You are no doubt reading this article because you have a new phone Android brilliant, but there’s just one problem: you’re so addicted that the battery is running out on a daily basis. Instead of putting the phone down, we will maximize the battery life.

Saving the life of the battery is not rocket science, the general principle is to get rid of what is draining the battery the most, and attitude to other things that you should use, but maybe you can change a little. Keep reading for the full explanation.

Use the built-in screen using the battery

There is a screen built into Android that most casual users probably do not even know, and can tell you exactly what is killing your battery. Head to Settings -> About Phone -> Using the battery to see what has been killing your battery life.

From this screen, you can usually see what apps are the worst offenders, and you will probably notice that the biggest problem—at least, the biggest one that we can fix—is actually the backlight on the phone. Personally I’d prefer to talk less to other humans, but that isn’t always an option!

Note: on my phone, I’ve already configured the backlight to not be very bright—normally that number would be a lot higher.

Adjust the Backlight to be Less Bright

Since we’ve already determined that the backlight is usually the biggest problem, Continue Reading ->

Everybody knows that Firefox has add-ons for virtually everything, but if you don’t want to bloat your installation you’ve always got the option of Greasemonkey scripts instead. Here’s a quick primer on how to use them.

Getting Started with User Scripts

Once you have Greasemonkey installed, managing the extension is really easy. Left click on the status bar icon to turn the extension on/off and right click to access the context menu shown here.

Whether you use the Options button in the Add-ons Manager Window or the context menu shown above, both will bring up the Manage User Scripts dialog. At the moment you have a nice clean slate to work with… time to get some scripts added in.

Continue Reading ->

Google Contacts needs to get better. Google and Gmail devotees regularly deal with duplicate contacts, sync abnormalities, over-stuffed contact groups, and other problems. Here are our best methods for fixing those annoyances yourself until Google does for real.

Photo by sidewalk flying.

Let’s be clear: We love how Google Contacts functions as a centralized database of email addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, mailing addresses, IM handles, and much more for our various Google services. Our readers generally dig it, too, though not without complaints about its sometimes unpredictable nature. What I’m aiming to do in this post is detail how Google Contacts works (it’s probably not how you’d expect), explain some fixes for common Contacts annoyances, help you clean up and organize your Contacts, and point out the proper way to sync Google Contacts to your various devices.

How Google Contacts Works

You don’t actually need a Gmail account to use Google Contacts, but Gmail is normally where most users start using Contacts. If you use nearly any kind of Google service, Google has probably set up a Contacts section for you, which you can visit at google.com/contacts and start tinkering with.

If you’re using Google Apps with a particular domain, your Contacts page can usually be found at google.com/contacts/a/sitename.com/, replacing sitename.com with your own organization’s URL. Google Contacts acts a bit differently inside an Apps account, and can cause some stress when used alongside a “personal” Gmail account—but we’ll get to that in a bit. Take some time to get familiar with the web interface, and learn what you can and can’t do in it. It is always, always the primary place to fix problems and negotiate sync issues with your various apps and devices—make a change here, and it’s the only way to ensure it will (probably) stick.

Google’s Help section for Contacts doesn’t get nearly nitty-gritty enough, but a read-through does provide a few pointers. The most helpful explainer is about Default contact groups, which really explains the five contact groups that you can’t delete, rename, or change, and the one contact group that drives a lot of office app veterans nuts: Continue Reading ->

Whether you want to save and watch a Flash video offline, convert a Flash music video for your MP3 player, or do something else entirely, learning how to rip and convert Flash videos is a useful skill. Here’s how it works.

When it comes to ripping Flash videos, there’s more than one way to accomplish the task, and in many cases it depends greatly on where you’re grabbing the video. We’ll cover a number of different options for downloading Flash videos, as well as several ways you can convert them into more useful formats. Once you’ve seen the options, you can choose the one that works best for you and your situation.

Downloading the Flash Video Continue Reading ->