Friedbeef’s Tech

When it comes to organizing pictures, I only ever use Google’s Picasa photo organizer. 

Now, one of my favorite features from Picasa is something called ‘I’m feeling lucky’ where it enhances dark and bright colors in a photo and adjusts both color and contrast to optimal levels in one click.  No fiddling around - just instant editing. 

ImproveYourImages.com is a great piece of free web technology which allows you to get access that feature without having to install anything.

You just upload your image…

• …and it automatically adjusts the color saturation, temperature and lighting of your photo
• …and lines it up side by side with the original for a quick comparison.
• …where you can download your new and improved picture on the spot!

Perfect for quick edits - where you don’t have or want to fire up Picasa to make simple tweaks.

What other images tools do you use?  Let us know in the comments!

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I’ve always had a soft spot for the command line interface since the good old DOS days.  (I started out using DOS 2.1).  No clicking through multiple menus, no hassle - just type it in, and watch it go. 

Command lines, though more user-unfriendly…are in many cases, a more powerful way to go about operating your system and appeals to many techies out there.

If you want to start learning up on some Linux commands, you can try Web Articles’s  Linux commands directory.

What I liked:

• Web Articles is a site which only accepts original and useful content.  Articles in there were comprehensive and detailed
• If Linux is not your thing, the site also stores articles on many other different subjects

What I didn’t:

• I’m a visual person, so lack of screen shots sometimes really made it hard to follow at times
• Although the Linux articles while good - there were way too few of them to make the site really stand out as an authoritative resource fo Linux commands

All in all, it’s free so I’ll give it a quick read - especially since I’m contemplating running a Windows dual boot with Ubuntu pretty soon.

Disclaimer: ‘Web Articles’ have paid me to review their service, and to give an honest opinion.  Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, and have not been influenced by ‘Web Articles’ in any way.

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Accidents happen. 
If you’re ever in a situation where your phone is giving you problems because you got caught in the rain, or dropped it in the sink or toilet, here are 5 steps you can try:

1. Turn the device off and do not charge it - You want to keep the phone non-operational while it dries out.
2. Drip dry and shake off as much water as possible
3. Dismantle whatever you can - If you are able to remove the battery and cover, do so.  The more you expose the better it will dry.
4. Cover your phone in a bowl of rice - Rice will help absorb moisture (at least it did for this Washington Post writer) like how it does in salt shakers.
5. Draw it away with a vacuum cleaner held over the affected areas for up to 20 minutes in each accessible area, having already removed the majority of liquids and moisture manually and dried all visible moisture by hand, so that none enters the vacuum cleaner. This method is preferable to leaving it to dry naturally as it halts any oxidation from occurring deep inside, such as can result in functional issues later on. This is the fastest way (less than thirty minutes after your phone drowns, it can be completely dry and working, especially if you are able to also partly or fully disassemble it) to quickly get all the internal moisture out of the phone effectively and stop the internals from ‘rotting’ away. Remember that the goal is to suck all the moisture and humidity out of the phone not to blow it even further in and create even more evil humidity deep inside

All in all, the idea here is to get it as dry as as possible - in as quick a time as possible.  You’d be surprised how many phones spring back to life once they are dried out.  Speaking from experience, I once completely submerged my trusty old Nokia 3315 several times during a camping trip (I forgot it was in my pocket).  I just dried it out, and it was just as good as new :)

Note: Fans and hair dryers are not a good ideas as they tend to force moisture further into the small components deep inside the phone eventually causing corrosion.

Update: 17th April 2008: Point 5 changed from refrigeration to drying with a vacuum cleaner (Thanks WikiHow)

On a related note, here’s a video on how to fix your laptop should you spill liquid on it.

Have you ever dropped your phone into water?  Tell us about it in the comments!

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