Muting Windows 8 Metro Apps

Sometimes, my desktop computer needs to do a few things at the same time and most commonly this takes the form of playing a video on the television (connected by HDMI to my computer) and playing a game be it Team Fortress 2 or even a quick game of Minesweeper on my desktop monitor. One …

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Access the Control Panel Quickly Under Windows 8

Another Windows 8 tip for you out there. Since the move away from the Start Menu to the Start Screen some user may find the process of getting to a specific control panel applet a little more involved that it used to be back Windows 7. Unfortunately, in the Start Screen you can’t just start …

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How to Use Two Google Accounts Simultaneously

Sometimes you might want to use two separate Google accounts without how to log out and login or switch between them given that doing so may interrupt other services in use (like Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, etc). I have a persona Gmail account as well as another Gmail account for the strata in which I live plus …

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How to Double Check if a Website is Down

Here’s a quick tip. If you want to obtain a second opinion on whether or not a particular website is offline then you should give downforeveryoneorjustme.com a shot when required. When you can’t perform a ping test yourself (like when you are at work behind a proxy) this can be a handy little tool to use …

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Panasonic HC-X900M Camcorder and VW-CLT2 3D Lens Unboxing

A new first for the blog – a double unboxing! This time around I get to show you the Panasonic HC-X900M 3D camcorder which is Panasonic’s flagship consumer camcorder for 2012. Plus, I also show off the VW-CLT2 3D lens which teams up with the X900M to enable you to shoot video in 3D. The …

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The App Count Doesn’t Reset for Windows Phone 8

Outside of the technology media, I have seen mainstream media seriously misreport the app situation for Windows Phone 8 and potentially doing Microsoft’s latest mobile OS quite a disservice. In a nutshell, pretty much any app designed for Windows Phone 7 or 7.5 will work on Windows Phone 8 and with 100,000 apps there is …

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COM Surrogate Process and High CPU Usage

Just an observation on Windows 8 that I wanted to share which may also help others using Windows Vista and 7. Recently, I was seeing some graphical glitches occur under Windows 8 as well as CPU usage getting stuck at 25% for unusually long periods of time on my quad-core i7 desktop. This meant that …

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Incoming Gadgets – Panasonic HC-X900M Camcorder and VW-CLT2 3D Lens

Just a quick update. I have managed to get my hands on a Panasonic HC-X900M camcorder as well as the special VW-CLT2 3D lens. Whilst the X900M cancorder is capable of doing 2D to 3D video conversion in order to capture 3D content in the best possible quality you really need to use a 3D …

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Switch Between 32-bit and 64-bit Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8

Update 22/09/2013: Looks like there is a bit more under the hood regarding Enhanced Protected Mode – read more here. Here’s another quick tip for Windows 8 users. In prior versions of 64-bit Windows there were two versions of Internet Explorer that came as part of the operating system. One was the regular 32-bit version …

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How to Perform a Nintendo 3DS System Transfer

Recently, I decided to upgrade to a Nintendo 3DS XL and trade in my original Nintendo 3DS but in order to keep all of my downloaded content I had to performance system transfer. In doing so, I thought I’d record a video to show others how to undertake the process. Before you start though, it’s worth …

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