Last year, Facebook introduced a new feature on the social networking site called "Live Ticker" which displayed a live activity stream of your Facebook friends. Facebook Ticker was hated by a lot of users and also led to a few Facebook scams including the one where users were duped into believing that they could stop posts from showing in Facebook Ticker.

In the past, we wrote about different ways to hide the Facebook Live Ticker. However, Facebook now allows users to hide the Live Ticker easily with the recent changes they have made.

If you are looking to hide the Facebook Ticker in your Facebook feed, you can now simply click the UP arrow key on the Ticker to hide the Facebook Ticker from view. Once that is done, you will no longer see the Ticker on your feed. If you want to see the Live Ticker again, you just have to click on the down arrow key and it will show up again.

Also Read:

• Boost Your Small Business on Facebook
• Express Your Life with Timeline Movie Maker
• Access Facebook on Any Mobile Without GPRS or Internet Connection

However, one must note that hiding the Ticker will only hide it from view. There is no way to stop your posts from showing up on all your friends profile so don’t forget to stay away from Facebook scams which tell you that you can stop your posts from showing up in the Live Ticker.

A shared broadband internet connection is a valuable resource, and sharing from a Mac to an Android device is difficult, but not impossible. OS X comes with a stock internet sharing feature, designed to quickly and easily turn your Mac into a hotspot for other devices to feed off of.

This tool comes in handy more often than you’d probably expect. Many hotels still offer wired-only internet access which makes traveling a pain, if you’re not alone. After all, who wants to take turns using the internet? Sharing a single cord for internet access is frustrating at best, and at worst, it can mean losing money by losing productivity. Sure, you can use your Android’s cellular signal, but data speeds vary and using it will cut into your allowance if you’re not lucky enough to have unlimited data. Because of this, the OS X internet sharing feature is a useful one to have.

There’s just one problem, though. Macs and Android devices don’t like to play nicely together, at least not when it comes to internet sharing. If you have an iPhone, then the process is straightforward, but with Android device activation rates outpacing the iPhone at a blistering rate, that means most people reading this won’t have such an easy time setting it up. Fortunately, the steps for correcting the issue and making OS X and Android play nice with one another are fairly simple.

Properly configuring internet sharing on OS X starts on the Mac side of things. Power on your iMac or MacBook, and navigate to System Preferences. From here, you’ll want to select the Sharing preference pane. At this point, you’ll be faced with a few options. You’ll want to go to the Services list and select Internet Sharing. One important part to note here is that you’ll want to turn the service off if it has a check box.

At this point, you’ll be prompted to choose a connection type to share. The only thing to note here is that you can’t select AirPort. You’ll need to choose a different kind of connection. For most users reading this and dealing with the wired-internet situation, choosing Ethernet will be appropriate. At this point, you’ll also want to select the check box next to AirPort. You can find this check box in the To Computers Using list.

Now that everything is set up on the Mac side of things as far as what kind of connection sharing you’ll be doing, you’ll need to set up the encryption for the sharing so that your devices can access the internet securely. Select AirPort Options and select enable Encryption using WEP. There are two types of encryption you can choose, and these will change the length of the WEP key accordingly. You can choose 40-bit or 128-bit.

Once you’ve chosen your encryption, you’ll actually enter in a WEP key to use when connecting your devices. 128-bit encryption will require a password consisting of thirteen characters. These can be numbers or letters, but no special characters or punctuation marks are allowed. Similarly, with 40-bit encryption, you’ll choose a five character WEP key with the same restrictions as the 128-bit key. Once you’ve created a WEP key, click the OK button and then check off the box next to Internet Sharing under Services.

Configuration for internet sharing on your Mac is now complete. Make sure that they key you’ve chosen is memorable, and you’re ready to move on to your Android device. You’ll find your Mac the same as you would any wireless network. If you’re not familiar with how to do this, there are two ways. The first is to click your phone’s Menu button from the home screen, and then select Settings. Alternatively, you can load the app drawer and open the Settings app.

Once you’re in Settings, you’ll select the option labeled Wireless & Networks. This should be the first option on the list, although it may vary based on your device manufacturer or the version of Android your phone is running. Once you’ve tapped into the Wireless & Network menu, click on Wi-Fi Settings. Enable Wi-fi by clicking the check box next to it. At the bottom of this screen, you’ll see a list of available Wi-Fi networks. If you’ve done everything correctly up to this point, your Mac should be listed by name. Select the Mac by tapping on it, and it should ask you to enter the WEP key that you created earlier on your Mac. Enter the key, exactly, and your Android device should connect.

Now that you’re connected, you’re done with setting up internet sharing. Any time that you want to share your Mac’s connection with your Android device, just head back to the Sharing menu on your Mac and enable it to share your broadband internet connection. You’ll connect from your Android device, and as long as you haven’t changed the WEP, your phone will be able to automatically connect. Enjoy!

=== About the Author ===

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website Broadband Expert where you can find broadband internet in your area and compare prices on different deals for your mobile broadband needs.

Google recently started redirecting Blogspot.com blogs to Blogspot.in and other country specific domains. The reason being that Google wants to give more freedom of expression to users while also being able to adhere to removal requests from different governments.

The country based redirection was first rolled out in India thanks to some recent stupid court judgments against websites in India. However, this will highly inconvenience Blogspot blog owners in India since they will not have duplicate content. Even though Google has promised to minimize the  negative effects of this change, you can definitely take an initiative to minimize the problems this will cause.

Google had introduced the rel=canonical meta tag to overcome this issue. This tag allows users to point tell search engines the actual location of the content if there are one or more URLs which have the same content, thus avoiding duplicate content on your website.

If you are Blogspot blog owner, you can avoid duplicate content by adding the following content to your template. Please note that you will have to edit the HTML code of your Blogspot template and add this before the </head> tag.

If you are using a HTML template for you blog, you should add the following code:

<ItemPage><Blogger><link href=’<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>’ rel=’canonical’/></Blogger></ItemPage>

On the other hand if you are using a XML template, you will have to add the following code to include all meta tags:

<b:include data=’blog’ name=’all-head-content’/>

Or also individually include the rel=canonical tag by using:

<link expr:href="data:blog.url" rel="canonical"/>

Once you have added the tags, make sure to save your template and then view source of your browser to check if the tag is added to your template. That’s it. Once you have added the rel=canonical tag, search engines will only index one page instead of creating duplicate content.

Here’s a quick tutorial I hope you will enjoy. Let’s face it, what Grandma doesn’t want a picture of their little pride and joy hanging on their wall? A photo calendar can be both useful and cherished gift. They’re also a breeze to create using Microsoft Word. Just follow these simple instructions.

First open Word. I am using Word 2010 for the purposes of this tutorial. Click the “File” tab, select “New”, and then choose “Calendars” under Office.com Templates heading. See the picture below.

Next, choose the appropriate year.

For this tutorial I have chosen the “Basic 12 month Photo Calendar”, as pictured below.

When you double click the selection, Word will download the template and then present you with 24 pages. You can see an example of this pictured below. Each month has a picture page and a calendar page.

The pictures are just stock photos that sort of act as place holders until you replace them. To replace the pictures with your own, click on them. You will see an example of this pictured below.

When the sample picture is selected, you will get an option in the top left corner to replace the picture. Click the icon in the left corner. This will open up a dialog box which will allow you to choose a picture from your computer. See the example below.

Select the picture you want to add to the calendar and choose the “Insert” button. Now you will see the selected picture on the page.

Just below the picture is a caption box. If you click on it, you can add a caption to your picture. Now, all you have to do is repeat these steps on the other calendar pages and you will have a sweet little calendar to give Grandma!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Feel free to comment or ask questions. I love hearing from my readers!

I came across an interesting problem with one of my end users the other day. They said they couldn’t see the lines on their spreadsheet anymore. This is usually a pretty easy problem to solve. In the image below, you will notice that by going to the “View” tab and clicking the check box beside “Gridlines”, you can toggle the lines on and off. Unfortunately, this was not the problem in this case.

When I got to the users PC, I saw a screen similar to what is pictured below. I did the step above only to find that she did have “Gridlines” toggled on.

Why weren’t the grid lines showing up? It didn’t make any sense. As is almost always the case, it’s the little things that people forget to tell you they were doing that will point you in the right direction. I discovered that the user had filled the cells with the color white. When you put a fill color in a cell, the gridlines disappear unless you have applied a border to that cell. Once I figured out what they did, the fix was pretty easy. In the picture below, you will see the “Fill Color” button selected from the “Home” tab on the ribbon toolbar. With the cells you want to fix selected, click the “Fill Color” button and choose “No Fill” from the menu. Like magic your gridlines will reappear.

I hope you found this quick tutorial helpful. If you have any feedback or would like a question answered, please feel free to write. We love hearing from our readers.

For more tutorials, check out http://techie-buzz.com/how-to!

One of the most frustrating things that I have seen people deal with in Word documents is when they try to work with a Table of Contents. Word has a really nice way to take a document that you have created and automatically generate a Table of Contents. A little planning ahead will make this process a lot simpler. In this tutorial, I will show you how to generate a Table of Contents automatically.

The first thing that you need to know about creating an easy Table of Contents in Word is the use of Style. Word has a Style Gallery on the ribbon where you can apply styles to your text. Take a look at the picture below to see an example of the Style Gallery.

To make the Table of Contents easy to automate, we need to use Heading styles. You’ll notice in the picture above that I have my chapter Title and I am picking Heading 1 from the Style Gallery. This will guarantee its inclusion in the automatic Table of Contents that I will create later. If I wanted to add a subheading, I would pick Heading 2, instead. Now if you’re following along with this tutorial, you may have noticed that Word 2010 can hide the other heading styles. Here is how you can get them into your Style Gallery. In the bottom right corner of the Styles group on the ribbon, there is a tiny arrow. Click that arrow and you will see the menu pictured below.

To add the other heading style we need to click the Manage Styles button at the bottom of this menu. You will see the menu pictured below.

Click the heading styles you wish to add. By default they will have “hide until used” selected. To eliminate this, click the “Show” button at the bottom of the window and click OK. You will now have the additional heading options in your Style Gallery. Now you can add the Heading 2 style to your subheadings if you have them.

Once you have all of your headings typed, it is time to insert the Table of Contents. To do this, we have to click the References tab on the ribbon. I recommend making sure that you are in the exact spot where you want this added your document when you start this. Pictured below, you will see that you click the Table of Contents button and then choose from the available Table of Contents options. I chose Automatic Table 2.

You will now see the Table of Contents at the cursor in your document with the fields automatically populated, as pictured below.

Notice that the words labeled with Heading 1 are aligned left and the Heading 2 words are indented. Word automatically picks up on these headings based on those styles that we picked earlier. One big mistake that I have seen people make when making a Table of Contents is thinking that merely making a word bold will make it show up. This simply isn’t the case. Use the heading styles. It will make life much easier.

There are other ways that you can insert a Table of Contents. One reason you might want to do it differently is if you don’t want the subheadings to show up. This is pretty easy to do. First, let’s remove the Table of Contents. If you click in the table, you will get a little menu at the top of the table. On the left side of the menu, there is a white sheet of paper with an arrow beside it. Click the arrow and then click Remove Table of Contents to remove it. Now, let’s click the Table of Contents button on the ribbon and look way down at the bottom. Pictured below, click the option that says Insert Table of Contents.

You will get the dialog box pictured below.

One thing I would like to point out to you is at the bottom of the dialog box. The “show levels” setting is currently set to 3. If you only want to see the top-level headings in your Table of Contents then set this option to 1. Pictured below, you can see that my table now only shows the Heading 1 text.

So what if you add more headings later? It is very simple to add those pages to the table. Simply right-click inside the table and choose the “Update Field” option from the menu. A dialog box will ask you whether you want to update the page numbers or the entire table. Choose the option to “Update entire table”, as pictured below.

I hope this tutorial will save you some pain down the road. There are other ways to get a Table of Contents into your document, but I have found that this is the simplest way by far. Now you can go write that great novel you’ve been putting off and put your new skills to work. Good luck and thank you for reading Techie Buzz!

As an IT Manager, I have supported desktop applications in some form or fashion for nearly 13 years. One thing I have learned in all of these years is that people get used to doing tasks a certain way. When software developers make sweeping changes to their applications, it often creates havoc for those who use them – not to mention the fact that it creates quite a bit of trouble for those of us supporting those applications. When Microsoft introduced the Office 2007 and 2010 suites, a lot of things changed for end users. I am a big fan of the new Office. However, I believe that there were changes made to Office 2010 that confused a lot of loyal users.

Today, I encountered a scenario where a very frustrated user was trying to find the “Select All” option in Outlook 2010. Unfortunately, when Microsoft introduced the Ribbon toolbar, the common menus like “Edit” went the way of the dinosaur. Of course, some experienced users will say, “just hit ctrl + A”. I am right there with you. However, remember my earlier statement about people doing tasks a certain way? Well, if you’re one of those and you need help getting the “Select All” option back, you’re in luck! There is a way to get to a lot of the old commands that you were used to in Office 2010.

In Office 2010, you will find a Quick Access Toolbar similar to the one pictured below. Click the black downward pointing arrow on the toolbar.

Once you click the arrow, you will see the menu pictured below. Notice that there are several popular commands on the menu. However, “Select All” is not. We need to click “More Commands” on the menu.

A “customize” dialog box appears. Under the heading “Choose commands from:”, you will see a list of commands under the heading “Popular Commands”. Click the arrow to the right and choose “All Commands”. This will show us all of the commands available in Office 2010.

Now we can pick “Select All” from the list and click the “Add” button. This will add that command to the Quick Access Toolbar, which is easily accessible at the top of every Office 2010 window.

There you have it! It is pretty much that simple. I hope that you find this little tip useful.

If you find little annoyances that you would like some help with, please drop us a line. We love hearing from our readers and would like to help in any way that we can. Thanks for reading Techie Buzz!

I have been using iOS5 for over a week now and though the new features like instant access to camera from lock screen and the new notification center in iOS5 is worthwhile upgrading, I have been facing constant issues with apps crashing all the time. This even happens in the middle of a game, while reading an email or even using the App store app on the device or using Safari.

It looks like I am not the only person who is facing this issue since there are several threads out there which discuss the problem. Based on most of the threads I was able to fix the app crashing (fingers crossed). However, most of the solutions don’t work so you might have to continue trying different solutions till the apps stop crashing.

Here are some of the solutions you can try out if the apps on your device crash constantly after installing iOS5:

• Close down all the apps running on your device and try opening up apps to see if they crash. If you are not sure how to check open apps, you can read a guide on multitasking in iOS
• Download a free app on your device through the App store on your device. This method has known to fix the crashing for several users
• Reboot your device.
• Update your apps to the latest version
• Turn of iCloud sync on the device

If none of the above solutions work for you, try to reinstall iOS5 on your device and then manually sync the apps to the device. Make sure to make a backup of the device before you restore it.

I will keep an eye for more solutions that should fix the app crashes after installing iOS5 and update this post. Please leave a comment if you continue to have problems or used another method to fix the app crashing problem in iOS5.

Have you ever needed to create an instruction manual and wished you could insert screenshots? There are lots of software options out there that will help you to do this. One of those options is probably sitting right under your nose and you haven’t noticed it. Microsoft Word 2010 has a screenshot feature that will allow you to take a picture of your desktop screens and insert them into your documents as pictures. In this article, I will show you the steps to do this. Let’s get started.

In Word 2010, click the “Insert” tab and then click the “Screenshot” button. In the picture below, you can see that when you click the “Screenshot button”, you get several options. First, you will see the “Available Windows” area. This shows you a representation of all of the windows that you have open. In this example, I wanted to insert a screenshot of an installation I was doing. I chose the appropriate window from my choices below. The second area I would like to call to your attention is highlighted in purple below. It is called “Screen Clipping”. This option will allow you to highlight a specific region on your screen that you would like to insert into your document. For instance, you might see a logo on a web page that you would like to clip into your Word document, simply click the “Screen Clipping” button and highlight the logo. When you release the mouse button, the highlighted area will automatically be placed into the document.

Once you have inserted your screenshot into your document, you can edit it just like any other picture you would insert. You will see your picture with selection handles (dots) all around. Clicking and dragging these handles will allow you to resize the picture. You will also notice, at the top of the picture, a green dot. This green dot will allow you to rotate your image 360 degrees. You may also choose to use Microsoft Word’s drawing tools to put arrows and text boxes on your image like the one pictured below.

When it comes to writing tutorials, it helps to have pictures to illustrate what you’re writing. I guess this is supported by the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”. I hope you find this tutorial useful. If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear back from you.

As a kid, I used to watch my dad with fascination as he hopped from stool to cupboard to adjust a speaker’s position to get it just right. As his little helper, it was my job to sit in his chair and make sure I heard the music from the speakers loud and clear. But of course, not everyone has the option of having a little helper around.

Here are my top five tips to help you get self-started with your sound system at home.

1. Use the Primary Components of a Sound System

You should buy several speakers if you want a superior sound experience. A single pair of speakers works, but as the soundtrack feeds all its separate sounds (frequencies) into the same device, this results in some lost or blurry sounds. To listen to a crisp and clear soundtrack (where you can hear every instrument or voice in it), you need several speakers so that the different sound frequencies are routed to the appropriate speakers.

The primary components of a sound system are as follows:

Left and Right Front Speakers: A speaker is a device that converts analog audio signals into the equivalent air vibrations in order to make audible sound ( definition from pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term).   The front speakers should not point directly to each other. Rear speakers follow the same principles as the front speakers.

The following image shows you how to place your front speakers.

Have you ever wondered why we need two speakers instead of one?

The science behind it is because we have two ears.  Seriously. For example, if you hear a train chugging on your sound system, the sound may be first played on your left front speaker and then on your right front speaker. This gives you the illusion of a train moving from left to right.

Left and Right Surround Speakers: The surround speakers are placed besides or behind your main seat. They are pointed at ear level. The surround speakers face each other more directly than the front speakers.

The following image shows you how to place your surround speakers.

Central Speaker: The central speaker should be in front of you and should point directly to you at ear level. In my opinion, this is the most important speaker, though it likely to burn a pretty hole in your pocket.

Subwoofer:   A subwoofer is a sound system component that focuses on the very low bass frequencies of the soundtrack. It is usually placed in front you (its placement is flexible).

If you hear imperceptible sounds in a soundtrack faintly in the background (the lower frequencies), you need to check the bass. Generally, the bass is set as “low” on your front speakers, which is perfectly fine. A subwoofer is used to bring out the clarity of these background noises and make them actually sound like something. It adds the “punch” to the soundtrack, if I may say so.

You may have two, five, or more speakers plus a subwoofer for your home sound system. Dolby has instructions on the how-to in it’s Home Theater Speaker Guide. I have used some of their wonderful and simple diagrams in this post.

2. Beware of Speaker Sizes

You can have small, medium, or large speakers depending on your budget and your room size. Remember that large speakers are too overwhelming in a small room.

To simplify this, let me categorize speakers based on the following two sizes:

• larger floor-standing speakers

Advantage: Power

• smaller book-shelf speakers

Advantage: Easy to maneuver

It is a matter of personal opinion, but I believe that small speakers cannot function with the same intensity as large speakers do, irrespective of the technology used to squeeze out every last bit of sound from the small speakers. You are free to mix and match different speaker sizes to  create your perfect home sound system.

3. Check the Distance of the Speaker from the Seating Area

A simple method to obtain the correct co-ordinates to place your sound system, is to measure the room and locate its center. Use this central point as the primary reference to measure the distance (at appropriate angles) for the various speakers. Ensure that a set of similar speakers is equidistant from the center. The front of the speakers should ideally face you directly; this may result in some speakers being angled (they are not positioned in straight and parallel lines from each other).

The famous 38 percent Rule  says that the best seating position is theoretically 38 percent into the length of the room (from either the front or rear wall of the room). A useful tip if you go to book movie theater seats too.

You will most likely place the speakers near the wall; but take care to never touch the speakers to the wall.

4. Check the Height of the Speaker  from the Floor

The front speakers should be placed at your ear level. This is suggested because of the direction sound waves travel. The left- and right-front speakers should be aligned at an angle of 60 degrees from each other.

The rear/surround speakers should be placed two feet above your ear level.

The central speaker should be placed at your ear level.

The subwoofer may be placed on the floor.

5. Angle the Speakers Appropriately (from each other)

Have you ever wondered why we need two speakers facing each other at an angle? It is because our ears face in opposite directions. Over simplistic isn’t it?  The following figure explains the angular separation of the speakers from each other.