numbers necessary to do important work like running a session of Minecraft Pocket Edition, the less juice your battery will have left for lower priority tasks such as calling your loved ones to assure them that you’re still alive and well despite the Creeper’s best efforts. Battery Graph is designed to run in the background on your handset while you go about your business. Start it up when you turn on your phone, and check it out at the end of the day. While you’re busy, texting, finding your way with Google Maps or having a jaw-wag with a co-worker via Skype, Battery Graph will quietly collect data on how each hoop you force your phone to jump through effects its battery. To snag a balanced benchmark of your battery’s performance, drain it all the way down and then charge it completely before starting. In order to paint a true picture of your battery’s performance, we recommend running Battery Graph over several days under normal operating conditions. Doing so will let you discover what applications and times of day take the biggest bite out of your battery’s life, as well as show you how long your battery lasts during an average day.

NenaMark 1 & 2

Available in two different flavors—one for high-end Android phones and the other for handsets wielded by mere mortals—NenaMark is one of the easiest ways to benchmark your phone’s GPU performance for free. By measuring the number of frames per second your smartphone can crank out in the face of parametric surfaces, varying light models, particles and reflections, NenaMark is able to ascertain whether your phone’s takes graphical hits like a champ or glass-jawed featherweight. Your handsets results can then be measured against those of other makes and models to see how your phone ranks.

How To Check Your (Rooted) Android Phone for Carrier IQ

Adriana Lee, TechnoBuffalo — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:07:03 +0000

Discovering that user-activity logging program Carrier IQ might be loaded on your phone is like finding out there’s a peeping tom in your neighborhood: You want to find out if your house was on the scumbag’s route or not. Well, if you have a rooted Android phone, you can do just that, thanks to a utility by Trevor Eckhart, the dev responsible for uncovering this scandal.

Eckhart posted an .APK that allows these Android users to test their devices for programs like CIQ, and it’s available as a free and paid ($1) version. (The latter allows you to not only find the offending software, but also remove it.) His post over at XDA-Developers.com says: “It can be used to verify what logging is being done on your phone and where data is going to. It will assist you in manually removing parts you do not running (see post#1), or you can go pro for automatic everything (and support me).”

Both The Verge and RedmondPie tested this on Samsung Galaxy SII devices, and in their cases, the tests came up negative. The Verge notes, however, that users in the related forums did experience a few issues, so you’ll want to exercise caution if you give this a shot. For more info, or to download the free version, click here to go to the post at XDA-Developers.com. (Bear in mind, to get the pro version, users will have to install the free version first and then pay a buck over at the Android Market to get a pro key.)

Again, this is for rooted Androids only. Oh, and before you install, you’ll also want to enable “Unknown sources” in Settings > Applications.

Are you going to give it a shot? If you do, be sure to report on your findings below.

TechnoBuffalo.com is a technology site created by a team of professional writers that are self-proclaimed tech-enthusiasts. Their articles cover a breadth of technology-related issues and topics from the everyday uses to the business side of the industry.

How to Install & Configure the Windows 8 Developer Preview

Tim Ferrill — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:08:47 +0000

With Windows 8, Microsoft is reimagining the most basic premises of personal computers. CEO Steve Ballmer recognizes the drastic changes coming in Windows 8, even calling the platform one of the biggest risks taken by the industry giant. The UI changes and fundamental paradigm shifts that Windows 8 brings to the table are making a lot of power users eager to give the platform a trial run, even in its current state as a Developer Preview.

If you want to take the plunge and give Windows 8 a try, there are some things you should know ahead of time. First, the current build of Windows 8 is intended as a Developer Preview. This is pre-beta software, meaning there will be bugs and even major missing features. We don’t recommend installing Windows 8 as your primary system, but we do encourage you to take it for a spin and spend some time tinkering under the hood. And we recommend that you use good backup practices for any data you put on your Windows 8 system, as stability may be an issue.

Step 1 - Prepare to Install

Whenever you are looking to install new software, especially a new operating system, your first step should be to review the system requirements.

Fortunately, the system requirements for Windows 8 are identical to those for Windows 7. In fact, a baseline Windows 8 installation will consume fewer system resources than a baseline Windows 7 SP1 build. So if you’re already running Windows 7, you’re in good shape. Note, however, that there are special requirements for touch input.

Microsoft has provided both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows 8 Developer Preview installation media, both freely available from MSDN. For best results, you should verify that your media downloaded correctly using the hash provided by Microsoft. The .iso files provided can be easily burned to a DVD using native tools in Windows 7 or your preferred DVD software.

Step 2 - Install

There are a couple of different decisions that must be made before you begin any OS install. The first is whether you want the OS to coexist with another in a dual-boot scenario or if you are simply going to overwrite any existing OS installs. Dual-booting provides you with some flexibility to fall back to an existing platform, but also adds complexity in terms of drive partitioning. The other decision is the method of installation. The typical method for installing an operating system is using a bootable disc, which gives you the ability to install the Windows 8 OS to a second hard drive or partition. The Windows 8 Developer Preview will also allow you to install from within a previous Windows version, providing you the option to retain accounts, files, and settings (if installing from Vista or Windows 7). We’ll walk you through both options.

The most common method for installing a new operating system on your computer is to boot from a setup disc, in this case a DVD. After inserting the disc and choosing to boot from your optical drive, the Windows 8 setup wizard will look very similar to the Windows 7 install. The first screen prompts you to enter your location information in order to configure your keyboard and other locale-specific settings (image above), and the second contains the button to actually begin the installation.

As with most Windows installations, Windows 8 displays Upgrade or Custom (advanced) options. One of the key differences in using the boot-disc installation is that the Upgrade choice is actually a dead-end. To upgrade from a previous install of Windows, you’ll need to use the Windows-based setup utility.The next step in this exercise is choosing the drive or partition for your Windows 8 install (image above). As with Windows 7, you have the option to use empty drive space, reformat an existing partition, or install over an existing Windows instance. If you choose the latter option, system and user files will be placed in the Windows.old directory to be accessed later. Choose your option and hit next—the installer will take over from there.

Alternative - Setup From Windows

Using the Setup option from within a previous version of Windows is a relatively simple prospect. After inserting the setup disc, the installer will ask if you’d like to get updates to the installer itself, which is a nice benefit (image below).

You’ll be asked a couple of simple questions—click the Install button at the end and setup will proceed. Once installation is complete, you will be prompted to configure Windows 8 for the first time.

Step 3 - Initial Configuration

Once you’ve successfully completed the install of the Windows 8 Developer Preview, there are still some configuration steps to take before you can start playing around with the system (image below). If you’re the impatient type, the “Use express settings” button is your shortcut to the end result. We recommend choosing the Customize option, which allows you to step through each setting and verify that your machine is configured perfectly.

Assuming you chose the Customize button, the next screen you see asks for your sharing settings—basically, whether you want to share files or devices with other computers on your network. The next screen allows you to configure settings for automatic updates and system protection tools like SmartScreen Filter in Internet Explorer. The rest of the configuration process is fairly self-explanatory.

Now that the system is configured, it’s time to get your account set up. There are a couple of options at this point that require some attention. Windows 8 will allow you to use local computer accounts, just like prior versions of Windows, or you can log in with your Windows Live account (image above). Using the Windows Live option will give you some additional features, like the ability to synchronize files and settings between multiple Windows 8 computers. If you used the Windows-based setup and selected the option to retain your user account information, you will be required to enter your old password in order to complete that process. Associating your existing account with Windows Live is completely optional, but if you forgo this choice you will miss out on some of the key new functionality in Windows 8.

Step 4 - Try it Out

Now that you’ve successfully navigated the installation process, it’s time to play with the shiny new Metro UI. Resist the urge to jump straight to the Windows Desktop—Metro is the future of Windows (image below). Though the UI is designed to be extremely touch friendly, Microsoft has made an effort to make it usable for users with a mouse and keyboard, as well. You can activate Metro apps with a mouse click, rearrange tiles by clicking and dragging, and search by simply typing a word or phrase.

There are a few common gestures you should become familiar with. Placing your mouse in the bottom‑left corner of the screen will access the “Charm” menu (image below), which gives you quick access to Search, Settings, and Sharing. Placing your mouse on the far left edge of the screen will bring up a thumbnail of the last app you used. Clicking this thumbnail will return you to the app.

OK, the training wheels are off and you’re on your own. Enjoy the ride!

How To Access Region-Locked Content Online

Brad Chacos — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:24:42 +0000

We may call the glorious series of tubes the World Wide Web, but that doesn’t mean you can view every website’s content all around the globe. Many of the big name content providers – like Steam, Netflix, Pandora and BBC – employ region locks to limit their services to specific countries. But this is the Internet we’re talking about, so naturally, there are ways around the roadblocks.

A few notes before we begin: the solutions offered below aren’t perfect. Surfing speeds are usually slow, content providers sometimes restrict access from certain proxies and VPNs, and you often have to pay proxy owners for access to streaming content. Got it? Good, let’s go spoofing!

Proxies

The easiest way to bypass many region locks is by using free “High Anonymous” proxy servers, which don’t identify themselves as proxies when connecting to websites; find them by searching proxy aggregators like proxy.org or running a quick Google search for “<country name> free proxy”. Most free proxies don’t allow streaming, however, so you’ll have to do some digging. FoxyProxy offers access to high-speed proxies in countries around the world, but you have to pay for access.

A lot of proxies use an in-browser interface to get the obscuring job done, but others require you to manually tweak your browser’s proxy server settings. Here’s how to do it.

Internet Explorer

Click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner > “Internet options” > “Connections” tab > “Lan Settings”. Check the box next to “Use a proxy server…” and enter the proxy’s info in the “Address:” and “Port” fields. If the server uses additional settings, click on the “Advanced” button to input them.

Firefox

Click “Firefox button” > “Options” > “Options” > “Advanced” tab > “Settings”. Select “Manual Proxy Configuration” and enter the information provided by your proxy server.

Chrome

In Chrome, you want to click the button marked "Change Proxy Settings" in the Options Screen.

VPNs

Virtual Private Networks often offer better region-cracking success than free proxies, but if you want to stream content, you usually have to pay for a premium VPN service. UltraVPN and HotSpot Shield are two free VPN services that allow U.S.-based streaming, but major services like Hulu and Netflix often block access by their servers. Make sure whatever VPN you choose offers IP addresses for the country you want to access content from.

Many VPNs use stand-alone applications that you simply activate and log in to. Others may ask you to connect manually. Here’s how to do just that in Windows 7/Vista:

Click “Control Panel” > “Network and Sharing Center” > “Set up a connection or network” > “Connect to a workplace” > “Next”. If prompted, click “No, I’ll create a new connection.” Connect via “Use my Internet connection,” and enter a name and the address provided to you by your VPN. Afterwards, connect to the VPN by selecting it from the network icon in the system tray. You’ll need to enter your supplied username and password to access the VPN.

Other Devices

Your options are few if you want to stream region locked content to gadgets like an iPad or Boxee Box rather than computers. Two premium DNS redirection services allow users to watch U.S.-locked content on devices (and computers) all around the world: Unblock-us and UnoTelly. Reports say these $5 services work well and speedily, but only for the devices and services listed on their websites. All you have to do to use them is sign up and tweak your gadget’s DNS server settings; you can find device-specific instructions on the respective sites.

Payment and Location

A quick note on payment options: accessing region-locked content on premium services like Steam and Netflix requires you to have a credit card from the country you’re spoofing. A prepaid Entropay virtual card lets you hop that hurdle (Unblock-us has a great tutorial), but you’ll still need to enter a valid country-specific physical address when registering with content sites. Usually, any valid address will do. Just sayin’. Remember not to do any banking, including Entropay transactions, while connected through a VPN or proxy.

Teaser image credit: Unblock-us.com

How to Run Android Apps on your Blackberry Playbook

Seamus Bellamy — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:07:45 +0000

The Blackberry Playbook is the red-headed stepchild of the tablet world. Since being revealed this past year, just about everyone’s taken a swing at it: Pundits dug it’s hearty hardware specs, but decried the device’s lack of native email or calendar functionality. Consumers loyal to the Blackberry name felt compelled to purchase the tablet based on the love they had for their Canadian built handsets, but quickly found the apps on offer in Blackberry App World to be few, with many of the available titles of embarrassingly poor quality. In the face of shrinking profit margins and angry device owners screaming at the front gates of their Waterloo, Canada headquarters with torches and pitchforks, Research in Motion announced the release of the 2.0 iteration of the Playbook’s OS—an operating system that tweaked what needed tweaking, offered on-device PIM management, the company’s much lauded Blackberry Messenger Service and the ability to load Android applications.

Thanks to the difficulties that RIM is having with getting BBM to work with the Playbook’s QNX powered operating system, the launch of Playbook 2.0 has been delayed until February, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the benefits of rocking a few Android applications on your Playbook right now. Thanks to the clever coding efforts of a number of Blackberry enthusiasts, a little elbow grease, and some patience, you’ll end up with a RIM-built tablet that’s not only functional (finally), but also down right enjoyable to use.

Step One: Upgrade The Playbook OS

Disclaimer: By downloading and installing Playbook OS 2.0, you’ll gain access to the ability to run specially recoded Android applications, you may lose the ability to operate some of the Playbook apps that you’ve downloaded from Blackberry App World. Also, if you were hoping to gain early access to the OS upgrade’s much touted native email, calendar or contact apps, proceed no further, as these features will not be available until February. Proceed with the download at your own risk.

While RIM has no plans to release Playbook OS 2.0 until February 2012, the company is currently offering a developer’s build of the software and it’s wicked easy to get your hands on. Start by opening your PC’s browser and navigating to https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/android/beta/bbtablet20/register/ where you can register your tablet with RIM’s beta access program.

In order to download your copy of Playbook OS 2.0, you’ll need to enter your Playbook’s PIN number, which can be found on your tablet by opening its device settings page and then looking under About, tap the drop down menu in the top right of the page and select Hardware. Your tablet’s PIN number will be listed at the top of the page. A few minutes after submitting your PIN to RIM, the 2.0 upgrade will appear as being available on your Playbook. Connect your Playbook to a power source and follow the device's on screen prompts.

The upgrade to the new operating system must be completed within 24 hours, otherwise, you’ll have to start the application and process all over again.

Step Two: Place the Playbook into Development Mode

After you finish gawking at the changes to your Playbook’s operating system, access its settings and under the security pane, set a new password for your tablet. For obvious reasons, make sure it’s something you’ll remember, as you’ll have need it in order to access your Playbook (duh), as well as to side load .BAR files from your PC (not so duh).

Next, switch your Playbook into Development Mode. This setting can also be found under the tablet's security pane. When you slide the Development Mode switch into the ON position, you’ll be prompted to enter a password. Use the one you created just a few moments ago.

Close your Playbook’s Settings page and return to the main screen. Look to the top right of the screen: See that little dude with the cogwheel stamped into his chest? The icon indicates that you’ve successfully entered Development Mode.

Step Three: Install Java Runtime Environment

With Playbook side of things taken care of for the time being, it’s time to turn your attention to your computer. In order to install .BAR files to your Playbook, you’ll need to have the latest version of Oracle’s Java Runtime Environment installed. The installer can be downloaded here. Follow the installer’s prompts and install the software to the suggested default location.

Step Four: The Right Tools for the Job

Until recently, side loading .BAR files to the Playbook was a frustrating process thanks in no small part to RIM’s byzantine combination of development standards and needful tools. When the possibility to convert Android .APK files into .BAR files so that they could be loaded on to a Playbook became a viable option for the tablet’s users base, Playbook aficionados began working tirelessly to not only see what Android apps would run after being converted for use on QNX powered Blackberry hardware, but also devised more efficient methods for installing the files. One of our favorites has been devised by HaTax—Blackberry developer and insanely active member of crackberry.com’s user forums. Thanks to HaTaX’s free Playbook toolset, installing .BAR files has become a drag-and-drop operation. The Playbook toolset can be downloaded here.

Once the download is complete, unzip the file and locate the the PB-installer batch file. Using Notepad or another text editor, open the batch file. One you’ve opened the file, you’ll need to hunt down two things: A line that starts “TABLETIP=“ and another that reads “TABLETPASS=”. Enter your Playbook’s IP address (located under the same pane as where you turned development mode on back in Step Two), and your tablet’s password, respectively. Save the file and close it.

Step Five: Find Some Apps

Converting .APK files to BAR files isn’t an easy process, and requires a lot of preparation including a Blackberry developer’s account, hardware signing key, Android SDK and of course, the Android APK files you want to convert. Even once you have everything set up and ready to go, there’s no guarantee that the file has been converted for installation as a .BAR will work. Until February and the official release of the Playbook 2.0 operating system roll around, running Android apps on a Playbook is an experimental venture which, depending on the application, can provide very mixed results.

Fortunately, Playbook users with the time and the tools to do the job have been hard at work building a database of Playbook-compatible Android apps that have already been tested and proven capable. The database, which can be found here, also includes listings for applications that are currently being tested, as well as any that have failed to open on the Playbook after being converted. Click the links for the apps that interest you and download them to your rig. For those looking to plug that PIM gap left by RIM thus far, it’s worth noting that Google’s Android Email, Calendar and Contacts apps have all been converted to .BAR files and are yours for the taking. Remember to check the database on a regular basis, as more apps are being added all the time.

Step Six: Installation

You’ve got a Playbook, you’ve got the software and you’ve the apps. It’s time to put it all together. Plug your Playbook into an available USB port and wait for it to be recognized by Windows. Once the tablet mounts, simply click on the .BAR file you want to install and drag it to HaTax’s batch file. If you correctly inserted your Playbook’s IP address and password as instructed back in Step Four, the .BAR file will be installed to your tablet, appearing on your Playbook’s home screen just as if you’d downloaded it from Blackberry App World.

Hopefully, this process will hold Playbook users over until January when the process for getting Android software on to RIM hardware will no doubt get a whole lot easier.

Build It: A First-Class Gaming & Media PC for the Living Room

Nathan Edwards — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:05:08 +0000

Get Gaming on an HTPC

I don't want to watch cable TV. I don't want to use a controller. I just want to watch 3D Blu-rays and frag people with a mouse and keyboard, all on a box that fits on my entertainment center. Is that too much to ask?

We’ve built our fair share of home theater PCs in the past, with all sorts of different use cases in mind. Our August 2010 HTPC was a stunner built for 3D, with passively cooled GPU, CPU, and PSU, as well as a four-channel CableCard tuner and Blu-ray 3D support. In June 2011, Gordon tried to make a small-form-factor HTPC that could cut out the previous build’s bulk (and CableCard) while still supporting Blu-ray 3D. Both of those rigs handled their respective tasks well, but what if I don’t care about cable but do care about gaming? This month’s task is to create a kick-ass gaming rig in an HTPC form factor—one that can handle modern games, as well as 3D Blu-ray and Dolby TrueHD audio, without sounding like a jet engine.

The Right Tools for the Job

When building a PC for the living room, the first thing to consider is the chassis. After testing many cases, including Lian Li’s PC-P50 and Silverstone’s oldie-but-goodie CW02, I settled on the Silverstone GD06, a microATX case with three 12cm cooling fans, front-panel USB 3.0 ports (with internal header!), and two hot-swap SATA bays. The other cases were roomier, but I wanted to keep the footprint as small as possible.

The videocard needs to be able to handle Blu-ray 3D and support HDMI 1.4a for true lossless HD audio. That’s the easy part. It also has to have the power to play today’s games, and the GTX 560Ti has that. MSI’s Twin Frozr II version is speedy, factory-overclocked, quiet, and doesn’t draw a lot of power. For Blu-ray playback, we’re hitting up an old favorite: Plextor’s PX320-SA.

The GD06's front panel latches when not in use to prevent miscreants from waltzing off with your drives.

We’re not crippling this rig with an Atom or Fusion board. Asus’s Maximus IV Gene-Z combines a powerful Z68 gaming platform with easy overclocking, two PCIe x16 slots, onboard 6Gb/s SATA, and X-Fi-branded onboard audio using Realtek codecs. Intel’s Core i5-2500K brings four unlocked processors at 3.3GHz.

I picked a speedy 6Gb/s SATA SSD for an OS drive, and a large-capacity drive for media storage. The case’s front hot-swap SATA bays make it easy to add more storage later.

Ingredients

Case	Silverstone GD06	$130
PSU	Silverstone Strider Essential ST70F-E 700W	$85
Motherboard	Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z	$180
CPU	Intel 3.3GHz Core i5-2500k	$220
Cooling	Stock Intel Cooler	$0
GPU	MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti	$240
RAM	2x 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3/1600	$100
Optical Drive	Blu-ray Combo Drive Plextor PX-B320SA	$110
SSD	120GB Corsair Force GT	$220
HDD	3TB WD Caviar Green	$115
OS	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (OEM)	$100
Total		$1,500

Step 1: Prep the Case

Remove the three screws securing the top cover of the GD06, then slide the cover off of the case. Unlock and open the front-panel bezel. Take out the four little screws securing the optical drive bay, and remove the bay. Do the same with the four screws holding the HDD trays. Lift out the bays and set them aside (image below).

Step 2: Install the PSU

Stick the four rubber feet that ship with the case onto the underside of the PSU (the side with the intake fan). Mount the PSU with the fan pointing to the bottom of the case.

Step 3: Install the CPU, Cooler, and RAM

Open the CPU gate and remove the plastic socket protector. Align the CPU with the socket and gently lower it into place (image below, left). Lower the gate and secure the CPU. Since we’re using the stock cooler, all you have to do is remove the plastic cover, make sure the stock thermal pads are in place, and align the four posts on the heatsink with the mounting holes in the motherboard. Press down firmly on two opposite pins at a time until you hear a firm click, then repeat for the other two pins (image below, right). Make sure the cooler is firmly attached; it shouldn’t wobble. Connect the CPU fan to the CPU_FAN header. Mount the RAM in either the red slots or the black slots.

Step 4: Mount the Motherboard

Install the motherboard I/O shield in the case, then put a motherboard standoff into the rightmost center hole (when viewed from the rear of the case)—this is the only standoff you need for microATX that isn’t preinstalled in the chassis. Slide the motherboard into the case (image below), aligning the I/O ports with the I/O shield, and screw the motherboard screws into the standoffs.

Step 5: Connect Cables

The trickiest part of this build is the wiring. As you perform each step, keep the next steps in mind. Plan ahead and make sure to coil excess cable and secure it to tiedowns when possible.

Connect one end of a black SATA cable to one of the four gray SATA ports on the motherboard. Connect the PSU’s 24-pin ATX power connector to the board. Run the 8-pin ATX power cable along the bottom edge of the motherboard, and then up behind the I/O ports to the AUX input (image above, left). Set aside a SATA power cable, the dual-6-pin PCI Express power cable, and a 4-pin Molex power cable, and tie the remaining PCI Express and SATA power cables down in front of the motherboard (image above, right) using the cable ties included with the case.

Coil the front-panel connectors until they’re just long enough to reach the pins, then connect them to the motherboard’s pinout. Install the pinout onto the board (image above). Tie down the excess cable. Attach the front-panel audio and USB 3.0 headers, pulling excess cable below the optical drive bay. Plug the system fans into fan headers on the motherboard.

Step 6: Install the GPU

Remove the two PCI expansion slot covers closest to the I/O ports and install the GPU, making sure to run the ATX auxiliary power cable beneath it. Plug the two PCI-E 6-pin plugs into the ports on the end of the card (image below).

Step 7: Install the Drives

Attach the SSD to the underside of the hard drive bracket using the four SSD screws (image below, left). Plug a 6Gb/s SATA cable into the SSD. Plug the two SATA cables from the hot-swap bays to two of the mobo’s gray SATA ports, and attach the other end of the SATA cable from the SSD into one of the red ports.

Attach the two 4-pin Molex connectors from the hot-swap bays to two of the 4-pin connectors from the PSU (image above, right). Attach the end SATA data connector from the cable you moved over earlier. Replace the hard drive tray and reattach the four screws that hold it in place. Slide your mass storage drive into one of the hot-swap bays and close the door.

Step 8: Install the Blu-ray Drive

Attach the optical drive to the optical drive tray (image below), making sure the mounting holes on the drive are aligned with the front set of mounting holes on the tray. Attach with four optical-drive mounting screws and plug in the SATA power and SATA data cables you previously routed to the area. Reinstall the drive bay using the four screws you removed in Step 1.

Step 9: Wrap it Up

Slot the storage drive into one of the front hot-swap bays, and then replace the case’s top cover. Install OS and drivers, and away you go!

It's Got Game!

I worried that an actively cooled gaming rig in an HTPC chassis would be too noisy, especially compared to passively cooled rigs like our August 2011 machine. But all builds involve compromises, and I wasn’t willing to give up gaming performance in exchange for a few decibels. Fortunately, the GD06’s fans are pretty quiet, and MSI’s Twin Frozr II cooler makes the GTX 560 Ti run quietly, as well. The rig only really got loud when I was installing driver updates from the optical drive. The drive runs much more quietly when playing a movie.

And to my relief, the system is pretty speedy. Our zero-point machine is an aging-but-still-powerful overclocked Core i7-920 with a dual-GPU videocard. The Sandy Bridge processor and GTX 560 Ti helped the gaming HTPC hold its own reasonably well in the benchmarks despite a stock-clocked processor sans Hyper-Threading.

The tight quarters of the GD06 don't leave much room for a fancy wiring job, but the positive air pressure generated by its three 12cm intake fans ensures that the components stay cool.

The rig plays 3D Blu-ray and offers a protected Dolby TrueHD audio path via the videocard’s 1.4a-compatible Mini HDMI port—essential elements in a home theater PC. If you must have cable, you can drop in Ceton’s InfiniTV tuner and a CableCard. If you must have a dedicated soundcard, you can add in one of those. If you’re really crazy, you can add both. I prefer to go without either and save the $650. I still have access to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and anything I can stream over my home network.

It's also great for games. Some of us like gaming on a giant screen, and we want to use a mouse and keyboard when we do. And now we can, with a box that’s far more powerful than any console.

If you’re curious about the rest of an HTPC setup—recommended remotes, peripherals, sound systems, TVs, and more—check out our guide to the Ultimate 3D HTPC from last year. The peripheral recommendations still stand, though 3D-compatible TVs have only gotten easier to come by.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat (eww), and my gaming HTPC isn’t the same as yours. What would you change? What essential part did I miss? What totally unnecessary expense did I incur? Email your critiques, build suggestions, and more to comments@maximumpc.com!

Benchmarks

	Zero Point PC	Gaming HTPC
Vegas Pro 9 (sec)	3,049	3,411 (-11%)
Lightroom 2.6 (sec)	356	312
Proshow 4 (sec)	1,112	986
Reference 1.6 (sec)	2,113	2,258 (-6%)
STALKER (fps)	42.0	34.1 (-19%)
Far Cry 2 (fps)	114.4	91.9 (-20%)

Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked to 1,750MHz, on a Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate.

How to Protect Your Boot Drive with BitLocker

Alex Castle — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:21:20 +0000

When it comes to protecting the data on your computer, you can’t do better than strong encryption. Properly encrypted, your files are safe even if a ne’er-do-well gains access to your computer, either physically or through a network. In the past, we’ve discussed how to use various encryption tools to encrypt individual files or create virtual, encrypted drives. Now, we’ll look at how to get maximum security by encrypting your boot disk using the BitLocker full-drive encryption system that’s built into Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise.

Step 1: Assess Your System

Ideally, you have a motherboard with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip. A TPM chip securely stores cryptographic keys, which BitLocker uses to access your boot drive before Windows even loads. The TPM also detects any early boot files that have been modified, protecting you from rootkits and other low-level malware. You can check with your motherboard manufacturer to see if you have a TPM, or you can just attempt to go straight to Step 3. If you don’t see a message that looks like the image below, you’re good to go. Otherwise, you don’t have a TPM and you’ll need to continue to Step 2.

You'll also need an additional, small partition on any boot drive you wish to encrypt in order to use BitLocker. Windows creates this extra partition by default during installation, but even if you don’t have one, the BitLocker software can create it for you.

Step 2: Enable USB Key Storage

By default, BitLocker requires a TPM chip to work. To change this, open the group policy editor by bringing up the Run menu (press Win + R) and then typing gpedit.msc.

Navigate through the hierarchy on the left side of the group policy editor, selecting the following folders, in order: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > BitLocker Drive Encryption > Operating System Drives (image below). Once you’ve found the right folder, double-click “Require additional authentication at startup” to edit that policy entry.

In the policy editor, all you need to do is click the radio button marked Enabled. In the bottom‑left, a checkbox labeled “Allow BitLocker without a compatible TPM” should already be checked. If it isn’t, check it. Click OK and exit the group policy editor.

Step 3: Enable BitLocker

The actual process of enabling BitLocker is straightforward: You can right-click a drive in Explorer and click Turn On BitLocker, or you can go to the BitLocker section of the control panel and enable it on any drive from there.

As long as you’ve followed the previous two steps, you should see a screen asking you for your BitLocker startup preferences. If you have a TPM, you have three options. If you select “Use BitLocker without additional keys” your startup process will be basically unchanged. Someone with access to your computer will be able to get at your data, but you’ll be protected from rootkits and from people accessing your data remotely. Alternatively, you can choose to enter a PIN every time you log in.

If you’re using the USB method, you only have access to the last option, “Require a Startup key at every startup.” With this method, you’ll only be able to boot your computer while you have a USB drive with a startup key inserted in the machine.

Once you select an option, you’ll be asked to insert a USB drive to use as the key, and you’ll choose where to store your recovery key, which you'll need if you want to decrypt your data on a different computer, or if the TPM detects a problem. It will take some time for BitLocker to encrypt your drive, but once it’s finished, your data is safe. Anyone attempting to boot from your drive without the proper key won’t even get to the Windows boot screen (image above).

How-To: Build a Site With Drupal Gardens

Seamus Bellamy — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:06:37 +0000

In a world where most of us have turned to expressing ourselves in snippets through the use of services like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, there’s still a place in this world for websites. After all, 140 characters might get be enough to push out a message concerning how much you drank last night and where you think you left your pants, but unless you’re a MAG Poetry Prize winner, you might have some difficulty at expressing the emotions you felt in seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time on your summer vacation. It goes without saying that for businesses, having a website to showcase or offer support your products is a no-brainer.

These days, those looking to build their own site are spoiled for choice. For those that just want to throw their pictures, video and photos up online without worrying about anything more than what template to use and an occasional bit of spellchecking, Tumblr, Blogger or Windows Live Spaces are all great ways to go. If you demand more control over your site’s look and functionality, you can rely on open source Content Management Systems like Joomla, Drupal or WordPress. Unfortunately, to get the most out of these users often need to be prepared to fulfill the role of both a content creator as well as a back end site administrator, dealing with frustrations such as choosing a reputable ISP, setting up your home computer to act as a server, deciding whether or not to download new versions of the and dealing with PHP databases.

Isn’t there a happy middle ground?

Acquia seems to think so. If Drupal Gardens is any indicator, they may very well be on to something. By taking the power of the of the open source Drupal 7 Content Management System and combining it with turnkey-style site management, Drupal Gardens offers up a Drupal-a-Service platform allowing users to go from nil to an up and running site in well under and hour. With Drupal Gardens, there’s no need to worry about backend administration, working with frustrating FTP uploads or paying scads to a talented web developer for his years of dedicated technical education. Simply sign up for an account, set up your site and get posting. How do you get started? It goes a little something like this:

Step One: Sign Up

Using the web browser of your choice, navigate to the Drupal Gardens website. If you still need some coaxing on the fact that Acquia’s service is right for you, you’ve come to the right place: The page is chock full of highlights surrounding what makes it a great option. Once you’re convinced, click Create a Free Site to get the ball rolling.

In doing so, you’ll be directed to a sign up page that demands you designate a site URL, select a username, password and provide an email address to bind it all together. As Drupal Gardens is a relatively new service, chances are that you won’t have too much difficulty snagging a domain name that works for you. That said, don’t be too surprised to find that obvious names like scott.drupalgardens.com have been taken (because it totally has). Once you’ve settled on your credentials, click the continue button.

Step Two: Choose Your Weapon

While a blog might be great for keeping a concise online record of your cat’s busy life, it doesn’t do much if you’re trying to promote a product or a service. Fortunately, Drupal Gardens accounts for this and offers a number of stylistic alternatives including a template optimized for promoting a product or service and another designed to help groups discuss or push their agenda forward. If none of Drupal Garden’s basic templates do it for you, there’s also the option to create a template to meet your particular needs. Acquia also provides their clients with the ability to pick and choose what services will show up on their sites. Must-haves like a rotating banner, an area for your Twitter feed, feedback and contact forms can all be turned off with push-button simplicity. When you're content with the type of site and feature set you’ve selected, click Continue.

Step Three: Reticulating Splines

At this point, as can be seen by the progress bar you’re presented with, your Drupal Gardens site is well on the way to being set up. Check your inbox: By now you should have received an email from drupalgardens.com that lets you know your account has been created and to remind you of your login credentials. Once your site is created, you’ll also receive a second email requesting that you verify your email is being helmed by a button-mashing human being and not some godless spamming machine. When it shows up, click the link to complete the set up process. In doing so, you’ll be directed to your site. If you don’t feel like responding to the email’s demands right away, don’t worry—you have seven days to click the link before your Drupal Gardens site and account are both deleted. Now, let’s move on. This is where things get interesting.

Step Four: Welcome Home

While it might not be much to look at yet, your new Drupal Gardens digs are set up and ready to be tweaked. Where services like Tumblr leave you to your own devices, Acquia has been good enough to provide you with a few sample posts, and other filler content to all new Drupal Gardens sites in order to give users a feel for the template they’ve chosen. Had enough of a feel? Good—time to make it your own.

Step Five: Master of Your Domain

Drupal Gardens, as with Drupal 7, can be controlled an manipulated via the administration toolbar at the top of your browser. Only users who have signed into the service can see or interact with the administration toolbar. Here’s the low-down on its various functions:

Dashboard: Clicking this link provides you with an overview of the latest updates to your Drupal Gardens site.

Contents: Shows a list of all of your site’s content, as well as who is responsible for posting it. An administrator can create publish, unpublish, edit, or delete any of the site’s posts from here.

Structure: Essentially, the structure link lets you decide what appears on your site and where it shows up. From here, you can configure your Drupal Gardens site’s Blocks (more on that in a bit), the content types, Menus, create simple content lists and your site’s Taxonomy.

Appearance: With the options available via the Appearance link, you can pimp your site out to your heart’s content. Foibles like the site’s layout, color palette, space for a custom logo, font customization, page borders and pre-made themes are only a few mouse clicks away. For the skilled (or adventurous), there’s also an option to putter about with Cascading Style Sheets.

People: From here, you can invite new people to your site under a wide variety of permissions levels. If anyone gets out of line, the People overlay also provides the the ability to block or delete users who get out of line… online.

Modules: With Drupal, Modules make the magic happen. Nothing on your site happens without them. The Modules link makes it a cinch to enable or disable the modules that make your site tick, adding or taking away functionality with a few mouse clicks. While some of the modules must be enabled at all times, Drupal Gardens provides users with a wide variety of additional modules to help you customize your site’s look and feel.

Configuration: As the link’s name suggest, from here, users are able to configure a wide variety of their site’s functions, including account settings, Content authoring defaults, how media such as photos, audio, and video are presented, language settings and a number of administrative functions.

Reports: With this link, you can check in on your site’s stats, recent log messages, and other important site information. For individuals looking to leverage their website for sales, media relations or product information, these metrics are vital.

Step Six: Upgrades

While Drupal Garden’s free offerings will sate the website building appetite of most users, Acquia also offers a number of tiers of additional service that allows for a number of finishing touches like additional storage, one-to-one technical support, additional responses for any of your site’s web forms, and even the use of a custom domain name.

Now that your site is up and running, don’t be afraid to tinker! Drupal’s reputation as a flexible, durable CMS is well-earned, thanks to the hard work of countless developers volunteering their time over the years. The chances of your breaking anything is pretty minimal. If you do find a way to flummox the works, don’t fret: the helpful folks at Drupal Gardens forums are standing by to help you unbugger just about anything you accidentally bugger up.