How to Install Android Apps on SD Card, by Default & Move Almost Any App to the SD Card

How to Install Android Apps on SD Card, by Default & Move Almost Any App to the SD Card

By default, Android Apps will be installing on the device storage of your smart phone; but the trick explained, in this article, is to set the SD card as your default installation location. This trick is allowing you to move, almost, any App to the SD card and no root access is required. And this tweak requires Android 2.2 or later.

To change the default installation location, you should have to use Android Debug Bridge (ADB) utility, a tool-kit, included in the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), which available with Google's Developer Console.

Enable USB Debugging: First, you've to enable USB debugging on your Android device. Open Settings > Applications or Developer options > USB Debugging.

Tap the USB debugging check-box to enable it. This will enable debug mode, allowing you to change the settings on your Android device from your computer. You should have to disable debug mode after completing this process.

Install the Android SDK: Now download and install Google’s Android SDK on your computer. If you don’t already have Oracle’s Java JDK installed on your computer, you’ll have to download and install it before installing the Android SDK. After you’ve installed both the JDK and Android SDK, launch the SDK Manager from your Start menu.

The ADB utility doesn't installed by default. This utility is included in the Android SDK Platform-tools package; so, select this package and click the Install button to download and install it.

When the process completes, connect your Android device to your computer with its included USB cable. Windows should locate the device and install the appropriate drivers, automatically. If it doesn’t, you may have to download and install the appropriate drivers from your Android device’s manufacturer. Do not mount the device after connecting it – just plug it in.

Using ADB: Open Windows Explorer window and navigate the folder .... android-sdk\platform-tools

On Windows, you’ll find this folder at C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools, by default.

Check C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools, if you’re using a 32-bit version of Windows.

Now launch a Command Prompt window in this folder by pressing and holding the Shift button, right-clicking in the folder, and selecting Open command window here.

Run the adb devices command and you should see your connected Android device.

Run the following command to set the default install location to your SD card:

If you want to revert this change later and install apps to the internal storage by default, run this command:

2 represents the external storage, whether it’s an SD card or USB storage and 0 represents your device’s internal storage, which is default.

Moving Apps to SD Card:

Apps that refused to leave your system storage can now be moved to the external storage. For instance, below you’ll see screenshots of the Slacker Radio app. Before the change was made, the Move to USB Storage button was grayed out. After the change was made, the button is enabled and the app can be moved.

To move an App to the SD card, open the Settings screen, tap Applications, and select Manage Applications. Select the App you want to move and tap the Move button on its details screen.

A Warning: 

Some Apps shouldn’t be installed to your SD card and they remain installed on the internal storage. The external storage is unavailable when your Android device is mounted on your computer, so Apps that remain running all the time should be left on your internal storage. Widgets, launchers, animated wallpapers, and anything you want to use while your Android’s SD card is mounted on your computer should be left on the internal storage.

Understanding Basic Image File Formats- JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF

Understanding Basic Image File Formats

We've witnessed a wide range of file formats across our screen; but do you really understand what they mean? For instance, you may know that a JPEG is for pictures; but how about a PNG and a TIFF? And which type of format supports an image with a see-through background?

This article will explain to those questions and even more! 

JPEG is developed by 'Joint Photographic Experts Group', which supports a wide range of colors; so, it's the one most folks capturing on digital cameras and scanners. JPEG is the most common format, as well, for storing and transmitting photographic images on the World Wide Web. 

JPEG can be compressed to a smaller file size, which maximizing the space of camera's memory card. It also works excellent for black and white photos. Its images can be posting online and sharing via e mails. In fact, a JPEG saved at the highest quality from your scanner, which is indistinguishable from a TIFF.

JPEG is not suited to the files, which undergo multiple edits, as its quality of image will usually be lost each time when the image is decompressed and re-compressed, particularly if the image is cropped or shifted. To avoid this, an image that is being modified or may be modified in the future can be saved in a lossless format, such as TIFF, GIF, PNG, or a raw image format. The JPEG standard actually includes a lossless coding mode, so the mode is not supported in most products of JPEG.

TIFF, Tagged Image File Format, is a flexible, adaptable file format for handling images and data. Unlike JPEG files, a TIFF file using lossless compression when a image may be edited and re-saved without losing image quality. It's the gold-standard in printing with high-quality images, which is always as pristine like the original.

TIFF originally gained popularity as a scanning format and designers used to rely on TIFF. Nowadays pro-level page layout Apps can be used native Photoshop files, which has all the quality of a TIFF at a smaller file size. If you’re sending an image to someone else for inclusion in a printed book, brochure or magazine, you could send a high quality JPEG; however, to be super safe, send an uncompressed TIFF. 

PNG, Portable Network Graphics, is the most used lossless image compression format; so, you don't lose any image detail. It supports a wide range of colors and transparent backgrounds. As a result, it produces higher-quality images than JPEG format, but the file sizes are bigger. Unlike JPEG, the PNG format keeps text and logos crisp when posting online, which is handy for social media cover images. 

PNG comes in two flavors: PNG8 and PNG24. The later, PNG24, supports more colors and partially transparent pixels, which is crucial if you’ve added a drop shadow to an image with a transparent background or when the image you want to post online includes a large gradient (a smooth transition from one color to another). The other uses high quality graphics and post highly detailed images to online photography.

PNG is better for high quality full color images with a transparent background (checkerboard pattern in Photoshop denotes transparency). 

GIF, Grafic Interchange Formate, is perfect for the images of web graphics or logos. It produces small file size with limited number of colors and transparent background. It's file format is not as popular as it used for static graphics, but still widely used for animated graphics on web.

The image on the left is perfectly suited for a JPEG; but the two on the right are perfectly suited for GIFs.

PSD, Photo Shop Document, is the native format of Adobe Photo Shop and this format supports layers (enabling to image adjustments), graphic elements and text that can be stored inside a single document. Saving your file in PSD format keeps your layers intact; so, you may protect your original image and you can continue to edit the document whenever you need. Sometimes, it stands for PSB, Photo Shop Big, which extends the PSD file format to maximum height and width to 300,000 pixels and the length to around 4 Exabytes. Because of Photoshop's popularity, PSD files are widely used to extent some competing software. 

PDF, Portable Document Format, is very popular for sharing single and multi page documents to view and print. Saving a file in this format is just taking a picture of the file, which included the text, fonts, graphics, videos. So, it looks just like the original in displaying and this format can be opened and printed by most of every computer. PDF files can be compressed and it is often preferred by printing companies for stuff like invitations, business cards, brochures and etc., We can generate a high quality PDF from anything and this format is easy to sharing with others.

The BMP file format, also known as Bit Map Image file, is a popular graphics file format used to store bit map digital images especially on Windows based PC's.

While there are many more formats, but above indicated are the most common in use and hope the creative force be with you all!

The History: Back Slashes and Forward Slashes

The History: Back Slashes and Forward Slashes

Have you ever noticed that 'why Windows uses back-slashes for paths, while everything else seems to use forward-slashes'?

In Windows, C:\Windows\ (back-slashes) and everything others, http://portonovocomputertech.blogspot.com/ on web, and /home/user/ on Linux, OS X, and Android (forward-slashes).

And it doesn't matter what type of slash you use, but the modern software, automatically, tries to correct when you type a wrong slash! 

The History: 
Why Windows uses back-slashes?  

It’s all around a few accidents of history, which happened decades ago.

Unix has introduced the forward slash character ( / ) as it's directory separator in 1970's. And we don’t, really, know 'why they chose this character', but that’s the one they picked. 

The original version of MS DOS 1.0 did not supporting directories at all, when it was released in 1981. Most of it's utilities were written by IBM, and they used the / character as a 'switch' character. We can, even, see this character today in the command prompt, i.e., to run the command dir/w tells the directory command to run with wide list of format option, while run the command  dir c:\ tells  the directory command to list the contents of drive C:\.  The different types of slashes here indicate whether you’re specifying an option or a directory path. 

MS-DOS 2.0 introduced support for directories, but IBM wanted to keep compatibility with the original DOS utilities and other programs that expected the / character to be used for switches. Microsoft had already used the / character, so they couldn’t just re-use it. They ultimately chose the \ character instead, as it was the most similar-looking character visually.

Windows may not be built on top of DOS anymore, but you can still see the legacy of DOS throughout Windows in the way backslashes and other features like drive letters are used for the file system.

Many of these details are from Microsoft employee Larry Osterman’s weblog, which contains more detailed information from Microsoft employees who made these decisions.

These all would not be the matter today, but web browsers follow the Unix convention and use / characters for web page addresses. A typical Windows user sees a forward slash when they type a web address and a back slash when they type the location of a local folder; so, this can be confusing. Websites follow the Unix convention, as do other protocols like FTP. Even if you’re running a web server or FTP server on a Windows machine, they’ll use forward slashes because that’s what the protocol calls for.

Other Operating Systems (OS) are using forward slashes for the same reason; it’s the convention of Unix. Linux is a Unix-like operating system; so, it uses the same type of slash. Mac OS X is based on BSD (Berkeley Software Design), an another Unix-like operating system. Other consumer operating systems like Android, Chrome OS, and Steam OS are based on Linux, so they use the same type of slash.

The more interesting question is, here, whether it really matters or not? Browser and OS developers seem to realize that the users are confused; so, they often go out of their way to accept any type of slash possible. 

If you type http:\\portonovocomputertech.blogspot.com\ into Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Internet Explorer, the browser will automatically correct it to http://portonovocomputertech.blogspot.com/ and load the website normally. 

If you type C:/Users/Public into Windows Explorer and press Enter, it will automatically be corrected to C:\Users\Public and you’ll be taken to the correct location.

DOS developers weren't satisfied with this in the earlier days; so, they made DOS to accept both types of characters for paths. Even you may type commands like C:/Windows/ into the Command Prompt, today, and you’ll be taken to the correct folder.

This doesn’t work everywhere in Windows, if you type a path like C:/Users/Public into the Open dialog and press Enter; you’ll see an error saying that the file name isn’t valid. Other web-based applications may show you the error if you attempt to type a path like http:\\portonovocomputertech.blogspot.com\ it depends whether the program corrects it for you or decides to display an error.

You can just forget that there are two different types of slashes, but it occasionally does matter. It would be nice if everyone used a consistent separator for directory paths, but Windows has historically been all about backward compatibility, even in the early 1980's.

How to Check If Your Android Device Is Working Properly?

How to Check If Your Android Device Is Working Properly?

There are a lot of components, which make to functioning your smartphone, and if one of those is not working properly, it may throw off your whole effort.

But how do you pinpoint exactly 'what’s wrong with your device?'. May be the accelerometer seems a bit off when you play racing games, or when browsing the web on Wi-Fi / mobile data, you don’t feel the speed as fast as it should. 

Whatever the problem is, there are apps that can help you to figure out the wrong side and how to solve it. Even if you’re not having a specific problem, it might be good, as a routine work, to run through a little check-up on your phone to ensure everything is running smoothly.

1. Device Assist

The App, Device Assist, is from the Play Store, which does a lot more than check for issues. If you're a beginner, it will give tips and advices on how to take advantages to your Android device; but if you've Nexus or Moto devices, you should have to download the APK and install it manually.

When you boot up the App, it asks if you want Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced mode, and this can be changed, later, from the Settings.

Beginners will be told how to turn Wi-Fi on / off, or create folders on their home-screen (pictured above), whereas advanced users will learn about more obscure features like finding or remote locking your device (pictured below).

Navigation is simple, just scroll through the list of cards that Google displays for you. At any time, you can search for a particular issue in the top right, or tap the three-dot icon to see previous actions you’ve taken, change your settings, or view a range of information about your device.

You can even check the Wi-Fi or data speeds, and Google will tell you the results in plain English so that you actually understand the results.

Since the App is a part of Google’s services, it provides hints for other Google Apps too, like little tricks for Google Maps. All the tips are explained in easy-to-understand instructions and visual explanations in GIF form, if necessary.

So, this App is simple and offers good solutions, if your smartphone facing problems.

2. Test Your Android

Have you any idea on this App Test Your Android, which is also available in Google's Play Store and it tests your Android device, too. This powerful App having an attractive colorful interface that allows you to test everything from your screen's multi-touch capabilities to your built-in compass. You can also slide to Information tab to view your device information like Device Assist App.

A small ad can be seen at the bottom of this App while you use it, but it's easily ignored.

3. Phone Doctor Plus 

As the name imply, the App PhoneDoctorPlus diagnostics as a doctor for your phone. It allows you to run through all sorts of 'check-ups' to ensure that everything works properly.

As your expectations, this App allows to check-up the health and status of various aspects of your device such as CPU, memory, compass, battery and etc., When you completed the various tests, the progress bars will be filled-up.

The date on which you're tested the each part of device will also be noted. So, you always have a record for different aspects.

4. Z Device Test
This App, z device test is not the prettiest one, but it is so functional. It uses big 3D skeuomorphic icons with tiny text beneath them.


However, it provides very specific and detailed information about everything from accelerometer to GPS coordinates. It shows a big green check mark on sensors and features that your phone equipped, and a big red X mark through any that your phone is lacking.

Banner ads run along the bottom of the screen, and sometimes interrupting by full-screen. But if you need the kind of detailed information this app can supply, those might be worthful.

Fixing Pixels Of Defective or Dead
Above said Apps will help you to detect the problems and solve! But, if your device has a defective or dead pixel, they doesn't do anything in fixing it. Some stuck pixels are hardware related defects, and those can’t be fixed by any App, but others just need to cycle through their three options (red, green, and blue) enough times to refresh them.

If you find that your screen has a stuck pixel (or more) then there might be a way to revive it.

5. Dead Pixel Detector & Fixer

If you want to try through the App route, then you could use Dead Pixel Detector & Fixer, which gives you different color backgrounds to identify dead pixels, then shuffles the whole screen rapidly through colors to refresh any affected areas.

The best solution to solve this, is not an App, but through a website: JScreenFix, which works on Android or any other device with an LCD panel. It displays a pure black screen so that you can identify the stuck pixel, then it offers a little square that you can place over the area that quickly shuffles through colors. Developers suggest leaving it running for about 10 minutes.

What App Do You Use?

There’s a flurry of Apps available on Play Store for checking the health of your Android devices; but above said were the best and personally, we suggest Google's Device Assist to be the best option for most people, as others will need the detailed readouts, like Z Device Test.

How To Clean And Sanitize Your Smartphone

How To Clean And Sanitize Your Smartphone

Years ago, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that 92 percent of phones tested had bacteria on them. It sounds frightening, but that’s par for the course for being a bunch of evolved animals with gadgets in hand. That’s also why we sought to find out how the heck to properly clean a smartphone. 

Here’s a couple of tips we learned along the way.

Make a habit of wiping it down!

This is an obvious thing to do but it bears repeating: you should wipe down your phone as often as you can. We love pre-moistened anti-bacterial wipes like Wireless Wipes or these stylish screen cleansing towelettes from Sephora, but you can also buy full size screen cleaning and microfiber phone cleaning kits to keep at home. 

Alternatively, you can make your own screen cleaning solution from scratch. All you need is a small spray bottle, 8 ounces of 70 percent rubbing alcohol, and 8 ounces of distilled water. (Make sure that it’s distilled water. Tap water can leave behind a residue.) A 50-50 mixture of white vinegar and distilled water also works, if you want to keep things organic and don't mind the odor.

Bust out the Q-tips and toothpicks!

Those tiny crevices in between the glass covering the display and the rest of the chassis store lots of gunk. My friend’s favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon is go through and pick at them with a plain wooden toothpick. It’s pretty disgusting to see what he excavates from the cracks in his smartphone, but he’s a contractor and that’s the only way to ensure his device stays relatively clean.

Try this yourself and, when you’ve finished, run through the cracks again with a dry cotton swab to clean out any residual dust. For tougher jobs, you can take a fresh cotton swab, dip it in cleaning solution and swirl it around on the camera lens and other parts of the smartphone chassis. Be thorough, but also be gentle; you don’t want to accidentally scratch anything.

Consider investing in a UV sanitizer!

If you’re really a germaphobe, you can invest in a device that kills off germs with a UV light. Try out CellBlaster’s Universal UV Cell Phone Sanitizer, or the Easycare Portable Multiuse UV Sterilizer. But honestly, killing germs with UV light is sort of hit-and-miss and you still don't get the crud off.

Don’t forget to wipe down your headphones, too!

If you opted for the UV blaster mentioned above, you can simply drop your earbuds in and take care of business that way every few days. If not, you can wipe each bud down with a soft cloth dampened with a bit of mild dish soap and water.

Headphones are a bit trickier: you’ll want to use same dish soap solution to wipe them down in their entirety. If the headphones include silicon covers, you can remove those and clean them separately with a toothbrush. Anything more serious, and you’ll want to dip a cotton swap in rubbing alcohol and give it a thorough once-over. Then allow the headphones to dry completely before using them again.

5 Add-Ons: Make Facebook Way Better

5 Add-Ons: Make Facebook Way Better

The tools, indicated here, help you to organize your News Feed and make them easier to view content.

Although Facebook does its best to make the News Feed as relevant and useful as possible; it can still become a cluttered place. With more than one billion people using Facebook on average each day, it can be difficult to parse through all of the different types of content that pop up in your feed.

However, adding certain extensions to your Web browser can make Facebook’s website more customizable and easier to digest. Extensions are almost like apps that run in your browser to add new functions and features that wouldn’t otherwise exist. They’re developed by third-party developers, which means they aren’t officially affiliated with Facebook, and can be disabled at any time.

Here’s a look at the five Facebook-themed extensions for Google’s Chrome browser that we found to be the most useful.

1. Photo Zoom for Facebook
As its name implies, Photo Zoom makes it easier to view photos as you’re browsing the News Feed. When Photo Zoom is enabled, you can enlarge a picture simply by hovering over it with your mouse pointer. This allows you to expand the photos you’re interested in without being taken out of the News Feed.

2. Facebook Secret Emoticons
Facebook Secret Emoticons gives you a wider selection of emoticons to use when posting a status update. Facebook already allows you to tag status updates with a emotions and feelings (i.e. excited, happy, annoyed, sick, etc.), but the extension adds an extra set of symbols to choose from. It’s also a little quicker to access than scrolling through Facebook’s feelings menu.

A subtle smiley face icon will appear when the extension is turned on; clicking it launches a menu that includes everything from a Pac Man-themed smiley to Facebook’s classic thumbs-up icon. The drawback is that you have to navigate to the developer’s website to access symbols in different categories, such as animals and places.

 

3. Social Fixer for Facebook
Social Fixer is a tool for those looking to get more customization out of Facebook. It lets you tweak nearly every aspect of Facebook, from the way posts look in your News Feed to how notifications appear. 

For instance, you can choose to enable or disable the photo viewer from popping up when you click on an image, make it so that tapping “Enter” starts a new line instead of publishing a comment, and hide duplicate stories in the News Feed among other things.

4. Facebook Unseen

Read receipts can be both helpful and hurtful. While it’s useful to know if a friend has seen your last message, you run the risk of offending a recipient if you don’t respond in a timely manner. Facebook Unseen gives you some control over this by blocking read receipts in Chrome. When the extension is enabled in Chrome, the friend you’re chatting with won’t be notified when you read their most recent message.

5. Facebook Flat — New Design and AdBlock

If Facebook is too messy for your liking, Facebook Flat offers a stripped down alternative. Turning the extension on removes ads and cleans up the lefthand column by consolidating things like apps and groups into subcategories. It’s a slick interface that focuses on Facebook’s core features.

5 Ideas To Save Your Printer Ink

5 Ideas To Save Your Printer Ink

The great nuisances of digital life, which irritate consumers, is the high price of printer ink. If you see black clouds rolled-in, just assume that it's time to drive to the store, open your wallet, and purchase a new round of color cartridges.

The gloom is understandable and hard to justify in paying so dearly for the privilege of printing out a grocery store coupon. And, while third-party printer ink cartridges may promise savings; but they often get rejected by printers that designed to sniff out off-brand intruders.

So, how do we save on printer ink? 

Here's a few ideas.

1. Change the Font

Two years ago, a 14 year old student from Pittsburgh created a stir on CNN by announcing that the U.S. government could save $234 million a year by printing its documents in Garamond instead of Times New Roman. While his discovery was eventually discredited—due to a point size issue unique to Garamond—the kid's instincts were right. So, the choice of typeface can make a difference in ink consumption.

When Consumer Reports tested fonts several years ago, we got 27 percent more mileage when using Times New Roman rather than Arial, a default font in many browsers. Calibri and Century Gothic both outperformed Arial, as well. 

An option called ecofont is designed specifically for frugality, which removes enough printer ink from its characters to stay legible and saving money. But you have to pay for it, a lifetime-license starts at $19.95.

2. Print in Black & White

The point of wasting precious ink is to print colorful ads or logos; but changing printer's default settings to black & white (also known as gray-scale), you can spare the color cartridges.

3. Strip Out the Stuff You Don't Want

Many websites let you select printer-friendly, which automatically remove color ink-sucking ads and images, leaving you with nothing but text. If the site you're reading doesn't offer that option, a service like Instapaper, Clean Print, or Print Friendly can help you reformat the story yourself, saving on ink and paper. Some even let you skip the printing process altogether and save the article for future reading on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

4. Upgrade Your Printer

Printers vary quite a bit in how much ink they use, and this is one of the factors that Consumer Reports tests in the lab. Laser printers are known for their low cost-per-page (around 2 cents, usually) and fast print speeds—a particularly strong performer in our Ratings is the Dell S2825cdn, which costs $280, and $0.02/page to print.

Inkjets are catching up on per-page printing costs, if not speed: Consider the HP Officejet Pro 8610, an all-in-one model that costs $100 upfront, and prints at a cost of just 0.017 per page.

Then there’s the Epson EcoTank line of printers, which have a novel take on the home printer, eschewing the classic ink cartridge for ink bottles and reservoirs. The bottles cost $12.99 each, and you need four of them. 

The printers have a pricey upfront costs—the Epson Expression ET-2550 costs $299. But the per-page printing cost is tiny, roughly an order of magnitude lower than some other printers at just $0.003. Do all that arithmetic, and you'll be saving money after about three years. According to Epson, a set of Ecotank ink bottles is equivalent to around 20 standard-capacity printer ink cartridges.

5. Use Draft Mode

If you're rarely using the printer for dissertation projects, wedding invitations, or quarterly earnings reports then the device spits out a legible soup recipe! When the end result doesn't have to be high quality, use the draft mode in your printer settings. This will not only use less ink, but also print faster.