Tech-Freak Stuff » How To

How to buy the Right & the Best Mobile phone

Rohit Sane — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 04:05:39 +0000

Finding the right cell phone can be a tricky task. The market is flooded with so many choices that comparing them all and finding the perfect fit would seem impossible. Taking a systematic approach to cell phone purchasing can make the experience much easier for you.

If you are looking to buy a cell phone, there are some important questions you should ask yourself. Once you have thought about these questions, you will have a much easier time settling on the right mobile phone. Use these questions for help when comparing cell phones on various comparison websites.

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Do you already have a cell phone?

The majority of people who are in the market for new cell phones intend to replace their current devices. Most of these individuals are already locked into mobile phone contracts. These contracts tend to last for a long time, so any new phone will need to be compatible with a customer’s current plan.

Some plans periodically make it easy for customers to get a new phone, especially when contracts are up for renewal. It can be much cheaper to upgrade an existing phone to a new phone at renewal time than it is at any other time. Be sure to ask your carrier what free and reduced offers they have going on new phones.

Do you have a preferred carrier?

Cell phone reception is not equal across the board. You should always choose a carrier that provides good service to your geographic region. Since most people know only what they see on TV or hear from friends, it is a good idea to look around online for reviews of different carriers in your area.

When choosing a carrier, it is also a good idea to consider whether you wish to purchase a pay-as-you-go plan or a long-term plan. Not all phones can be used with every type of plan, and not every carrier will have this option.

What is your budget?

It is very smart to have a clear idea in your mind of how much you are willing to spend. You should make this decision before you go shopping for a new phone. People who sell cell phones can be very persuasive, and they are experts at talking people into costlier phone options. If you are firm with your budget from the start, you are less likely to regret your purchase later.

How do you plan to use the cell phone?

This question is one that is ignored with surprising frequency. Customers often let themselves get swayed by snazzy advertisements instead of thinking about their specific needs.

Do you plan to use your cell phone in emergencies only? Will your mobile phone be your only phone? Do you plan to use it to answer Emails and to surf the web? Do you want to play games on it or watch movies? The answers to these questions can drastically change your choice of phone. A simple flip phone will work fine for some people, but a smartphone will be essential for others.

Making sure not to go all out and order “unlimited everything” is the best approach for limited users. It may seem comforting to have all the extra minutes, texts, and data, but over time the added costs may leave you penniless.

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Which features are most important to you?

Once you have decided on a phone type, you can narrow your specific choice by thinking about the features that are most important to you. Do you need to have a phone with a long battery life? Do you want a phone that has the biggest selection of apps to play with? Do you want a phone with a touch screen or a button keyboard?

Always make sure to filter out things you don’t need. As with the minutes and data, unwanted features can add up to overpayment for a user who doesn’t really need the all the bonus functionality.

Compare and Take a Test Drive

Always try out a cell phone before you buy it. Cell phones that look perfect in pictures might feel totally different once you hold them in your hand. Since you will probably be using your cell phone many times each day, you need a model that is intuitive to you.

Let us know if you need any more pointers to select a good Mobile phone option for you. We would be happy to help!

Note: This post is written considering that you will be purchasing a new mobile phone (Not a used one)

This Article is written by Blake Sanders. He writes about technology at a phone comparison site Cell Phone Expert, where he specializes in Cell phones and wireless Internet.

Translate English into Hindi Online for free

Rohit Sane — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:01:32 +0000

Hindi is the National Language of India and Among the top three most-used languages in the world! It is advised that you have some knowledge about this language as you can meet Indians in just any part of the world. Learning or knowing Hindi is not as easy as it appears so learn the script from Google and let Google help you with the E-Leaching.

Online Hindi Translation

All of us have a Gmail Account [if you don't have then sign up for one]
You will see the G-Talk Client in the Left Sidebar.
Click on “Add a contact” link near the Chat section.
Now add en2hi@bot.talk.google.com in the list and Invite it to Chat.
Now you will see this bot active in Google Chat window.
Whenever you want to translate anything into Hindi, then just type the required sentence in English and the Bot will reply with the same sentence Translated and Written in Hindi Script.
Just remember that you cannot use any SMS language [it wont translate that]

I hope it will help you learn the Hindi script and language translation to some extent. Happy Learning!!

Extract and Download MP3 Audio from Youtube videos

Rohit Sane — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:53:59 +0000

It happens a lot of times when we have to listen to some speech or some seminar that we don’t need the actual visuals of the video but we just need to hear what is being talked about. In such cases, we just need the audio file from the video without the visuals.

Youtube being the most sought after site, when it comes to online videos, I will tell you a small trick to download only the MP3 files from the Youtube video. I am assuming that all of you use Mozilla Firefox as it is the most used browser in the world! Anyways, if you are still not using it, You can download and start using it from their official website.

Download Youtube Video as MP3 File in your computer

You will need to download a small Add-On for Firefox which you can download here. Once you download and Install this Add-On, just restart your Browser once.

Once you restart your PC, you are all set to Download the MP3 Audio file from any Youtube video. Just go to any Youtube video and you will find two links below the video allowing you to Download the MP3 file from it. It also allows you to download the HQ i.e. High Quality MP3 Audio from the video file, if it is available.

Watch Live Streaming FIFA world cup 2010 opening ceremony

Rohit Sane — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:10:59 +0000

The 2010 FIFA World Cup, the international football tournament kicks off on June 11th 2010 and will be held in South Africa. As most of the people have moved to the Online world, the FIFA World cup 2010 has already started creating a huge buzz in the current generation.

There are 64 matches being played during this world cup which starts on July 11th 2010. In case you don’t have access to your TV or you want to watch the entire Opening ceremony live Streaming on the Internet, then I am going to provide you with some working links where you can find it.

As this is the first time that this event is being hosted in an African nation, the World Cup 2010 Opening ceremony, also known as FIFA World Cup Kick-off Celebration Concert is expected to be mind-blowing and a must watch for all. Check out the working live streaming links of FIFA world cup 2010 Opening Ceremony which are actually free.

Live Streaming FIFA world cup 2010 opening ceremony links

Live Opening Ceremony Streaming from FromSport

Opening Ceremony live on IraqGoals

Live Football action on Justin.tv

Live Soccer Opening ceremony on UStream.tv

Free live streaming Online WC 2010 on MyP2P

Online FIFA WC 2010 matches on First Row

Now you have all this cool working links, There is no chance you should miss the Live FIFA World Cup Kick Off Celebration Concert. Believe me the FIFA World Cup 2010 Opening ceremony is really gonna be worth your time..

Tips to Improve Apple iPad battery Life

Rohit Sane — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:04:40 +0000

iPad has become the call of the world and it has already crossed 2 million sales!! But in this green energy era, we must do our best to save energy even while using our most loved gadgets. One similar notes, let me bring to your notice that the Apple’s iPad has some serious battery requirements.

An iPad’s battery gets you 10 hours of continual use, according to Apple. But for people who use the iPad extensively, it might become a severe usability issue.

So here are some steps to improve the iPad battery life to make it last long!!

Use “automatic” brightness setting so the iPad’s light sensor will adjust the brightness appropriately.
Use less power hungry applications.
Do not leave your iPad in places where it can may get exposed to extreme temperatures.
Avoid watching HD movies or playing 3d games.
Disable Bluetooth / 3G / Wi Fi when you are not using the network connections.
Update the iPad software often.
Keep it in a Cool Dry place, keeping it in a hot places drains the battery faster.
Don’t keep the batteries Charged or Discharged for a long period of more than one month.
Temporarily disable the Data Push function when not required.
Avoid the batteries from being completely discharged.

If you have any more tips for the Apple iPad uses, all of us will be happy to hear. Do let us know in comments!

Hacking Facebook Account Username and Password

Rohit Sane — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:44:46 +0000

People ask these questions to me a Hundred times! How to hack a Facebook Account? Can you get me the password for this account? Teach me how to hack Facebook profiles! Finally I am going to reveal it and I don’t want people to ask this to me again and again. I am going to describe the entire procedure of Hacking a Facebook account Username and Password step-by-step so that there isn’t any doubt in your mind! Just Follow the steps and you will have entered the Facebook account!

Hack Facebook Account

Step 1: Create a New Email Account! I wont advice to use your existing Email Address for security reasons.

Step 2: Use this new Email Address to create a New Facebook account.

Step 3: Find your Profile Id though the Facebook URL. Visit your Profile and observe the URl.

Step 4: Add all fake information into that Profile.

Step 4: Add a picture to it. A female’s Photo will work wonders!

Step 5: Now write 2 or 3 status updates and Add 20-30 friends in that account. Friends can be random people!

Step 6: Now decide who’s account you wish to hack.

Step 7: Find the Email Address of that person.

Step 8: Now when you have the Email id of that person, you only need to know the password to get into his account.

Step 9: Give up guessing his Password and Log in to your own Facebook account and go crazy!

Step 10: Wish yourself “Happy Fool’s Day”

Sorry Guys, for misleading you for so long. But, you can get a 100% working Facebook Hacking Course here along with actual Videos.

Solution to : ComLuv Plugin “bad juju” error

Rohit Sane — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:45:09 +0000

I faced this issue last week! ComLuv plugin on many blogs was giving me a bad juju error when I entered my Blog URL in the URL field of their Comment form. For those who don’t know about it, let me tell you that this plugin usually publishes the latest post of your Blog URL which you enter in the URI field. My latest blog-post was not being shown and instead a “Bad JUJU happened” message was shown, which was really irritating me. So, I started surfing the Comment Luv plugin website to find out weather I can somehow get rid of this error.

After about 30 minutes of hard-core surfing I landed on a page which told me about the UnBan URL option and after that it all was back to normal.

I also came to know that my URL was “Banned for having 3 feed errors”. I have now realized that feed errors were arising because I was not using the www prefix in my URL address when my non-www URL has a 301 permanent redirect to that URL.

Anyway, If you are facing this similar problem just follow the following steps:

Register yourself at the Member’s Page
Register your URL
UnBan your URL

If the issue does not get fixed after doing this then I will suggest you to get in touch with Andy [developer of ComLuv], but in the mean time you can always try unbanning your URL again.

For now, my bad juju problem is solved. Tell me what about your case now!

How to Change your Facebook vanity URL username [to get more SEO and Promotional Advantage]

Rohit Sane — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:16:15 +0000

It has been long since Facebook started allowing Users to have a vanity URLs for their profiles. The suffixes [after facebook.com/***** ] of the Vanity URLs were call the Usernames. These usernames were first supposed to be constant and Facebook dint allow anyone to change these. But after some Trademark infringement issues and inappropriate Usernames were set, Facebook made a small change in this rule and started allowing to change the Usernames [but only once]

How to set your Facebook username

Just login to Facebook and visit this URL. Here, you will be asked for the Username suffix you want in your Facebook vanity URL.
You don’t need to worry about the people visiting your profile as they will be automatically transferred to your new Vanity URL. Just keep in mind that you are supposed to use only “.” marks and Alpha Numeric characters in this field.
Tip: Keep this username as your Name or your Promotional keyword or your Brand name for Promotional purpose and SEO advantage.

You can observe my User Profile URL as http://www.facebook.com/Rohit.Sane.techfreakstuff, so my username is Rohit.Sane.techfreakstuff.
Also, the Fan Page of Tech-Freak Stuff is using the username TechFreakStuff, so its URL becomes http://www.facebook.com/TechFreakStuff

How to Change your Existing Vanity URL Username

It may happen that you are already using a username of your choice but you feel the need to change it, because you come to know about some mistakes in selecting that name. So here is how to go about it. Remember that you can do this only once!
Login to your facebook account and visit this URL. You will see something like the Screenshot below:

Now click on the change option as shown in the screenshot and check for the available Usernames.

You may select anyone, but remember that this will be your permanent one. You won’t be able to change it again in future, so think twice before confirming.

Note: I was out of town for 10 days, so was not able to update my blog properly. You will get to see timely updates from now on. Thanks for understanding!

How to Make your Blog/Website more User-Friendly?

Rohit Sane — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:36:03 +0000

Being a casual web surfer, I come across many irritating websites! I try my best to identify their errors and don’t repeat their mistakes. After all, it is my duty to provide my visitors with a pleasant experience on my Blog. So today, I would like to share with you a few things which can help you make your blog/website a little more User-Friendly.

Proper Navigation Options

Create proper Navigation options which can be used easily. Avoid using Drop down lists and other Complicated stuff which may confuse your Visitors. The general rule of thumb is that any page on your site should be reachable with 2 clicks from your home page. So, let all your pages be accessible easily.

Site Search Facility

For proper navigation, it is good to give your readers a chance to find whatever they want. Allow them to Search your website using a Site search option or a Custom Google search which indexes your entire website. This will help them find the Content of their choice easily without any hassles.

Administrator’s Contact Details

Your readers may face some problems while accessing your website, or it may happen that they want to tell you something. Many a times, your readers may give you some constructive criticism, some good suggestions or show you some small mistakes. It is good to have the Administrator‘s contact details on the Contact page of your website so that users can contact you easily.

Neat and Uncluttered Web-Design

Colors which you use for your Website design do matter a lot! It is not advised to use Bright colors for background. No one would like to visit a website which has Bright Bloody Red color as its background. Your content should me in a clearly visible font with proper size. Other elements should be arranges in an Uncluttered way and it should not appear that you are desperately trying to put all your information in one place. All independent information must be clearly differentiable.

Proper Categorization of Pages

Do not categorize your Web-pages in wrong or inappropriate categories. No one will like to search a “WordPress” related post in the “Blogging” category. It may happen that a visitor may have come to your website only because you write some particular articles very well. But if he is not able to find it in a particular category, he may not really bother to find it unless he is desperately needing it.

Adequate Bookmarking Options

In today’s world, people like to share what they find. They want to share Cool Articles on Social Bookmarking or Social Networking Websites. But, if you don’t have any option to share this articles, your readers may find it difficult. Remember, that if your readers don’t share your articles then it is indirectly your loss as you may lose some traffic.

Easy to use Comments Area

Your readers want to comment on your Articles. But Not if it takes a lot of time or if the process is complicated. Keeps the process simple! Have a minimum number of input fields possible. It may also happen that your readers want to ask you something related to your article, so they may comment on it. But if you don’t have a Comment Subscription facility, they wont get your replies unless they visit your article again. Keep in mind, that conversation between your readers is most important for the healthy growth of your website.

Appropriate linking to other Web-pages

It is being noticed that many Bloggers link their web-pages wrongly. Ask yourself, will you like if you are taken to some random website after searching for some particular keywords which are in no way related to it. It is irritating! I think even I may do this mistake, so I use “title” tags for my links. It gives me better SEO and helps my readers too.

Fast page loading

Tell me frankly, Will you visit a website which takes more than a 30 seconds to load. In this fast paced world, people are impatient and you should value their time. Use better Servers and reduce the use of Flash and other Content which makes your Web-Page slower to load. Having a lot of JavaScript Advertisements also slows down the loading of any website.

You must remember, that the easier you make the task for your readers, the happier they will be and more love you will get from them. Also, its not a very difficult thing to observe such small tips. So, help your readers and they will help you!

Did your WordPress Blog ever go Blank? Not yet? But, It can happen with you too, So be prepared for it!

Rohit Sane — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:57:14 +0000

Have you ever opened your blog to see everything gone? None of your posts will be visible only the empty Theme with Ads all around! I know you will get a shock of your life, and Even I did! Yesterday, when I opened my blog, I got a message “Nothing found” written in the posts section of my theme. I was just about to faint and was not understanding what exactly was going on. It was 2 years of my hard work perishing in just 1 second! There was nothing left.

I started searching Google on what might have caused it and How can I undo this change. But I dint find any relevant and helpful articles. Most articles talked about various such cases which have happened before. Even I had noticed such a case with a fellow blogger who blogs at “The Bad Blogger“. I wrote a comment on his blog but the reply never came anytime soon.[The comment got deleted too]

Then I logged in to FaceBook and started searching for Bloggers in my Friends list. I started chatting with 3-4 of them and explained them my problem. They were helpful but most of them dint have enough knowledge about this issue. Everyone asked me the same question “Do you have the back-up of your Database?” and my answer was “NO”! I was cursing myself for never taking a back-up of my WordPress Blog.

I was really depressed and tears were just about to flow from my eyes! Various thoughts were crossing my mind. “I have lost everything what I earned in the last 2 years”, “My Alexa rank of top 1,00,000 will be gone” and so on..

That was when I found “Piyush Kumar“, a FaceBook friend whom I had befriended the same morning, Online on FaceBook chat. I did not know that he was a blogger and I crazily send him a buzz saying “Help Needed”. He was quick to reply. I told him the exact problem of what had exactly happened and that I dint have the back-up of my database.

He though over it quickly and asked me weather I had access to the CPanel of my hosting provider and also to the PHPMyAdmin. I said yes! He asked me for the Username and the Password of my hosting provider and I gave it to him without even thinking over it. I had visited my database just before talking to him just to find out the “wp_posts” table in the database totally empty and corrupted.

Piyush had a look at it and told me that he may be able to get back the “wp_posts” table of the database. I was happy to hear it! I dont really know What he did, but I think he restored the database to the latest known stable one. The corruptness was gone. I had life back in my heart!

He asked me to take the back-up of the Database ASAP and I did exactly as he said! My blog was back in action. But when I refreshed my blog while backing-up the Database, I got an error saying “Error Establishing Database Connection”. I was so nervous and was about to cry! I tried to buzz Piyush, but he had gone Offline by that time. I also buzzed him on the Gmail chat, but he wasn’t there too. So, I nervously questioned on his Wall weather he was still Online? And within 2 minutes he commented on it saying “yep ! tell me..” It felt better to see him Online.

He told me that the error was because I was backing-up my database and So, the database was not able to connect with my Browser. My Blog started working fine again after the backup!

He asked me to change the Password of my database and Hosting account as he had know it. He appeared quite trustworthy, but still I did it and from then on “Error Establishing Database Connection” message was present on my blog for 17 hours! My mistake was that I changed the Database Password but dint change the password in the wp-config.php file. Now when I have done it, I am writing this post for saying thanks to Piyush Kumar for his Instant Help and Valuable suggestions.(Join Piyush on Facebook) I might have never got my Blog back without him!

Now all you guys, Please Back-up your WordPress Database first and then do all the other work! I just escaped the biggest disaster of my Blogging career but you may not be as lucky as I am. Take Care!