A complete idiots guide to twitter

Twitter is another type of social networking you've no doubt heard of, but if you're like many that haven't even looked at it, or ever understood what it's for, you've come to the right place!

In short, twitter is a service that allows you to share what your up to, whats on your mind, what's new, what's going on, what's trending etc. There is a limit to how much you can write with a limitation of 140 characters per tweet.

There are different types of users too. Some are companies, most are individuals, some are blogs, some are news sites, others are spam. You get all sorts on twitter.

Apart from "tweeting" what you're up to, or whatever your tweet is, you can also "follow" people. This principle is similar to the friend feature on facebook, except that most people don't have their profile on private, in fact by default your account is public, which means anyone can follow you and get your updates.

Many people don't even use twitter to post anything, rather they just use it to follow others (myself included) to get their updates and find out whats happening. The way I use twitter is to get news updates from specific companies that I have an interest in. For example, you can follow Microsoft, Google, Apple, your bank, your phone carrier, your friends, your local news publisher, and so on. In this way you essentially get a customised news feed which gives you updates and news on places, companies and people you care about.

Personally, I think this is the best thing about twitter, and this is the primary reason I use it.

Let's get into a few guides on how to use and interact with twitter.

Firstly, you'll have to get an account. When you navigate to twitter.com for the first time, you'll get a login screen, and a prompt to sign up for a new account. It will look similar to this:

In order to sign up, just enter your details in the box that says "New to Twitter?" then click the yellow button below.

The next screen will confirm your details and ask you to create a username. This username will appear all over twitter whenever you make tweets or when people refer to you in a tweet. This can be changed later if you need to. It looks a little like this.

Finally, you click create my account. You will then be presented with a quick set-up which will help you find your friends on twitter, help you locate potential people/companies/etc to follow

Towards the end of the set-up guide, the service will ask you for a short Bio about yourself, with a limitation of 160 characters, and the option to upload a profile picture. None of any of this information is required, however I'd recommend putting at least something in. Even if it is very basic information. Eg. "My hobby is stamps", or something.

This is the final step to the set-up guide of creating a twitter account on the twitter website. The next screen you'll see is the main screen. This will change over time as you start to follow more and more people. But it might look like this when you first start. You may also be asked to confirm your email address with twitter.

On the left hand side of the screen, you can see worldwide trends, which you can customise to be your location, by clicking change.

Above this box is your profile box, where you can create a new tweet, see how many people you follow, how many follow you, and how many tweet's you've made since creating your account.

The last piece of info I'll go into in this guide is the hashtag section. A hashtag is a tag you can add to your tweets when you are tweeting about something that is relevant to an event, time, news or something happening. For example, looking at the list of trending topics posted in the screenshot, Titatic is a topic which is getting a lot of attention on twitter at the moment. If you were to write a tweet about the Titanic movie, you could include a Titanic hashtag in your tweet. An example tweet could be: "Going to see a ship destroyed by an iceberg in 3D. Should be awesome. #Titanic" In this way, you are referring to the titanic, but not actually including it in your sentence. It's a good way to add topics to your tweet, whilst reducing the word count, and keeping up with current trends.

That's it. With all this info at hand you should have a basic idea about twitter, how it works, and how to use it. If you have any questions, please feel free to post in the comments below, and I'll do my best to answer you.

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Google Drive: What is it, and how do I use it?

Google announced recently it's remote storage services called Google Drive. This is similar to the hard drive in your computer, except it's stored on Google's servers remotely, which means for you, you can access your files anywhere you have an internet connection. No more having to carry USB's around for printing documents and sharing files.

The only limitation on the service - which is free to use - is that the storage space is 5GB. If you're only storing documents, then it will more than likely be more than enough, however, if you feel that you need more space, you can upgrade to some paid options of 25GB, 100GB and higher if you need.

Basically, how it works is that the installer, which you can download from the site, creates a folder on your computer which you can then create sub-folders for if you need, or just copy and paste your documents into this folder, and they will automatically be synced to the cloud, or Google's Drive.

Then, when you go to another location, you can just sign in and your files can be seen on the screen, available for download.

Let's get into some screen shots to show what this all means.

Let's quickly go over the boxes.
- Blue: Main menu options, from here you can create, star, share, trash etc. Similar to GMail's main option
- Purple: You can share, organise, delete, and preview documents with this button.
- Orange: Your actual files you have on Google drive. Note that it can read pages, numbers and keynote files created using Mac's iWork suite.
- Green is a link to the file that creates the program on your computer.

Apart from syncing files, you can also create new files, documents, power presentations etc, by clicking the big create button at the top left. You can also upload your files manually too, if you like, by clicking the upload button which is next to the create button.

If you'd like to install the software, Google will set one folder which automatically syncs with the server, so any files in this folder will be on the Google Drive, backed up in the cloud.

I'd recommend saving a project folder as a sub-folder on your drive, so any files you save here are automatically backed up. In this example below, you can see my files are mirrored on my computer as they are created, and automatically sent to the Google Drive application.

That's the basics of Google drive.

If you've got any specific questions, feel free to ask me or make a post in the comments for all to see.


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A quick guide to uploading videos to YouTube

Everyone on the internet has been to or watched a video on YouTube before, unless of course you've been living under a rock for the past 5 years. But have you ever shared one of your own videos? YouTube is the perfect place to share one of your videos with whoever you want, and you can choose if you'd like to keep the video private or not.

This quick guide will teach you how to upload your first video to YouTube which you can then use to upload subsequent videos if you like.

To start, let's point our internet browser to http://www.youtube.com/

Then on the right hand side, as shown below, click on the upload button. If it's not there, you may need to sign in, or sign up.

Then, you'll be presented with this screen:

Click on the button below the upload icon that says "Select files from your computer"

Once you've found the file you are wanting to use (I recommend saving the video to your desktop to find it easily) select it, and choose, upload.

Once you've chosen the file to upload, it will start uploading, but whilst it's doing that you'll be presented with this screen which has a few important options, so make sure you clearly select the options you want.

The green boxes are where you want to name your video, give it a description, and some tags. The title will help people find it.
The red box is the box that will determine how public or private a video is.
- Public speaks for itself
- Unlisted means the video can be seen by anyone that has the unique link, and it will not show up in searches on google or anything like that.
- The last option is only available to other people that have a specific YouTube account and require them to sign in.

I'd recommend an unlisted video. It allows anyone with the link, (that you will email to them so they can see) to view it, but stops it coming up in searches and to the general public.

Unless of course the video is one you don't mind sharing with the entire world, then choose public.

Once the upload completes, you can click Video manager, (top right) to be taken to the management screen of all your videos. From here you can get the link to your video, and then share it with anyone you like.

That's it! You've just uploaded your first video to share.

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Keeping your Mac up-to-date

Since the recent news of a Mac malware that was brought to light, a few friends have asked me - how do I know if my Mac is secure and if it is up-to-date? Well this post will explain how to keep your Mac up-to-date, and ensure you have the latest patches and software updates.

The first step is to open software update. If you look at the top right hand side of the screen, it will have an Apple icon. Clicking it will give you this menu. Choose software update.

Clicking software update will present you with this box:

Once that progress bar reaches the end, you'll get one of two boxes.

If there is a software update for your computer, you'll be able to install the updates by clicking install, and if you have the latest software, you'll get a box saying your system is up-to-date, such as below:

That's it. Easy done!

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The fire from the sky still falls. Diablo III has not yet launched.

When trying to install the game you get this error message: "The fire from the sky still falls. Diablo III has not yet launched." and a screen that looks like this:

If you're wondering what this error means, because you're trying to install the public beta opening this weekend, it means that you have downloaded the retail version of the game, and the version available for play this weekend is for beta clients only, not with retail clients (which is a slightly different install).

You should be able to access the Diablo 3 beta download from Blizzard's page here https://us.battle.net/account/download/index.xml

Note that you need a battle.net account to use it. You can sign up for a free account through this site too.

UPDATE #1 (24/04/2012) : As the public BETA weekend is now over, you will not be able to access the game unless you have been invited to do so with a BETA key.

UPDATE #2 (11/05/2012): Blizzard have announce on their blog that:

We will be unlocking the game's installer at 17:01 CEST on May 14. This will allow you to begin installing the game, troubleshoot any issues you run into, download and install the launch day 1.0.1 patch, and be ready to play as soon as the servers come online.

So this error after this date will no longer be a problem.

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How to get Smiley Faces and Icons for texting on an iPhone [Emoji Keyboard]

I have been asked many times by friends how to get the smiley faces in their texts to their friends. Well, if you have an iPhone with the latest software update (currently 5.1) you're in luck.

It's quite simple to turn the keyboard on, and once it's on, you are ready to go. I'll put a quick caveat in, that this does work over iMessage, and other chat clients like WhatsApp, but I am not 100% sure on compatibility for general SMS messages. Some seem to work, some don't. Feel free to try and if it works - great! If not, maybe check the recipient has a recent phone with the most up-to-date software.

Here's the step by step guide of how to turn it on for iPhone.

On the home screen, go to settings.

Scroll down to General

Scroll down to select International

Choose Keyboards

Choose add new keyboard

Pick Emoji from the list

 

You should have two keyboards listed.

 Go to Home screen

Choose the Messages App

You should have a little globe icon in the corner of the screen, tap it.

Now you have the Emoji keyboard up.
You can scroll through the list of smileys by swiping left or right, and seeing all the options you have available to use and if you choose one of the icons down the bottom, this changes the tile set, and you have a whole bunch of new icons to choose from.

Hope that helps!

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Setting up any printer to use over a network in Windows

If you've bought a printer that's promised network printing, and it's come with a bunch of CD's, but you're having trouble getting it working, fear not, for there is a simple way to get it going.

Before we start, note that this guide has been designed for windows XP, however, the similarities between windows 7 are quite close, so you should be able to adjust easily, and follow along.

1.  The first step in this guide is turn off all your devices, including your modem, computer, and anything that connects to the network, including Wifi devices, but leave on the printer attached to the modem/router.
2. Next, what we want to do is just power on your modem/router so that the only device it's connected to is the printer. The purpose of these first two steps is to get the router to assign the first available IP address to your printer, which we'll come to later in this guide.
3. Then you can start to turn back on the other computers and devices that connect to the network.
4. Once on, click start, then go to printers and faxes in the menu.
5. Click add printer in the column on the left hand side.
6. In the wizard that pops up, click next to start the process.
7. The next screen will ask you for a local or a network printer. This is a very confusing question as we are adding a network printer, but it's on a local network, which means that we will choose the first option, a local printer attached to this computer. Click Next.
8. On the next page, go to bottom option which is create a new port, and then in the drop-down list, choose "Standard TCP/IP port"
9. When you hit next a new wizard will popup showing add port wizard.
10. This screen will ask you for the IP address of the printer. This will probably be one of the harder steps to complete as it's not immediately obvious which TCP/IP address you need to use.
11. The best way to check this for your printer would be look on the actual printer through the screens on it's mini screen if it has one. Failing that, you can log on to the modem/router and check the DCHP table. If this sounds a bit too technical for you, don't fret, we can try and take a pretty calculated guess at what the port will be.
1. Click start, then click run, and type CMD, then hit enter
2. Type ipconfig on the black dialogue box that appears.
3. You should see a few sets of number depending on what set up you have, but we are interested in the IP address of your computer, and the IP address of the default gateway.
4. If you default gateway is 10.1.1.1, and your computers IP address is 10.1.1.3 for example, it's pretty safe to bet that your printer is 10.1.1.2 because remember at step 2 earlier in this guide we turned on the printer first?
5. Similarly, if the address for the default gateway is 192.168.1.1, and your computer is 192.168.1.3 (see the pattern here) then your printer could be 192.168.1.2
12. With these addresses in mind, type the missing address in the box on the wizard screen, and then hit next.
13. If you have problems a this stage it probably means that the printer wasn't able to be located, or the address we have is incorrect. You can click back to try a different one if you wish. If not you may need to get the help of a technical friend or call in a computer tech to help.
14. With not problems, it should find the printer and prompt for a driver you'd like to use. In this screen you can choose from the list if your printer is listed, if it isn't pick the closest model, and failing that, chuck the CD into the drive, and click have disk.
1. Clicking have disk will open a new window, asking for the location of the disk, and to search automatically which you can choose to do.
15. Once the driver has been found hit next and it will install the printer on your system.
16. If it asks to keep the same driver, I would also recommend this as it's known to work, and we want to keep using something that works :)
17. The next screen will offer to name the printer and ask if you'd like to print a test page.
18. Now the momemt of truth - print the test page and if it comes through you're good to go. If not you may have missed something along the way I'd recommend going back and checking you've done each step.
19. Now click finish
20. You're done!

I will also post a guide to adding a network printer on a Mac shortly.

How do I get the battery percentage my iPhone?

Sometimes the little icon in the top right hand side of the screen just isn't enough to know how much juice your battery really has.

If your like me, and you find charging the phone annoying, or you'd rather avoid it if you can, a good way to check to see if the battery is going to last you the rest of the day is to use a percentage value to find out how much charge your battery has left in it, which can be the difference between having a usable phone later in the day if you go out somewhere that evening, and might need your phone.

Apple don't have this option turned on by default, and to the extend of my knowledge, it's only available as an option from the iPhone 3GS models and newer, so if you have a 3G, your sweet out of luck, and you may as well stop reading here.

To set up the battery percentage meter, follow these steps.

1. Go to settings
2. Click General (you may have to scroll down a bit)
3. Choose usage
4. Scroll right down to Battery Usage heading
5. Slide the switch to "ON"

You'll notice that the battery's charge value, in percentage has appeared next to the battery icon. This will indicate to you the amount of battery remaining and will permanently be displayed there until you turn the switch to "OFF"

Hopefully this will help you manage how much battery you've got and help decide whether you need to charge again sooner rather than later. It may also help you see how much usage your phone is actually taking up during the day, and allow you to kill any unnecessary apps running in the background.

Setting an Email Signature [How-to]

If you send a lot of emails, and you use emails for business or some kind of organisation or you just want to better represent yourself when creating an email to people, an email signature is a good way to go about this.

An email signature is a tagline or default bottom section to an email which outlines who you are, who you work for, and ways to contact you.

Depending which email program you use there are different ways to set it up so I'll run through what a signature should look like, followed by a few client walk throughs to get you started.



How a signature should look:


Generally there are a few ways about doing this, and can depend on if you want to include a logo or not. In my example I have decided not to include a logo, but I will point out where it could be placed if you did decide to include one. Keep in mind this is just how I like a signature to look, feel free to customise in any way you wish.
-----------------------------------

Regards,

Firstname Lastname
Position Title
Department

Company or Organisation Name (can be replaced with a logo)
e: name@example.com
p: (123) 4567 8910
w: http://www.example.com/
-----------------------------------


Setting up a signature on Mail for Mac:


When you've got mail open, follow these steps.

1. Click the word Mail, next to the Apple icon
2. Choose preferences from the drop-down list
3. Along the tab up the top, select signatures.
4. Click the plus sign
5. Type a name for your signature
6. Type the signature in the box on the right.
7. Tick the box that says to match the message font.
8. Ensure that Place signature above quoted text is ticked
9. Close the box
10. Open a new email, and you should see your signature there.

Setting up a signature on Outlook 2010:

Open outlook, and follow these steps

1. Open a blank email.
2. On the message tab, in the group "include", click signature
3. Then click Signatures...
4. In the email signature tab, click new
5. Type your signature in, and hit save
6. Close the box and you should be back in your blank email
7. Click the signature button again, and you should see your signature
8. Click the saved name, and it will appear at the bottom of your email.

Setting up a signature on an iPhone, iPad, iPod:

Get to your home screen, then select settings.

1. In settings flick down to Mail, Contacts, Calendars
2. Choose this option, the scroll to Signature
3. Choose signature, and you'll have a box where you can type your signature
4. If you don't want a signature at all, delete any text here.
5. If you'd like to change the default "Sent from my iPhone" then simply remove the text you don't want and type the text you do.
6. When done, choose the back arrow, and you'll be back in settings.
7. If you hit home, and go to the mail app, and create a new message, your signature should be automatically populated.

I hope this guide was simple enough for you, but if you were unable to get it to work, or you have a different version of one of the programs I've listed a guide for, feel free to make a comment below and I can add a guide for your version, or at least point you in the right direction :)